CONSTRUCTION OF GS WAGONS.

HOW I MAKE AND PAINT GS WAGONS.

                                                                                                    

Having completed yet another batch of GS wagons I  photographed the whole process of construction and painting  so I can now share these with readers.

GS wagons are the most numerous vehicle in my armies. The total required for the army I am currently constructing is over 450. For the three armies already existing to date I have built almost 1400 !!!! The primary historical reference for these vehicles is the British mark X GS wagon made in large part by the Bristol Wagon Works and used in vast numbers in WW1 but I have also been influenced by the US army's Escort wagon and the products of both Studebaker and Murphy Brothers.

Construction starts with the cutting of balsa blocks. These are 30mm long and 15mm wide and are cut from 9mm thick planks as shown on the left of the photo below. I then take toilet tissue and cut small squares/oblongs which I screw up between my fingers as shown in the middle left and middle right of the photo below. These lumps are then glued to the approximate centre of the balsa blocks as seen on the right. The process is kept rough and non exact so as to ensure the lumps are all slightly different in size and shape as you can see in the photo.These lumps depict the cargo load in the wagons. 

The next stage is to create the canvas tilt cover to the wagon. I use the brown paper that comes from the large paper sacks in which we buy sunflower hearts to feed our garden birds !!!!!!!! These sacks are two ply and I use the inner ply. However you can of course just use regular brown wrapping paper too, I am just addicted to repurposing anything and everything I can to provide raw materials for my modelling activities because I am just odd like that !!!!  The idea behind using brown paper is simply that I have found it to be just the right consistency for this purpose. The paper is best used crumpled and a bit used, it then looks and creases more realistically.  

The photo below shows the roughly cut oblong of paper which is then glued onto the wagon body using hot melt glue around the edges. The paper is quickly and carefully pressed onto the hot melt glue to ensure a good bond all around. Any surplus glue oozes out and creases are created all at the same time. Practice will make perfect but be careful as hot melt glue is very hot and sticks to the fingers, and that hurts !!!!! The final stage of this bit of the process is to trim the brown paper tilt after the glue has gone cold as shown on the right side of the photo below. This can be done easily with sharp scissors which will also cut away any oozed out glue. After making hundreds of these wagons I have never found any two with the same exact pattern of creases which I think adds a lot to the aesthetics of the models.

The next stage  is to treat the end grain of the balsa wagon blocks  with sealer. I use MDF sealer which I find does a good job. This stuff is water based and soaks in well and drys quickly. The idea is to ensure a good painting surface that does not soak up gallons of expensive enamel paint, and it looks better too. I apply sealer at this stage because it is easier to file the end grain smooth after the sealer has dried  rather than later when other elements have been added. I follow the same process with all balsa block vehicles and equipments. For filing the end grain I use emery boards which are actually more effective for this particular task than my Excel belt sander as they are wider and do not create grooves if used too energetically.

The next step in the construction process is to add the shaft. These are made from long (average length 58mm.) flat toothpicks as shown below. Unfortunately these are only available in the USA but most large supermarkets over there stock them. I have bought large quantities over the course of a number of trips over several years. They can however be purchased on the interweb but the postage is high. Of course the best solution is to  actually visit the US or know someone going there !!!!. Please bear in mind that the wastage is high. You will find only at best a third of the contents are good enough to actually use so buy plenty.

Having glued the shaft on, next steps are to glue on the wheels and a towing hook made from a Bambi staple, also readily available online. In addition you will also need to cut and fix a block of 5mm thick balsa to the shaft on which you can mount the horses in due course. These elements are all shown in the photo below.

One last step before we  move on to the painting process is to trim the horse mounting block. I find that when fitting these blocks they are never quite square, therefore , to ensure the horses are fixed straight and level they need to be carefully trimmed by eye using a craft knife or the belt sander. Please ensure you trim the balsa block only and not your thumbs !!!!!!!!! I have a leather thumb stool but rarely remember to use it. Don't be dumb like me !!!!!!!! Once that is done painting can start. The first job of that process is to prime the wheels and the towing hook as seen below.

