Old Figure Repair

I have been looking at some figure repairs on another blog - Man of Tin - and thought I'd go back to working on some of my own.

The sailor repair I began a couple of years ago and then forgot about it. I like these old hollow cast and it is fun to fix up the cheaply had damaged ones. I used a drill, wire and putty. I had already done the leg and glued in a new cast head  and I have now added the rifle. i still need to add a base.

The running infantryman has had a new cast arm added. The arm hadn't come out that well so I fleshed it out with putty. I had to make a hole in the arm to fit the shoulder lug and did it so the arm can move. By the time I paint it it might not move. i suppose I could have painted the arm first but i was impatient to see it on the figure. Although the figure has much of its original paint I'll probably almost completely repaint it.

Here are the figures in process of being painted. The blue is a lot lighter appearing here than what it is. I used Humbrol enamels straight on without my customary undercoats. This is easier to do with enamels and I would not advise it for acrylics that have less covering power. 

I had almost forgotten ho stinky and messy enamels are, hard to get off fingers, hard to clean brushes and the pint often takes ages, sometimes days to be fully dry. That's why I haven't finished painting the other colors.

So far I've gone pretty much with original color schemes but I'll probably go another step and add extra colors and detail, especially on the sailor. The whites i use for belts will be slightly creamy or off white.

I looked up the figures and found out a few things. The Britains infantryman came also in an earlier production with gaiters. The blue of the pants came in a very dark shade and a lighter dark blue. The helmet is black although i think it should, historically, be a dark blue.

The sailor is Hilco and one of their better figures. I notice that much of their stuff comes with stumpy legs but not this one, who is also in a nice pose. On reflection, I could have not repaired the rifle and used him to man a machine gun, haul a rope or whatever. In that case, though, I would have had to cut away the remainder of the rifle at his waist and probably had a big hole to fill.