5 Armies in a tray

Hopefully, enough space left for the Austrian & Prussian line troops (the Landwehrs are finished) after I find 6 more of the rubber hair rollers (I hope).

The artillery of the 5 Armies

Hair Roller Update

Royal Scots Greys & British Cavalry 

Progress ?

Still learning about this technique. This scale (3mm) also makes it harder to suitably photograph these armies. The cavalry and infantry are painted and mounted for the 3 Armies (Russian, British, and French). I have spent several hours trying to figure out an easy way to make artillery with little succes so far.

What started as an effort to make armies quickly and easily has ended up being a bigger challenge than I anticipated. My eyes, hands and fingers just don't work well enough any more to tackle this type of project. But, I will push on to make 6 artillery stands and finish up the 3 Napoleonic Armies. And anticipate finding 10 suitable rollers to do the Austrian and Prussians.

Trying to figure out this Aleene's Quick Dry Tacky Glue has been an experience. Not as easy to glue one's fingers together as "crazy glue", but has caused bowed bases and trying to balance the PMS (Plastic Mesh Sheets) horses is a real patience tester.

Size is everything

Discovered that my hair roller armies are actually 3mm. Which has resulted in another version of horses to be cut from the #10 needlepoint plastic mesh. This time 1 1/2 rows. (Photo above)

Took another trip to Sally's Beauty Supply (the places my hobby has taken me over the decades) and found some Nitecurl rollers (above, right). However, it looks like the roller design has changed from the type recommended by  Kenneth Van Pelt at The Penny Whistle. A lot of sprue on the bottom and the bodies appear to be not as tall.  On the left, above is my orignial hair rollers.

So this is going to take a lot more thought than I intended as I try to figure out how to proceed. I don't have enough of the 3mm hair rollers to build the Austrians & Prussians armies to give me the the 5 Napoleonic armies I was originally after.

 However, along the way I have a lot of 4 to 5mm horses, which I can salvage into a Late Eastern Roman army and Attila's Hun army made entirely from the #10 plastic mesh for needlecraft.

   Now how the heck did that happen ? Did I mention that I have a #7 size plastic mesh sheet which allows for cutting out 6 mm armies ?

Thanks to Kenneth Van Pelt for all his info, advice, suggestions and photos. If you're not following his blog The Penny Whistle, I highly recommend it.

3 mm Cavalry

Lost 2 days while experimenting with different ways to make cavalry for my hair roller armies. I was looking for a quick way to assemble large number of mounted troops. No luck. So I Returned to using a modified Van Pelt cut. I am using #10 plastic mesh used for Needlepoint. As my hair roller infantry is only 3mm high I opted to use the smallest mesh I could find. I choose to leave them as strips to make them quicker and easier to paint. Will cut them 5 deep on a 30mm deep base.  Still not sure how many units on a base for the different cavalry types, as I prefer a more massed looked.

The making of the 3 Armies

In the lower right are the cavalries, which are a bit tricky to construct.