Painting my British Heavies - Part 1, Pinning

These are the tools I use for pinning. From left to right top: wire cutters, pliers, rigged vice for sculpting, Liquitex modelling paste (vice and paste not used this time). Lower row: box cutter (rough cutting), gorilla glue, pin vice and surgeon’s scalpel (fine cutting), 46 gauge guitar wire, stripped and two part modelling putty. 

I was asked by a fellow figure painter on the Benno's forum the other day if I could put together a short tutorial on how I do my pinning. And then another asked if I could talk about my painting technique! I have honestly never thought that either of these skills of mine worthy of a tutorial but decided it might be fun to give it a try. I needed to get at my HaT British Heavy Dragoons, as I still need a few units before I can tackle all of the Talavera scenarios I want to play in 2022 so these seemed like a good choice for both. 

They are not the most beautiful set to paint, as the detailing is a bit blobby and they have a few inherent difficulties in assembly, both of which I have talked about in this post from a year ago. But they do need some pinning so I thought I would work with these. 

 My first step in preparing them was, as always, to wash them with soap and warm water to remove residual oils from the molding process. I then cut off the figures from the sprues, trimmed away the bits of flash, and paired arms to the figures that require them (In this case three of the twelve). There is no trumpeter in this set so I borrowed an arm from the HaT light dragoon trumpeter for one of those. 

Figures trimmed and ready to assemble. 

Each figure also gets a carbine which needed attaching. Although the pin for the carbine is usable, I found the arm pins are not, and chose to carve the arm pins off and replace them with my own. For my pinning holes I use a #75 bit in my pin vice, with only 1/4” or so protruding as these are fine bits and snap easily. For my pinning wire I use old guitar wire my musician friend gives me, in this case a #46 gauge wire. It is wound with a thinner wire which you can pull off easily once you get the hang of it, revealing a very stiff fine wire, much thinner than a straight pin.

As it’s a bit fine for handling with my fingers I use a pair of pliers to force it into place and then clip it off close to the body. Not too close, as I need enough to secure the arm but not too much as it is hard to trim off excess after the arm is attached. 

Using pliers to push in the wire.

Trimming the pin the proper length is key. In the arm below you can see I have also drilled a smaller hole in the arm socket. The arm itself, of course, already has a molded hole but this hole was too big for my new pin. I then placed the arm on the new pin I had created, testing to see that the pin comes just short of the surface of the arm, and glued the arm on with gorilla glue (a thick form of crazy glue).

Wire cut off and arm with new hole drilled inside of old one.

Figure with arm glued in place. The arm will be reinforced later with putty. I have also attached the carbine here but elected to wait to do this for the remainder so they would have two points of contact.

I placed longer pins between the riders’ legs that fit into holes drilled in the saddles, especially important for this set as they do not grip the horse well. Finally I added pins to the bicornes of the three figures requiring arms as an armature for plumes, because, for some reason, these three figures lacked them. 

Figures with pins inserted for mounting on horses, and (bottom three) plumes and arms. (The figure on bottom left is the one that I had already attached the arm, shown above.)

In the case of the trumpeter’s arm I also needed to sculpt a bit of a wing as this was missing from the borrowed arm. The trumpeter’s head needed to be sliced off and repositioned at an angle (again, with pinning) so that it interacted with the raised trumpet. 

The bicorne pins I built up into plumes with a bit of modelling putty, at the same time patching and reinforcing the arm connections.  I proceeded to attach all of the riders to their horses, thinking that with the pinned arms and carbines, it might be better not to have to handle the riders too much. This creates some difficulties in painting and perhaps was not the right decision, but it did allow me to glue the carbines not only to their pins but to also glue the muzzle to the saddle bag at front, giving it two points of contact. 

Figures complete, with reinforced arms, missing plumes created, carbines attached and all firmly attached to their mounts.

It also allowed me to prime them as a unit, with the paint contributing somewhat to holding them all together. The primer paint I use is Rust-oleum Painter's Touch 2X Ultra Cover, Flat Black, especially formulated for adhering to plastics. Primed and ready to go, I will pick up the painting in my next instalment.

Primed and ready to go!