At the same time I also cut out the horse blanks needed to supply the batch of vehicles I am building and  prime them too. I find that partially painting the horses before fixing improves the strength of the glue joint. Therefore I  paint most of the inner surface of the horses. Do not forget that you will need mirror image horses for each side. The way I cover this is to paint either head up or head down. If you look carefully at the photo below you will see exactly what I mean by this expression.

Next job is to paint the wagons, in my case, olive drab.

At the same time I paint the horses brown, still one side only, again head up or down. Although my wife complains that my horses should be in a variety of colours, I decided long ago to have a standard "issue" horse colour, Humbrol Burnt Leather.

The next stage is to glue the horses to the wagons, ensuring you glue the painted side in. As soon as the glue has dried , the rest of the horse, that is the edges, outside and inside of the head can be primed and then painted brown just as soon as the primer has dried.

Almost there  !!!! Next job is to fix the twisted wire "harness" around the horses as shown below. I buy this wire online, there are many suppliers, just look for twisted wire. I originally used the sealing wire used on franking machine but that is no longer available in the UK. I just make a small hole in the wagon body and then bend the wire in my fingers then push home. Usually I can do it easily but occasionally there is a hard bit of balsa so then I just use pliers to push the wire home. I find no glue is needed. Be careful not to apply too much pressure to the horses during this operation or you will be re-attaching them  again and again and again !!!!

At this point I have a confession. The sharp eyed reader may have noticed that the photos above and  below are different in that the spare wheel has magically appeared on the vehicles below !!!!!! Despite the 1000 plus GS wagons I have now made , I actually forgot to fit the spare wheels to this batch until I was just about to paint the wheels black. I had to hastily fit the wheels and prime them. In fact, the spare wheels need to be added at the same time as the other wheels. I use no glue, just push fit the pins.

The very last job is to paint all wheels black as shown in the photo below. I only paint the outside of the spare wheel black. I paint the underside olive drab like the wagon, it's just easier.

The basic principles of construction and painting described above apply to virtually all the other vehicles and equipments I build. Unlike some of my other vehicles and equipments, the construction process for GS wagons is quite lengthy and complex. Given the quantities I make it may even seem arduous I guess to some readers. However the end results do look really good. To see hundreds of vehicles lined up alongside thousands of soldiers is what, being odd I suppose, gives me a buzz.

CONSTRUCTING CAVALRY.

HOW I BUILD MY CAVALRYMEN.

 I thought it may be of interest to explain the background to how I first designed mounted troops for my armies before detailing the actual construction methods.

On the matter of cavalry, the original Miniature Warfare magazine article on which my armies are based, proposed the use of a larger size of screw for cavalry. I never liked that idea at all. I already had a horse pulling vehicles so could not reconcile myself to not using that horse in some way for cavalry too. The issue was how ???

 To marry up a screw and a flat plastic card horse into a realistic cavalryman eluded me for many years. The obvious answer was to deepen the slot in the screw so it could sit on the horse but then the horse would fall over, so how to provide the stability needed ??? Than one day while doing some tiling I looked a little more closely at the tile spacers.....was this a pair of legs ???

After some experimentation I found that by cutting the spacer up I could indeed create a pair of legs, drilling a hole through a horse and fitting the legs provided a stable platform for a screw with a deepened slot to ride the horse.....hey presto a cavalryman !!!

I realize that a horse with only two legs sounds weird but  of course it is no stranger than either using a screw as a soldier  or indeed having a flat horse. The fact is it looks good and like virtually everything else in my army, it's a representation of the real thing rather than an accurate scale model. Anyway at this point in time my cavalry and horse artillery regiments have over 2100 mounted soldiers with an additional 700 on the way as I build my fourth army. 

I will now detail the actual construction method itself which I must warn is hard and time consuming. 

The starting point is a 2mm tile spacer. This is cut up to give a pair of legs.

Above is the before and after photo. Please note the flat cut at the top of the leg joint. The next step is to take  a standard horse and  drill a 2mm hole in the horse in line with the neck and about halfway down. Into this I force the legs. This is where the square cut comes in useful as it provides for accurate centring of the legs. I find that the square profile legs are a tight fit and usually require some force to get through the round hole. Be careful to cut off any flash on the legs before assembly otherwise you will not be able to force the legs through the hole.

