Looking forward to this one Robin as I am very interested in medieval battles and armour

Rgd Martyn

Robin

Wish you luck with your build.

Very interesting models that is sure. I went through some of the airfix range when i was young.

Miniart are one of the recent well known suppliers of 1:16 historical figures not thecsame scale as your version

http://miniart-models.com

Looking forward to seeing your metal finishing.

Hi Robyn,

Don't forget to post a link to this build log here;

http://forum.model-space...&m=174351#post174351

In this instalment we meet Frederick the man and the complicated politics of his time which ultimately led to the battle depicted in this diorama. If history isn’t your thing, just scroll down to the end where there is a short description of the photos at the bottom!

Kurfurst Freidrich I (Elector Frederick I) 1425 - 1476


1) The Character:
Friedrich was in essence a ‘Prince’ of the Electoral Palatinate, a region in what would one day become Germany and was a territorial remnant of the Holy Roman Empire, the Empire by this time was composed of independent states, the ruler of any one of which could be ‘elected’ as the next Holy Roman Emperor if the current holder of the title died without a successor. The Palatinate itself was a collection of independent regions most of which had an Elector or Count as their hereditary leader and mostly found along the course of the Rhine. Despite the term Elector sounding like something out of a democratic society, this was far from the case and the Palatinate was a purely feudal fiefdom ruled by the Counts Palatine. Born just a decade after the Battle of Agincourt, Frederick (to use his Anglicised name) shared much in common with Henry V as did the Battle of Seckenheim in June 1462 as you will later see. Frederick was a very able commander and strategist who led his people to victory against far superior numbers and ended his reign after adding significantly more territory to the Palatinate than he began with.

2) The Politics:

The politics of the Rhineland provinces can be summed up in just three words: GAME OF THRONES! The Lannisters and Baratheons had nothing on this lot! To begin with Frederick’s parents were Louis III, Elector Palatine and Matilda of Savoy who was Louis’ second wife. After the death of his father, Frederick’s older brother Louis became Louis IV, inheriting the title of Count and marrying Margaret of Savoy, Duchess of Anjou who gave Louis a son, Philip. The marriage only lasted four short years with the death of Louis in 1449. Louis was Margaret’s second husband, the first being another Louis, Duke of Anjou and King of Naples. He, (coincidentally) died after only three years of marriage!
On the death of his brother Louis, Frederick assumed the title of Elector as Regent for his nephew Philip. So far so good. In the meantime the neighbouring Province of Mainz under the command of Dieter von Isenburg, the Arch Bishop of Mainz and also Elector of that Territory, had attempted to grab the Palatinate for the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III but had been roundly defeated by (our) Frederick at the Battle of Pfeddersheim. (Mainz was also in fact another part of the overall Palatine region.)
Now things began to get complicated (yes, even more so!)
After his military failures Arch Bishop Dieter von Isenburg had fallen out of favour with his Liege Lord, the Holy Roman Emperor and to a lesser degree with his ‘boss’ Pope Pius II. Dieter became a convert to the notion that both Imperial and Papal authority needed to be reformed, not something that either of his superiors cared to consider. In 1641 he attended a conference to discuss such reforms in Nuremburg, the recommendations of which infuriated both the Emperor and the Pope to such an extent that Pius II removed Dieter as Arch Bishop of Mainz, replacing him with a more ‘compliant’ Arch Bishop in the form of Adolph II of Nassau. Dieter wasn’t going to take this lying down however and ran off to find military assistance to regain his position. Knowing the most able military strategist in the region only too well, he ran straight to Frederick his old adversary. Now you might think that Frederick would be the last person to offer assistance to Dieter but the fact that Dieter paid for his assistance by handing over a substantial part of the Mainz Palatinate to Frederick obviously sweetened the deal and he and Dieter were now allies.
In the meantime, all was not a bed of roses in Frederick’s domain. Having assumed the title of Elector and Regent, Frederick now committed ‘Arrogation’ – he adopted his nephew Philip as his son and foreswore any future marriage. This meant that Frederick would keep the title of Elector until his death when his adopted son/nephew would then inherit it. Arrogation was illegal under Imperial Law and Emperor Frederick III would not recognise his action. Frederick simply ignored him and did it anyway!
Now Frederick’s arrogation had really upset one particular person – Margaret of Savoy! She had already, ahem, survived two husbands to get where she was and was in fact now on her third catch having married one Ulrich V adding the title of Countess Wurttemberg to her ever growing collection. Now, instead of regaining much of her previous power in her son’s Palatinate which she possessed as the Countess, when her son came of age, she would now be forced to wait until her brother in law died before her son took the title. Margaret was not one to put up with waiting long and without further ado she rushed straight to Emperor Frederick III to demand action. Action came swiftly, the Emperor declared war on Frederick and Dieter and the Pope promptly excommunicated both of them for grabbing half of his Mainz territory without so much as a thank you!
In June of 1462 Frederick III invaded the Palatinate along with Margaret’s husband Ulrich V, Count of Wurttemberg, Louis I, Count Palatine of Zweibrucken (another Palatine territory, only too happy to indulge in a little bit of land grabbing!), Charles I, the Margrave of Baden-Baden and his brother George of Baden, who was the Bishop of Metz.

