Back in May or June last year, Lee of the
Nostalgic ECW blog [clicky] fame, sent me a parcel of quite astonishingly generous proportions full of Hinchliffe little metal men.. I had been admiring his rapidly growing collection (and still do, the latest post - as we speak or rather type - is chock full of cavalry splendid'ness)
I was bemoaning the lack of progress in my own English Civil War project, and had gone on about how irritating I found it having to stick the heads to the bodies of the Tumbling Dice miniatures I had chosen to go with, and he mentioned that he'd send me a "few" so I could do a size comparison.. suffice to say a half shoe box full arrived in the post, full of examples of all arms, so many in fact that I had enough for whole units should I wish..
Being me, and deep in painting funk these sat on the paint table for 6 months but the following was the result of a fun afternoon in the loft at the paint table (binge watching Dickensian which I got on DVD for Christmas).. you'll note that both sets of figures are on painting sticks - the funk may be over..
Difficult to portray the comparative size when you are doing close up as clearly whichever is in the foreground appears bigger, but this is the best..
Hinchliffe in the background - Tumbling Dice foreground...
Hinchliffe are nominally 25mm (old 25mm, so small compared to the monsters of today), Tumbling Dice are 20mm (which was my choice of scale for the project)
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| Hinchliffe left |
..one thing I noticed was that there was a fair amount of scale creep even within the Hinchliffe figures I had - some of the poses seem bigger than others...
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| Hinchliffe front |
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| Tumbling Dice front |
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| Hinchliffe front.. |
...and lastly a 'perspective shot' - bottom line? In their own units I think the foot at least will work very well... stay tuned for a cavalry comparison
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Hinchliffe rear - note the comparative size of the figure on the left
of the painting stick to the one on the right
- a marked difference within the same range.. I'm growing to like those tumbling Dice figures... 😏 |
Separately, I also think I have addressed my issue with the construction of the Tumbling Dice figures.. my issue was having to balance the damn head while the super glue takes ...and then over on one of the sailing forums I frequent someone mentioned this stuff...
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| ...other makes are available... |
That my friends is cyanoacrylate accelerator - or 'super glue drying speeder upper' - mine is spray can, but you can get in dropper bottles.. it doesn't make the glue set instantly, but it is set between one and two minutes after spraying... a game changer.. recommended.
Good post. I like an accurate description of figure compairisons. I read somewhere of people using milliput to hold the heads or arms in place while the glue dried. Lately I've been doing that and using five minute epoxy.
ReplyDeleteThanks Dan - yes - I try to put up posts that I'd find useful, so job done.. I'd heard about the Miliput idea, I also tried blue tac as per Lee's comment, but it's a right old faff and I'm a gamer not a modeller.. :o))
DeleteGood post. Never really considered 20mm v 25mm as in the older school of figures since most of my stuff is moving to 28mm (aka 30mm). The thing with the 20mm stuff is that it does allow the use of those lovely figures from Zveda and the like doesn't it.
ReplyDeleteThanks Paul.. when I chose the scale for the project it was a bit if a toss up... 25mm is too big for me... I only have a 6 x 4 table but I wanted to field at least 8-10 units a side whilst still giving a little manoeuvre room... 15mm is getting too small for me - I can paint them but as age creeps in, glasses etc., it becomes more onerous.. so 20mm was the shoe in... but metal... never plastic... trust me, "it's an aspirational thing"... :o))
DeleteOh - and the accelerator in droppers is evil. it smells and once on your fingers lingers for ages. at least that's been my experience.
ReplyDeleteThey look pretty good together I'd say Steve. You mention scale creep within the Hinchliffe range, it's something I became aware of as I built up my armies and apparently is something they are notorious for. The ECW range is really not too bad as all the early codes were sculpted by Peter Gilder in 1978, but later codes added in 1980 are noticeably more chunky, I don't think they are the work of PG as the faces are very different. That said I have plenty of latter codes in my collection and find once painted a slight difference in sculpting style is not so noticeable. I look forward to seeing these examples painted. Re wobbly heads, I'm a user of blue tac, a tiny blob holds things in place and fills any tiny gaps and goes solid once the gel superglue has dried. Can be very frustrating though.
ReplyDeleteCheers Lee (again), that was a most generous parcel...they will be painted.. and I'll use them too... once they're done it will be interesting to see how they compare when standing right next to another unit of TD.. and I'm still hoping Sean at Newline is going to bring out a 20mm range...
DeleteThe accelerator looks excellent. I don't like slotta bases so am currently sawing of the tabs on some metal figures to stick them on to washers. I am sick of sitting with my fingers holding something for four or five minutes while it sets properly!
ReplyDelete