Another great old favourite of mine and many a small boy in the 1960's and 1970's, and - to be honest - it's stood the test of time well, you can still slip a few of these in with your Miniart or Revell armies without raising an eyebrow.
Although there are some who would lecture you endlessly about the subtle changes in shoulder adornment mid-12th Century, meaning at least two of these are "...way out..."; we know people like that should go back to their cheese-toasties and let the rest of us enjoy our toys!

Hot implements and childhood fingertips were never a good combination, while the Bostic they (Airfix) recommended was no help at all...



Another Montaplex shot, just the foot figures, with a full complement of poses and their Airfix equivalents. They are a bit rough, and the second guy in from the left is welded to a sheet of flash!


Note however; the two Nibblett horses bottom right show the pedigree of being from the same stable as the Cowboys and Indians (which he almost certainly did design).








The recent re-release, hardly differing from most other sets re-releases and/or the HaT contracted sets in being practically the same colour as the originals - a mid grey, albeit slightly darker than most of the originals.
Both sides/angles of all four sprues - I seem to have left one archer off the introductory images at the start of this post, don't know why and it will be corrected at some point, but for now...there are THREE archers.
Sorting and cleaning; I used to use good old Nitromore's paint-stripper, which was a strong caustic gel, taking most paints off in seconds, sometimes (usually thick coats of spirit-based gloss) minutes. But these days it's either the aerosol foam of Mr. Muscle oven-cleaner (orange can) or a yellow-green (Firefox is giving me 'yellow-bellied' as the only correct term here!) aqueous gel that comes as a pump-spray, but which I couldn't find the other day and can't remember the name off off-hand, so these were done with Mr. Muscle.
I place all the painted figures in an empty 2 litre (4 pint) plastic milk-bottle/carton and then spray the foam in. The reason for this is that the foam remains active for some time but brakes down to a liquid after half an hour or so. As these modern stripping methods take far longer than the old caustic strippers, you can then put the lid back on the bottle and give it a good shake every 20 minutes or so for a few hours to foam it up again.
They then go in the sink for a rinse and a quick scrub with a toothbrush, use cold water with a bit of washing-up liquid and a hard-bristled brush - the cold water keeps the bristles stiff, warm water will soften them. Of interest here is that some of the figures have a floating density, others have a sinking one, this shows how the figures can vary between production-runs or batches and may be one pointer to the problem of brittleness.
I allow them to air-dry, not because it's better for them, but because by the time you've cleaned that many, you're pissed-off with the fiddlesomeness of it all, and your hand's gone rubbery, so let them do themselves! All the shaking and scrubbing will reveal (and write-off!) any brittle figures, there was only one it this batch, but he was the lunging with sword pose and had he not broken I would have got another complete set...them's the breaks - ho ho!
Because there is often a small trace of paint left with these new methods - which never used to happen with Nitromore's - I sort them to one side and the unpainted one to the other prior to picking complete sets. Staring with a dark set, then a light set, only taking needed figures from the right-hand (ex-paint) lot if needed, and continue until there are too few figures of one pose left to make a full set. This sorting produced four good sets and left me with a bag of figures to play about with!
Note: Nitromore's is still available from hardware stores but has been re-formulated to save the planet (which I'm all for) and is no more efficacious than the other available products now.
A conversion, not my work but a nice use of the bowman figure. I have more conversions of these somewhere (I think they may have been put on the other blog already?) but I can't find the images, so they will join this post another day.
The upper shot here is of my old figures from around 1983, they are getting very brittle now and are in the bag of damaged figures and bits which may prove useful one day, but which really just proves how bad my addiction is - that I can't even throw away damaged stuff!
The lower image is stuff painted by other people, back in the day, which have come in with mixed lots.
I was so pleased with the eagle-shielded guy at the time, looking at it now I suspect the eagle was not as happy with his appearance as I was! Even if these were not brittle they would still be in the shrapnel bag as I used to cut a bevel onto the base edges, so that the filler I used to mount them would hold them down, polyethylene's being so hard to glue.
On the left is the only common fault with this set, he's quite a solid moulding round the middle and suffered from shrinkage sometimes when removed from the mould too soon. However he is usually still a usable pose: appearing to be leaning over slightly to get-in under the other guys thrust, and also seems to be putting more effort into his own thrust than his non-deformed twin, so when I find them they go in 'my' bag, for future use.
Top right is a shot of the three main colour variations, with a brown or mauveish grey to the left, a pale grey in the middle and a darker grey to the right, they haven't reproduced well under flash though. The other shot shows how the mould degraded over time from the fine lance on the left to the chunky 'apparatus' on the right!
3 comments:
One of my favourite Airfix sets...coming second only to the robinhood set. Those 3M Feudal board game pieces look interesting....
Cheers
paul
I always assumed that the mounted knight with raised sword and a crown on his helmet was King Richard.
Blimey Paul...missed that comment sorry! They are nice figures!
You're right really Ross, but I always think of him as King John...it's a poxy little regents crown thing! And you need a King John around to re-fight each episode after it's broadcast...Richard only turns-up at the end to right a few wrongs before the summer break in schedules!
H
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