3) The Battle.

After crossing the border into Frederick’s territory, the allied army which numbered up to 8,000 began a deliberate campaign of pillage and destruction designed partly to force Frederick into a battle and also to line their own pockets with as much loot as possible (their soldiers had to be paid after all!) During the advance, the army of Dieter’s rival, Arch Bishop Adolph II attacked and captured the city of Mainz, butchered four hundred of it’s citizens and sent another four hundred into exile including one Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the first moveable type printing press. Ironically, Gutenberg’s printing press was a prime mover in the following Reformation which did much to reduce the power of the Church but the same Adolph II later awarded Gutenberg the title of Hoffmann, (Gentleman of the Court) which came with a stipend or pension!
According to their spies, Frederick was not at his capital at Heidelberg, which meant his most valuable assets were free for the taking so the Allied armies made straight for the city. Unfortunately for them, the spies were only passing back the miss-information left for them by Frederick who was in fact nicely fortified in his largest castle. Frederick rapidly amassed his forces of around eight hundred mounted men-at-arms and two thousand infantry including some Swiss Mercenaries (the SAS of Medieval Europe). Soon after, Dieter arrived with a further three hundred men-at-arms together with an unknown number of local peasantry.
This is the point where the Battles of Agincourt and Seckenheim take on a similar aspect. Like King Henry V fortyseven years earlier, Frederick was a master at choosing his own ground to fight on and he picked the moment to act with perfection. Nearing Heidelberg, the Allied army created a fortified camp from which a large section of the army then marched out to continue their pillaging and burning. On receiving word of the march, Frederick sallied forth from Heidelberg and caught the enemy force at a junction of the rivers Rhine and Neckar. Just as Henry had chosen a flat though muddy area between two converging woods, which protected his flanks and funnelled the French knights into a narrow killing ground for his archers, Frederick had forced his numerically superior enemy into the narrow space between the two rivers which prevented them from outflanking him! Unlike the English however, the longbow was not in great use among European armies and this battle would be decided with cold steel and crossbow bolts.
Frederick formed up his men-at-arms in the centre with each flank consisting of a double row of mounted crossbowmen. Like Agincourt, this was going to get very messy and to aid recognition of friend and foe, the Allied soldiers broke off straws of oat stalks as badges whilst Frederick’s men wore wreaths of hazel leaves around their helmets. Those hazel leaves came from a forest which arced around behind Frederick’s mounted contingent. It was also the hiding place of most of his foot soldiers too!
After some initial skirmishing and also probably somewhat annoyed by Frederick’s crossbows, the Allied cavalry finally charged straight into Frederick’s horsemen and a huge hacking and slashing battle began. Greatly outnumbered, Frederick’s men barely prevented the Allied knights from smashing through his thin lines but as the two sides fought ferociously, Frederick’s foot soldiers surged out of the flanks of the woods and moved in behind the enemy horse. At this point Seckenheim again came close to being another Agincourt. In Henry’s great battle a number of French knights seeing the carnage being inflicted on their comrades managed to avoid the main English line and, riding around the edge charged into the English baggage train where they bravely slaughtered the un-armed and defenceless boys and civilians – an act which was expressly against the rules of chivalry. At Seckenheim, as Frederick’s infantry began to surround the Allied horsemen, a group of three hundred Allied knights finally cut their way through Frederick’s men-at-arms and instead of wheeling around to re-engage their mounted opponents, immediately fell upon the young un-armed grooms waiting on their men-at-arms to return for fresh horses and weapons. Again, completely against the rules of war, as laid down in the chivalric codes of the time. The grooms were slaughtered to the last boy and then the Allied knights made off towards their camp twelve miles away.
With the departure of the brave three hundred, Frederick’s combined foot and horse pushed the dwindling Allied force back against the two rivers where they were eventually forced to surrender. For the loss of twelve of his own knights, Frederick’s smaller army had killed over forty Allied knights, routed three hundred and captured one hundred and twenty four noblemen and two hundred and four squires. Among the noblemen were Charles of Baden-Baden, Bishop George of Metz and his ex-sister-in-law’s husband Ulrich of Wurttenberg, (must have been some stoney glares that night!) Only Louis the Count Palatine escaped capture that day, presumably he could have been one of the three hundred!
Within a year, the Princes and nobles had been ransomed off for large sums of gold, as well as substantial amounts of land if they were unlucky enough to have been one of Frederick’s less than friendly neighbours!
I wonder how much of an ear bashing poor Ulrich received when he eventually got back to dear Margaret? The new territories acquired by Frederick remained part of his Palatinate until his death when his nephew Philip inherited them.
As a result of this battle, Frederick was forever known as Frederick the Victorious by his people and allies. However, to the Pope and Holy Roman Emperor and their many defeated nobles, Frederick would always be referred to simply as “Evil Fritz”!



