The Union Infantry Project: or 'How I Lost My Mind Painting Over and Over and Over for 3 Months'

I've been working on 15mm American Civil War figures on and off , and a couple months ago broke open two of the old large packs (100+ figs each) of Old Glory, Union Marching and Union Skirmishing.  I popped them onto about 34 popsicle sticks, (six to seven on average per stick), primed them up (using some black but mainly a brown primer), and got to assembly line painting...  Somewhere, I could have sworn someone said painting 15mm was easier than 28mm... I hope to find that person one day and kick them right in the chach-bag... yes, there is less to paint, but it's all a lot smaller and doesn't lack for detail, ie. multiple bags, bedrolls (both grayish and light brown), belts, buckles, skin, straps (black and off-white), guns, bayonet frogs, canteens (blue and grayish), mustaches and beards, hat brims, shoes, socks, and all the other small stuff like buttons...  It's a lot but the devil is in the details sometimes.

I started out with pants... painted all 214 figures, then started over and did all jackets and hats, then start over and do all the next item, star over and do all the next item... and so on and so on and so on... In a two or three hour window I might get six sticks worth of figs done... so night after night after night this went on  for several months (the date of one pics showed June 3 this year, so it appears I started sometime in May.  I could paint faster, but I do like to try to paint to a higher standard than simple gaming table figs.  No I'm not OCD.... well maybe a little...  I read a blog at macpheesminiaturemen.blogspot.com where he has some great tips and tutorial stuff... great painter too... but he wrote in once article about maximizing your work process... that's very helpful.  Next time I think I'll just do one bag at a time though.

Well as of last night I finished up this lot, getting the majority of the figs based four to a 1" square, using 40 squares.  One night to glue figs on, one night to paint the base dark brown, and last night getting all 40 bases flocked with grass and a few rocks.  I'm really happy with the way they turned out.  

I've got about 40 loose figures left, as I ran out of 1" bases and waiting for a new order to come in... and I need to do some command stands with Officers, flag bearers, and maybe some drummers.  I intermixed the marching figs with the skirmishing figs to give a lot of variety, and tried to be careful not to make any bases look too much like any other.

I've got a number of large quantity bags of Confederate soldiers, artillery, more cavalry, and additional bags of Union infantry (Berdans Sharp Shooters and Iron Brigade), and more Artillery and cavalry.  I didn't realize the artillery was going to go quite as far as it did... I might have to sell a bag and use the money to finance some other figure purchases... OR... I could paint them up and sell the painted sets for a nice little profit... to offset costs you say?  NO!!... to buy more figures of course.  

Here are some pics of this endeavor...

 British Colonials... Again

I did another group of nine British Colonial troops, but these are a bit different from the previous set.  These are from Reaper Chronoscope, and although they are supposed to be 28mm, they are a bit bigger.  They will work well for skirmish games.  Yellow facings this time vs. the green facings.

American Civil War (ACW): Union Artillery

Just finished up a bag of 15mm Old Glory 'Yanks Artillery' (15ACW10).  It was one of the older packs with 12 artillery pieces and 60 men.  I did my best this time to be as efficient as I could to save time, although I did find myself clinging to my usual desire to pay attention to detail vs just slapping paint on.

This was my first foray into Union troops, so there was some experimentation with colors for uniforms.  I wasn't sure whether to use Vallejo 'Dark Prussian Blue' with 'Intense Blue' highlights for frock coats, and finally settled on 'Oxford Blue' which had a bit of a purplish hue.  I think for my next project of regular infantry I may go back and try the 'Dark Prussian Blue' route or Delta's Ceramcoat 'Navy Blue'.  Shades of uniforms varied with dye lots and age of the garments from fading, so it's not too big a deal either way.  Best to have some variety on the tabletop.

I used 'Deep Sky Blue' mixed with a bit of 'Sky Grey' for the pants.  'Sky Blue' and even 'Deep Sky Blue' seem just a touch bright, but the addition of a touch of 'Sky Grey' seemed to dull them a bit.  Again, I read another's blog in which he had used Delta Ceramcoat 'Denim Blue', so I picked that up from Michaels Craft Store, along with 'Blue Jay' and 'Navy Blue' and plan to experiment with those.

All came out pretty well and am really happy with the figs, despite a near disaster using Krylon dull-cote spray which left the dreaded (mild) white haze on my entire project.  I read in another blog someone had put olive oil on the same thing and solved the problem, which I tired, brushing a very light coat on the figs and cannon.  Three days later they were glossy with oil so had to take a soft toothbrush and soapy dishwater to them to get the oil off.  On the plus side it took not only the oil off but also the dull-cote, so I was back to the slightly glossy figs from the 1st clearcoat pass.  Back to Tester's Dull-coat.  All is good.

The basic steps I took were to mount the bare figs on tongue depressors, prime and paint.

I used Litko 1"x1.5" wood bases, except for three additional larger cannon of a different manufacture, where I had to increase to 1"x2", keeping the 1" frontage.  I painted the bases first with a quick coat of cheap brown before mounting the cannon and three to four men per cannon, and two men for the Gatling.  Oh, yeah, I had a couple Gatling guns I'd previously painted.  Since I had the two Gatling guns and three slightly larger cannon, I used some of the figs from the pack to man those bases.

Other's said they used fine brown ballast for the ground, but I didn't have that on hand and used plain sand I had gathered a few years back from the street curb, which had a bit of larger bits that seem to work well.  I used Woodland Scenics Scenic Cement (very thin watery glue) and a hobby syringe with curved tip to really cover the brown wood base with glue and then added the sand.  The curved tip on the syringe really lets you get the glue where you want it without having to use a brush.  The sand hardened up really good and pretty quick and looked pretty good too.  I'll definitely go back to that.

I then used regular (thick) Scenic Glue with a brush over the hardened sand, and sprinkled Blended Turf Earth Blend then Green Blend to get my grass.  I then sprayed a light layer of the Testers Dull-coat to take the shine off.  Very happy with all of it.  I've got three Mortar stands coming.