Building in Progress

Build it, they said. 

So why not? How hard can it be? So I put aside 30 minutes to build it, whilst the paint was drying on some Taipings.

First off I thought I'd just take a photo of the pieces. That's a piece of brass chain if you were wondering at the bottom. As you can see, the previous owner had made a start at painting some of the bits, then stopped. How odd.

I then got out the instructions, and read them carefully. Hmm. It recommended Araldite, but I reckoned I'd go with Super Glue. Can't sit around and wait for glue to dry. I get bored easily.

The instructions are that delightful mix of apparently comprehensive but also slightly vague you can only when they're written by someone who knows what they're talking about, but isn't that good at explaining things. For example the elephant bodies have the same right but different left body halves, and there are two different heads. Does it matter which goes with which, and which one is the front and which one the rear elephant? (Answer - yes it does matter. I think).

This is the elephant destined to be the rear elephant. As you can see, it's the one the previous owner started to paint. First surprise - it doesn't stand upright unless you balance it really carefully. 

Once the halves are glued together you add the saddle, making sure that you align the rear loop with the hole where the tail goes.

The front elephant is a bit more stable. So far, so good. Then it all kicked off. (BTW - thank goodness for Super Glue).

The neck collar hangs from two lengths of chain that are attached to pins on the collar and the saddle. You have to determine how much chain you need, then snip it off. 

Firstly, the collar is a really tight fit on right hand elephant. It required forcing on, as they wouldn't bend, because of the way they were cast. Any idea that they would "hang" from the chain was a non starter. Once they were in position I glued the cut lengths of chain in place. All hail Super Glue.

I then looked at how the rest of the harness and limber trail was to hang suspended from the sides of the elephant on a long piece of chain. I was now really getting why the previous owner had given up on this in a world without Super Glue. Plus, how the flip was I going to paint this thing. with free hanging dangly bits everywhere. I mean I can paint small to some extent, but since my neck and arm operations my motor skills are a little less fine than they used to be.

I resolved to spray undercoat them, paint what I'd built so far and work the rest out later, once I'd built the limber and gun. Easy peasy.

So the limber wasn't that bad. The only possible trip up was the piece of casting sprue that I nearly cut off, before realising that you had to bend it up into shape to make the towing hook (circled in blue). I nearly built the damn thing upside down, as I thought it was a pin the towing ring on the gun went over.

The gun wasn't too bad, except I don't think I will be able to use it, as it is a RML with cast iron/steel carriage, which I think is more late 1860s than Indian Mutiny.

Finally I reckoned I might as well glue the mahouts on the backs, rather than glue them after painting.

And then I stopped for a while. As I said, hopefully tomorrow I'll find a minute or two to undercoat with auto primer if I have a spare can in the garage.

Then I just have to work out how to base them while I paint them.

I've painted a lot of elephants, from 6mm to 54mm. These are my first 20/25mm metal jobs. They are heavy, so lightly tacking them to a painting holder won't cut it. I mean, I have painted a LOT of 20/25mm elephants made in plastic, but this is a new problem. 

30 minutes? Hah! Shows what I know.

Food for thought, I guess.