There are very few pictures of Frederick, Photos 1 to 3 are the most well known, since putting this page together I’ve found a couple more which only corroborate these shown here. Photos 1 and 2 are contemporary paintings of Frederick, and like all the others, show him to be a clean shaven individual, with medium length dark hair and apparently brown eyes. This is the appearance that I’ve gone for in the model. Photo 3 is a later print probably 17th century judging by his armour, which is more English Civil War period than medieval.
Photo 4 illustrates the arms of Frederick’s Rhineland Palatinate, I’ll be trying to adapt these to produce a water slide transfer or decal for the shield which Frederick will be holding up for protection from the enemies’ crossbow quarrels (bolts or wrongly called arrows). Just out of interest, this is where ‘Pick a Quarrel’ to mean to start a fight comes from, before gunpowder pistols came into being, duels were often fought with crossbows and combatants would each pick the straightest looking bolts from a collection of ammunition for their weapons!
Photos 4 to 6 show the actual armour on display in the Vienna museum. Whether or not Frederick actually wore this armour at Seckenheim is debateable as this is a dual purpose suit or ‘Harness’. It could be used in battle but is also designed for the tournament. In Photo 5, just to the right of the round armpit protector you can see a set of brass sockets, these are there to insert a lance rest into which supports the weight of a tournament lance, in battle the lance is more like a long heavy spear and doesn’t need a support. Also, in Photo 6 you can see the ridiculously long pointed ends to the foot armour! Very fancy looking for the mock combat of the tournament of course, just imagine some hefty man at arms from the opposition standing on them in the heat of battle! I won’t be including them on the model!

So that’s the man and his times. In the next instalment, I’ll begin by constructing Frederick’s head with some serious cosmetic surgery!

Until then, Happy Modelling to you all!


Robin.

I know exactly what you mean Kev - it confuses me and I wrote it!! It doesn't help when the main protagonists have the same names either! In it's simplest form its Frederick I vs Frederick III !
Now the modelling begins!!

