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...

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.

15mm American Civil War Reb Cavalry

Here's something I've been wanting to get worked on for a while.  Some American Civil War (ACW) 15mm figs... specifically Confederate (Reb) Cavalry.  We've talked in our gaming group about a larger sized cavalry engagement sometime, which would be fun to do, but think all the guys are gonna have to contribute some figs to get that done if we want to have enough on the table.

I've got a whole lot of packs of Old Glory 15mm figs, so could probably paint for a couple years to get them all done... come on retirement!!  And I also don't do as much during the warm spring and summer months as I'm usually outside working around the house or enjoying some libations on the back deck while watching our dogs and the neighbors cows.

For Cav units the horses and riders come separate, so you can either mount the figs then paint or do them separate.  I like the latter and prefer to paint separate.  To do this I mounted horses to tongue depressors, four or five in a row and that worked pretty well for painting.  I just alternated some color variations of red-brown, dark brown, gray/white etc, and then added some white blaze the the chest, head, or forelegs. I thing painting the tack and harness took a bit more time.

 For the soldiers, I needed a way to pick them up and handle them, and rotate them to paint.  I got a piece of 2x6 wood, drilled out a bunch of holes to fit dowel rods into, cut the dowels to about 4 inches or so, and wallah, a nice holding block that I could pick out a figure, pick up the dowel, paint on the figure, then put it back the dowel back in the block and move to the next figure.  I did the painting all more or less assembly line doing like items as I went along, ie. all skin, all hats, all shirts, all pants, all swords etc.

The harder part was that the pack of figures I used had about half regular uniformed Cav soldiers with pistol and carbine, and the other half of riders irregulars with flop-hats, civilian jackets, pistols and shotguns.  The uniformed guys were obviously a bit easier as all the uniforms were pretty much the same.  The irregular Cav needed some imagination for color combinations to vary the jackets, pants, hats, and chaps, so not quite so quick.  Afterward I added yellow piping for the uniformed Cav's leg stripes, cuffs, collars, and hats, and even managed some arm stripes to give a bit of rank to a couple of the boys.  Gotta keep some Sergeants to keep the discipline when the butter-bar lieutenants loose it.

I finished with basing everything up, and all in all I like the way they turned out.  Whenever you do something for the first time there's that learning curve to figure out what you like and the best way to do it.  I'm looking forward to getting some line units done, but still have several packs like this of Cav units.  I might have gone a bit overboard when I first was buying them. Hmmmm... Nope... Maybe?