HELMET Soldiers

If it's Sunday it must be Blog time. Hello everyone from a wet, dank and dark south of England. We've spent most of the weekend getting stuff ready for our first show on December 1st at the Royal National Hotel in London. We've never done this before, and there seems to be so much to think about and prepare, but if you're coming to the show, drop by table A1 and say hell. I am continuing our quest to get some new HELMET products on the market, and I fully realise that we have at least one customer patiently waiting for new stuff out there, but I'm quite excited that we'll have some new and interesting items in the near future. I'll not mention this again until I know that we can actually supply the new bits and pieces.

So, on to this week's pictures. There is nothing new here, the show preparation has seen to that, but there should be some more War of 1812 pictures ready soon. I particularly like British 18th century uniforms, The Revolution and before, and have long been interested in the Jacobite Rising of 1745/1746 and the French and Indian War, so have devised a cunning plan whereby I can use the British troops for both conflicts. I realise that there are subtle uniform differences, but as I said in an earlier Blog, I paint and convert to get the "look and feel" rather than complete down to the last button accuracy. These grenadiers are mainly from the A Call to Arms grenadier set. I have trimmed their bearskins and produced mitre caps from the ubiquitous greenstuff, and added deeper cuffs and some additional bulk to their coat tails from the same material. The drummer is a metal figure from Dorset Soldiers and the officer is made by Barzo. The loading figure is from the Maryland Infantry set.

The Romans are mainly from the newish set from A Call to Arms, the conversion work consisted mostly of turning heads through 90 degrees so that at least some of them are holding their shields in front of them. I read somewhere that equipment was only replaced when it was worn out, and as this makes perfect sense, I used a few heads from the Toyway set and a mail clad body from Italeri. The centurion and a couple of legionaries are metal models from a New Zealand company who are no longer operating.

The two Napoleonic cavalrymen are made from HELMET spare parts. I saw a photo of a painting by Eugene Leliepvre on the front of an old Military Modelling - July 1984, I was only 10 at the time (not!) and was impressed by the simple but elegant uniforms. These are Declarers of the Guard, I think the nearest translation is "scouts" and were formed apparently to counter the threat from Russian Cossacks. We could issue these as a kit, what do people think?

Finally the Russian steamroller from the Crimean War. There are two companies from a line regiment here and about 20 packs of greenstuff. The figure come from the usual wide range of sources and take ages to make, but there is some compensation in the fact they are fairly quick to paint up.

That's all for now, any comments and feedback gratefully received.

Cheers and take care,

Eric

www.helmetsoldiers.co.uk