In Photo 1 we have the front half of Frederick’s head as supplied in this kit. From the available reference pictures it’s pretty obvious that he looks nothing like the Frederick of history! The face is actually a bit of an oddity – the box top art has a ‘mature’ face complete with a bushy ‘Prussian’ moustache which looks a lot like the German Kaiser, the photos of the completed model on the sides of the box show a younger looking face with what appears to be a full beard and moustache whilst the actual head is younger still, almost in his early teens. In fact, I think the face has an uncanny resemblance to that tyrannical psychopathic little monster Jofrey Baratheon, King of Westeros in Game of Thrones! (May he burn in hell forever!) So if anyone wants to scratch build figures from GOTs here’s a great starting place! With the two halves of the head removed from the sprue and glued together, we have the ‘kit part’ complete as in Photo 2. Unlike the bare headed Jofrey, Frederick will be wearing an item called an ‘Arming Cap’, this is a padded skull cap worn under the steel helmet as a shock absorbing liner. It was therefore necessary to sand off Jofrey’s hair down to a ‘bald’ appearance as shown in the rest of the pics. Now the surgery could begin. Frederick is encased in steel armour and mail in the middle of a savage battle and also in the middle of summer – he’s either going to be screaming orders (or insults) or panting his lungs out – so he’s going to need an open mouth! The first stage is illustrated in Photo 3 with two slices up from the bottom of the chin to the sides of the mouth. This was accomplished with a safety razor blade held in it’s metal ‘handle’ and rocked to and fro gradually working it’s way up through the plastic to the mouth as seen here.
With that done the next step was to use the same blade to cut down through the line of the mouth, starting at each side and cutting towards the other side until the entire mouth and chin could be removed like a ventriloquist’s dummy. The chin was then glued in position further down to produce the opened mouth as shown in Photo 4. Polystyrene glue is better for this than super glue as you can fiddle about with the positioning until it looks right and then leave it to set hard.
Once the chin has dried hard (overnight is best for this part) the next task is to sand and remodel. The obvious hard angles where the chin has dropped were sanded down with fine grade wet and dry and then a little ball of mixed Milliput was pushed up through the hollow neck and forced forwards into the mouth cavity until it began to extrude out through the mouth. With a length of model kit sprue stuck up through the neck, the Milliput in the mouth was then ‘poked’ back using an old cocktail stick (one with a ‘ball’ of dried superglue from previous use), this then formed the open part of the mouth whilst the outer edges were carefully ‘smeared’ back towards the cheeks using just a wetted fingertip. Finally, the extended chin was blended back into the face contours with a thin ‘sausage’ of Milliput again smeared into place by fingertip. The final result before allowing it to dry hard before sanding, is shown in Photo 5.
With the final fine grade sanding of the chin area completed, it was time to turn to the construction of Frederick’s protective head gear – the Arming Cap. Photo 6 illustrates two of my rolls of the excellent Decra-Led self adhesive lead strip. The one on the right is the standard flat strip which I used to form the seat harness on the Spitfires in the Scramble diorama. This will be used extensively later on to replace the moulded on straps which I will be sanding down on various parts of the armour as well as other parts such as the sword belt and shield straps etc. On the left is a thicker profiled strip composed of a pair of joined rounded strips. The ‘proper’ use for these in the construction of glass vivaria (ornamental miniature greenhouses or planters) is two fold – left joined together and bent at right angles they form the corner edging of the planter, slit down the centre and used singularly they can be curved into intricate ‘leaded window’ designs to simulate stained glass. For Frederick I’ll be slicing them down by half again to form the padded panels on his cap.
