Assorted Old Metal Toy Soldier Repairs, Hollowcast and Home Cast

  A Britains draft horse partially repainted: This enamel brown paint takes days to dry so I'll wait until then to paint other parts of the horse, including white bits on legs and the lighter brown yoke.

                                                Home castings of Timpo GIs (medics, I think)

                              A home casting of a Charbens Cossack machine gunner with hat filed down. I may paint him as a Turk with Fez, or give a peak to the cap and make him a Belgian,

                                           Home castings of WW1 Britains figure in gas mask.

        Draft horse before repainting. It was bought for a couple of dollars so I don't think I am 'diminishing its value'. Eventually he will be conscripted into pulling military wagons and artillery. I have another one somewhere.

   I quite like this hollowcast which I often pick up in battered condition, often minus head. A new head and paint job and I think he turned out okay.

Left is a hollow cast Britains Italian Carabinieri awaiting paint job, I got him with no paint and missing arm. Next are home castings, French coloniual or American zouave and British Rifles. Last figure on the right is a home casting of Britains hussar or artilleryman rider with home casting of BMC plastic horse. The carbine didn't come out so is replaced with metal rod.

                                                                 Britains Arab

                                                 Home casting of Britains plastic horse

                      Britains hollow cast lancer. I have here repainted the horse. I'll leave some original paint but the paint is mostly gone from the unifoem so I'll replace the blacks and blues and paint one eye! I need a lancer arm. Does anyone know where I can get relatively cheap ones?

          I didn't see a brand on this one but it looks like Hilco. I repainted the horse with that enamel Airfix paint. I'll repaint the rest later.

                                                                Horses before repainting

  Now, I love this figure! It is a Britains but the poor bloke is missing his left hand and pistol! There is a lot of work in this one but I am thinking of making him into a partisan Confederate scout pointing to where the enemy is. He is assisting the regulars or maybe he is joining them. It might be a while before I do all that but the plan is to replace horse legs, hand and to add two flap over military holsters and maybe a sword scabbard. He will be painted in the 'enhanced' toy soldier style I did the Confederate cavalry.

    Here is a good pic of the lancer. What fascinates me is that someone repaired it, using solder, I guess. That is something I do not know how to do but if anyone could show me I'd be interested. I wonder how many people still do that or if solder repair of metal figures is a dying art as the men who collected these figures for childhood nostalgia reasons die off. For the same reason, I am told, the money value of old metal toys soldiers like this is diminishing as the market for them grows smaller. My own1960s to 70s  childhood really was the beginning of the age of plastic toy soldiers but I had a handful of metal guardsmen and a horse guard that always fascinated me.