I recently purchased some excellent cloth flags from Solway for my Spanish WSS troops. They are truly top notch. When my wife saw them however, she mentioned that they sell fabric sheets to be run through an inkjet at her quilting supply store, Joann’s. Since I needed flags for my poor miserable Portuguese I “let” her talk me into going with her next time. The brand they carried is Tailor Colorfast. The cost was $52 for 25 sheets but the wife had a coupon for half off (yay!) so it came out to bit over a dollar a sheet.

When I got home inspiration starting flying fast and furious. I had already drawn up my Portuguese flags in paint and downloaded English, Dutch and French flags from various sources. One of the things I wanted to do was to add a texture to the flag like those at Warflag.com http://www.warflag.com. It occurred to me to print a texture on the sheet first, then run it through again with the flags. Eureka! It gave me pretty much what I wanted. The sheet of colonel’s flags below shows the texture best, followed by the regimental flags.

After printing and allowing the ink to dry it is a simple matter of ironing the sheet to set the colors, rinse under cold water and then iron again to dry. I took a first draft that I did and stress tested it. After setting the colors I through it into a load of wash, no special settings, then dried it in the dryer with the same cloths. Other than being wrinkled the colors held true. They had come off in a few places where the cloth had been folded between other pieces of laundry and spun dry in the washer but other than a few blemishes they came out fine.

Here are a couple of examples showing the flags with units close up, (forgive the painting):

The cloth flags are then cut out and glued around the staff with Elmer’s. They can be draped much more realistically than paper and once the glue dries they are rock solid. I will be switching out my paper flags with these as much as I can. This company also makes a fabric sheet with a higher thread count which means less graininess. I will probably use that for my 10mm and 15mm figures. For my 28′s this product seems perfectly in scale.

Another bit of inspiration came from the size of the Solway flags. My original paper flags were approximately 1 inch square. The Solway’s were 1.5 inches. Wow, what a difference! Compare this picture to the image above for the English unit.

Size does matter!

I had recently purchased a Proxon foam cutter and had been playing making buildings and such. It is the right size to slice the foam into thinner slices.

Proxon Foam cutter

One inch slices

I settled on 1/2 inch slices and then started painting some test samples. I used a medium green craft paint to seal the foam. The I oversprayed with dark green, brown and tan spray paints. For the most part the foam held up pretty well. Where I did get some melting it was pretty easy just to pass it off as “texture”.

Painted hex

Three hexes

From my previous experience with GeoHex, I knew one problem to be overcome would be the hexes sliding around. I decided to make a dedicated board to the hexes. I took 2 2′x4′ particle board sheets and hinged them on the back. I then painted the top with a ferrous “magnetic paint” from the local Home Depot.

The board folded in half.

I then glued rare earth magnets from Amazing Magnets to the bottom of the hexes.

Magnets on the bottom

I also decided to paint the underside with other types terrain such as roads.

Dirt Road painted on bottom

The magnets do a good job of holding the hexes as this photo shows. The three hexes here are on the board and the board is upright.

Hexes holding on an upright board

The nice thing about the cutter is the ability to change the angle of the cut. With this feature I am able to slopes easily.

Hills and slopes

slope with texture, maybe a trench?

The net result of 30 4″ hexes is stored easily in a couple of underbed plastic containers.

Storage

A few photos.

Regiment in block

Extended Regiment

Shot

pike and command

Four more regiments, the cavalry and artillery left.

For this project I started out with an advancing musket of the Blue Regiment. I start by blocking in the colors and then going back over the fine details. I then seal the figure with clear floorwax and when dry, I brush on a wash or dip coat of floorwax with black added. When totally dry and based I will hit it with a coat of Dulcote.

Here are some photos of the plain figure and the shaded one.

Blocked Colors

Future Floorwax with black

For my own future reference here are the colors I used:
Vallejo
MC Flat Bue – Shirt, pants
GC Bronze Flesh – Coat
MC Ivory – Stockings
GC Leather – Pouches, scabbard, hair
MC Flat Brown – Musket
GC Cold Grey – Belt, hat
MC Black – Shoes
MC Flesh – Skin
MC Oily Steel – Ramrod, barrel
MC Brass – Hilts
MC Ochre – Feather in hat
Craft paint green for the base.

As I start the assembly painting I will add in the occassional change to the shade of grey or a different color pants just to vary the look and diminish the uniform look of the unit.

Next step: The assembly line.

The miniatures are separated, glued on craft sticks and primed. For a change I am trying out Krylon Fusion White as the primer. I usually use the cheapo 99 cent primer from the hardware store but I thought I would try something different. My first reaction is that there isn’t much difference. One downside was a bit of powdering on the minis. That was probably more a result of priming in 97 degree F Texas weather. Here they are in all their ghostly glory:

Primed Swedish TYW

As is usual with most plastic sets there are always some less than desirable poses. This set had two that just were not going to be used as is. The first was a musketeer using his weapon as a club, swinging it overhead. The other had a musketeer advancing with his weapon butt first. I had 35! of the former and 19 of the latter. A little judicious use of an exacto, some superglue and plastic broom straw and they became pikemen. Maybe the overhead fencing pikes are unrealistic but they will be filling in the back rows and hopefully not too out of place. Here are the pics of the final conversion:

Overhead pike

Advancing

The final count of the horde is:

Pike: 71
Shot: 176
Command: 23
Cavalry: 26
Large Cannon: 3
Artillery crew: 25

Total figures: 321 figures, 3 cannon.

I am looking at dividing it up into 5 regiments of 48, 32 shot, 16 pike and 3 8 man cavalry units.

Next step: Painting