In Photo 7 I’ve positioned the first strip cut from the flat lead around his forehead to form the edge of the cap, as you’ll see later on, I decided to double this thickness with a second strip once the curved sections were going on. That lump of Milliput under his left ear shouldn’t be there! It was flicked away with the point of the knife later!
The Arming Cap is completed by Photo 8, as you can see, the individual padded sections have been formed by the thicker strips which have been sliced down their length to produce thinner sections and the initial front strip has now been doubled. The DecraLed in this shot is stuck on by it’s own self-adhesive backing, but this was then made permanent by adding thin superglue along each joint. Also, after I checked the fit of the head against the two halves of the helmet shown in Photo 9, I realised that nearly all of the cap was going to be hidden inside the helmet! There was therefore little point in modelling the rear of the cap so only the front part was constructed – which was probably quite fortunate as it turned out as there was a little problem with the fitting which I hadn’t banked on later! You can just make out in Photo 9 that the bottom of the kit helmet is actually solid with a cut out slot to take the tab moulded under Frederick’s neck. Unfortunately, with his now extended chin, Frederick wouldn’t fit in place for that slot to work and so the tab was duly sliced off as shown in Photo 10. That allowed him to ‘fit’ (or at least I thought it did) but there was still the problem of the solid front of the helmet, which would have to be cut away for authenticity (not to mention the reality of his head actually being attached to his body down below!) In Photo 11 we have the two halves of the helmet with Frederick’s head nestling in the left half. This is where the second problem arose as you can tell from the ground away shiny lead showing through the grey primer! With the internal ‘floor’ of the helmet removed, the head fitted in the left side with no problems, it also fitted in the right side the same way – it was when I tried to test fit both halves together that I realised his head was now too wide to allow the halves of the helmet to come together! If you look back at Photo 8, you can see that there is a considerable protrusion of the lead strip in the vicinity of his ears. A pity but as mentioned, it’s all hidden away inside the helmet anyway – so off it came via the rotary and a pretty coarse grade grinding cylinder – hence the nasty looking gouges! Once the head was fitting properly inside the helmet It was given a final fine sanding where required, mainly under the chin and a couple more coats of spray primer as shown in Photo 12, ready to begin the next task – painting the flesh!
Incidentally, one of the main differences between Frederick’s armour and that of King Henry V at Agincourt is in the helmet. Henry did wear an actual helmet, one that sat on his head and allowed him to turn his head and neck, Frederick’s version is actually a ‘Helm’ not a helmet. In use it’s more like a deep sea diver’s head piece and is fixed in place by two leather straps to the breastplate and backplate. In essence, Frederick can move his head around inside the helm, but to look sideways he’d have to turn his entire body – not sure I’d fancy that in the middle of a hacking melee!
In the next instalment, as mentioned above, it’s time to ‘flesh’ him out!