The above photo gives two views of the assembled cavalry horse. The joint is covered with plastic modelling glue. The only time I use this smelly stuff I am pleased to say. I use  Revell glue simply because the long spout makes it easy to drip the glue into position accurately. I do find however that the glue can melt the plastic into holes sometimes so I usually drip some more glue onto the joints next day to be sure of a solid bond and good painting surface. 

The next step is the preparation of the screw soldier. Yet again this is a tedious job so I tend to cut 15 or so then do something else for a hour or two then go back and do some more until the required number are done. Basically the work involves cutting with a hacksaw into the slot on the screw head to make it deeper so it will sit on the horse. Interestingly the hacksaw cuts are the same thickness as the plastic card used for the horse. 

I long ago found that holding the screw in a vice damages the thread so now I screw the screw into a block of oak which is fixed in the vice. Using oak means I can cut at least ten screws using the same hole. You will soon know when a new hole is needed. My cavalry regiments have 109 mounted soldiers so the ten  or so holes needed use only a small area of the oak block. Every now and again I just saw the used bit off the block to enable a fresh start.

The above photo shows the cut screw. The depth of cut needs to be just less than the head and shank in total. The next job is to file both sides of the cut to remove any swarf, again tedious but essential. The penultimate task is to sit the screw on the horse. When the screw is sitting comfortably I use pliers to squeeze the cut end of the screw together as hard as possible, you will know you have got it right if the screw does not move.

The final task is to make sure the assembled cavalryman sits straight and level. Given the variations implicit in the manufacturing process it is almost inevitable that some adjustments will be necessary. It is trial and error to trim carefully either the length of one or both legs or trim a very small sliver off the bottom of the horse to achieve a good result. Don't rush this bit of work, it makes a lot of difference to the appearance and stability of the finished model. Don't get carried away either or you will end up with a Shetland Pony instead of a horse !!!

Finally, and after a great deal of work, you have a cavalryman ready for painting.....and he looks great !!!

CONSTRUCTION OF HORSES.

The original Miniature Warfare magazine article on which my armies are based included flat horses made of card. I have used that principle for my horses but use 30 thou plastic card instead as it is considerably more durable. The idea of flat horses however in my view is perfectly acceptable. They are after all only a representation of horses in the same way that screws represent soldiers. 

As to the construction of the horses, I cut the plastic card with a modelling knife into strips using my "master" horse as a guide, then measure the length of each horse at 20mm, then cut the resultant rectangles with scissors. I then cut the horse shape freehand again with scissors. After the thousands I have made I know exactly where to cut which is around one third in and one third down give or take a bit  !!!!!!!!

The photo above shows the strip with a rectangle below and the final horse shape at the bottom. I usually cut up a whole sheet of plastic card at one time so as to have a number of horses in stock. It can be tedious to make horses for each batch of vehicles so I find it best  to have a stockpile. I will detail the painting methods I use for horses later under the  Painting Techniques heading.

The Remuda

Remuda is a Spanish word meaning a horse herd suitable for remounts. In the context of my armies I have a Remuda in each Quartermaster battalion to provide spare horses for the other battalions served by that Quartermaster battalion. The Remuda is part of the Veterinary company establishment.

The photo above shows a Remuda assembled and primed ready for final painting. Construction is based on 10 horses with a bar passing through each row of five horses and glued into a square section beam with a twisted cable and "towing" eye to enable attachment to a Veterinary company wagon. The construction is similar to that used for Cavalry horses.
I admit the arrangement may appear odd but it is the best way I have found, so far, to represent the availability of a herd of remounts which I consider essential to the overall importance I attach to the army having a full logistical capability.

This photo shows the six Remudas I recently made to equip the six Quartermaster battalions in the army I am currently constructing. The horses are of course my standard horse brown colour with the "frame" black. I did originally try olive drab, my usual vehicle/equipment colour, but it just did not look quite right. Which ever colour is used the painting of the "frame" is slow and complex as even the small bits between horses are painted.