The Great Horse Race continues

     As I push ahead with my Lace Wars cavalry project I thought that I would take a moment and let my gentle readers into my working method. Not to suggest that this is the only way, or even a better way, to get things accomplished. It is just my way of breaking the project down into digestible sized pieces. As you have seen earlier I have assembled and mounted on bases all of my horses, next I assembled all of the legs (the only thing in the set that is provided with no options). In the case of this kit this is the lower half of the figure from the belt downward. After these were glued together and dried I tacked one set of legs to the back corner of a horse's base, see below:

 

the starting point for everything

     Then I sat myself down and did some research. The most saddening part of this was the realization that way too many units had gray coats and red cuffs. This simply wouldn't do and I began digging around to find real historical units in as many different colors as I could manage. During this I found that large a variety of uniform and equipment patterns existed, even within the same army. Rather than try to work surrounded by a pile of research books (all far to valuable to risk near my clumsy hands and open paint bottles) I did a hasty sketch of the uniform and horse furniture with the colors annotated directly on the sketch, see below;

 

no Dutch Master, but all the pertinent information is there

      I used these sketches to guide my parts selection as I assembled the models, what sort of belts, the style of hat etc.The sketch was placed in a box with twelve horse and legs combinations awaiting assembly. The card will follow the figures through the assembly, priming and painting process. I repeated the process until every unit was provided a uniform card and placed in its own box.

 

the tip of the iceberg

      Having sorted through all of that I sat down with one unit and started building the model; torso first, then the head with hat, then the arms and last the scabbard. I use tube cement as it will fill minor gaps on its own and is tacky enough that it can hold the parts in place after just a moment of pressing into place.

 

ready for priming  

     Now all I need is a break in our absolutely vile weather so I can get these primed.