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin.

Wow that is some serious and very well done modelling.

He certainly looks a lot better after his "face lift".

Hope the rest of your build goes well.

As I began the painting of Frederick’s head, the first thing I realised was just how out of practice I am in this very important modelling discipline! It’s got to be well over twenty years since I’ve painted a large(ish) scale face – I haven’t even done any 1/35 scale figures in all that time, just the 1/72 scale personel for the Messines and Scramble dioramas where painting a face is a case of undercoat/primer, flesh and a darker flesh wash to bring out any details! This one was going to require some head scratching and memory recall!
Anyway, in Photo 1 we have the very basic start to the painting process. The finished head has been given a couple of coats of Poundland Grey Primer Car Aerosol and allowed to dry completely overnight. There are many different ‘flesh’ colour paints on the market but for Frederick, who is an ‘outdoors’ type of bloke I’ve gone with the Admiralty Flesh which is a more ‘ruddy’ or suntanned type compared to the Humbrol or Revell hues. In the same photo the flesh areas have received two coats applied with a fairly small and soft haired Revell No.1 brush.
Photo 2 illustrates the first set of shadowing applied around the eyes, under the eyebrows, the sides of the nose, under the nose and under the lower lip using a thinned down wash of Citadel Flesh Wash, this is the same wash which provides all the details in the tiny 1/72 scale faces! Nearly forgot, the under edge of the arming cap is also lined with the wash as well. With Photo 3 we have the first application of highlighting using the same Admiralty Flesh lightened with Revell Matt White. This was applied using an old, once favourite natural haired brush, which has seen many years of service until it is not quite as ‘cleaned out’ as it should have been. It no longer comes to a sharp point but it’s slightly stiffer hairs now make the ideal ‘detail dry brusher’ for this kind of task. The flesh and white was mixed together on a scrap piece of shiny card and a little drop taken up on the brush and almost completely removed on a sheet of toilet paper. It was then dry brushed on the face picking out the lighter highlights across the forehead, bridge of the nose, cheek bones and chin as well as blending the previous shadow wash into the overall flesh tone. In Photo 4 and 5, things have progressed with Frederick’s brown eyes created with Admiralty Wood Brown followed later with a Black pupil and a tiny dot of White to give a touch of character. The larger brown iris was put in with a cocktail stick whilst the smaller pupil and white dot were applied with the tips of sewing needles. Looking at the photos close up, I'll need to re-apply the black to his left eye to reduce the size of the white highlight! The inside of his mouth was then painted in with a mixture of flesh, wood brown and Vallejo Carmine Red. This took a couple of goes to get the shade just right, and finally the same Carmine Red was mixed with the Flesh to create the lips and also a touch of ‘red cheek’. This is the first time I’ve ever added ‘rouge’ to any figure’s cheeks but I reckoned he’s wearing a ton of armour and padding (figuratively) and it’s the middle of a hot June in Germany – he’s going to be a little ‘flustered’ at least! Finally, for the face, the final light dry-brushing of some more highlighting and blending together with a set of sewing needle applied top teeth (the photo makes him look like he’s got a set of ‘Nosferatu’ fangs in there, but when viewed from lower down they look better!) I did try a bottom set too but they didn’t look right somehow so I painted them out again!
Photo 6 illustrates the painting of the arming cap, this was really simple with a basic undercoat of the Revell Matt White as a foundation and once completely dry, this was then 'stained' to a linen colour by just giving it a wash with a very thinned down Flesh Wash - the easiest part of the lot!
Finally, in the last two Photos 7 and 8, you can see the difference between the basic kit head and the upgraded more 'Medieval' looking one.
So that’s it for the face painting, it’s a bit like riding a bike I think, once you’ve got the hang of it, the fundamentals do come flooding back again, even if you have’nt done one for ages (thankfully!). In the next instalment, Frederick gets into his helm and the next bit of up-grading and scratch building can start – with a real ‘horticultural’ feel to it!

Until then, Happy Modelling to All!


Robin.

Hi to All again!

This installment is another one of the longer 'wordy' ones I'm afraid and apologies for that, unfortunately there is a lot going on in this one and a larger than usual collection of photos to go with it! The following post will be much shorter! (Once again, just skip to the bottom for the pics!)

This installment has had a couple of change of minds as I was drawing it up and putting it together! The first ‘draft’ was actually the one you are looking at now, but then I decided not to put in the first four photos and their explanations because I wanted to keep the procedure for creating the steel effect back until I got to the finished outside of the helm or even the first parts of the main armour. After even more thought however, I came to the conclusion that the inside of the helm IS really an integral part of the build and even though it brings in the plastic to steel process a little earlier than I wanted, you still won’t see the full effect until later anyway so here we are, back to the original description!
Photo 1 shows the two halves of Frederick’s helm with the inside painted with Humbrol’s Metal Cote ‘Polished Steel’. As you can see here, the polished steel is not exactly ‘Knight in Shining Armour’! I had tried a couple of experiments on the finished model knight with mixing the Polished Steel with my decades old original tin of Polished Aluminium. In actual fact that did work quite well and lightened the overall colour quite considerably. In the end though I decided to try a completely new technique spurred on by the excellent results obtained by KPNuts and his gold leafing and Kev (Modelmania) and his kitchen foiled Mustang! What I did was to send off to China via Ebay for a set of Silver Leaf sheets (get it from China and you can get it for less than half the price of UK suppliers, you just have to allow for about a month for it to arrive!) Fortunately, I’ve been planning on starting this model for a while and I sent off for the leaf just before Christmas knowing it wouldn’t arrive until after the start of 2016! This is a fantastically economic material, it comes in sheets of about (oh, hang on I’ll measure it properly) - three and a quarter inches square, and cost less than £4 for fifty sheets, less than eight pence a sheet!
The one I’ve got is called ‘Antique Silver’ and gives a slightly duller effect than plain ‘silver silver’ if you get what I mean! I did wonder if the antique effect would be enough to simulate steel without any further additions but unfortunately the answer was no – it was still too shiny for steel on its own.
Photo 2 illustrates the previously painted and polished Metal Cote after the application of the ‘Size’ the thin liquid ‘varnish’ used to glue the leaf in place. This is an acrylic size so the brushes simply wash out in water, this I did buy from a UK Ebay source – I waited for the leaf to arrive before I sent for the Size, even then, at less than a fiver for a 25ml bottle it was still far cheaper than trying the local craft suppliers down here. Larger amounts are available but this model is a trial of the whole gilding technique so I started off small! The object is to apply a thin coat whilst avoiding any brush strokes as it dries. The silver leaf is only a few microns thick (millionths of a mm!) and it can even pick up the ripples from brush strokes if you’re not careful. The size has to be left for a minimum of fifteen minutes after which it is ready to take the leaf (becomes sticky), according to the instruction sheet the size remains useable for up to twenty four hours but I can’t swear to this as I’ve never waited that long!
In Photo 3 the Antique Silver leaf has been applied to the insides of the helm. This taught me the first useful lesson – always try to cover the area in one piece – the right hand side was (virtually) a single piece of leaf whilst the left hand side was made up from the bits, which came away from the single cut down section. As I was to discover, not a good idea – which of course is why I’m experimenting on the inside of the helm first! (I had by now already tried the technique on the other knight figure with good results, but more of that at a later date.) What appears to be a hole in the back of the left hand helm is an optical illusion – it’s actually a reflection of the green cutting mat through the open front coming off the mirror surface!
In Photo 4 you may or may not see a slight difference in the ‘sheen’ of the silver leaf. This is after a single coat of the secret addition – a thinned down solution of the Humbrol spirit based Blue-Grey Enamel Wash. This is the wash I bought to do the panel lines on the undersides of the Spitfires and Hurricane in the Scramble diorama. By experimenting on the other knight figure I discovered that two to three coats of this wash applied as a varnish over the bare silver leaf tones down the overly bright silver and leaves a lovely ‘blue steel’ effect. As I mentioned, this first look at it doesn’t do the effect justice but you’ll see the full effect at a later stage I hope! This is where I learnt the disadvantage of applying the leaf in small bits, compare the left and right inner faces of the helm and you’ll notice the right hand one has lots of darker ‘squiggles’ almost like cracks in the steel. This is where the little bits of silver leaf come together – unnoticeable in the basic finish but the enamel wash follows the lines just as though it was a panel line (which is of course exactly what the wash was designed to do!) This was a useful lesson though, when I get on to the full armour I’ll need to try and gild each separate piece as a single application, this is what I did on the other guinea pig knight and it worked really well.
Photo 6 illustrates Frederick finally into his helm, which has been glued together, left overnight and then sanded smooth along the joints. See what I mean about all that hard work hidden away! The next task will be to give the helm a coat of spray primer (preferably without turning Frederick grey in the process!) so the next actual job was to mask his face up with a couple small pieces of folded loo paper! A small square was folded over and inserted up into the small gap under the chin. Using thin pointed tweezers, this tissue paper was then gently pulled up through the front of the helm until there was enough to carefully prod it into place around his face with the cocktail stick. Once in position a double check was made to ensure no tissue was overlying the rim of the helm which would prevent the primer coming next. The inside of the hollow head is still accessible however to allow the bamboo skewer to hold the assembly for spraying.
The next upgrade is applied to the other part of the helm – the visor as shown under way in Photo 7. This involves the drilling out of seventy three (I think) holes in each half of the visor, a hundred and forty six in all, and also sawing out the vision slit with an Exacto Razor Saw, sanding the resulting gap smooth and then replacing the dividing bars with extremely tiny slivers of styrene strip. (Those bars were probably one of the most irritatingly fiddy tasks so far!) The drilling of the holes was far easier, each one is already moulded in the plastic as a sunken dimple which made starting the pin vice drill easy enough. Once each line of holes was drilled through, the inside was countersunk with a larger drill bit to remove the rough scurf around the hole. You can see the huge difference this makes to the kit parts in Photos 8 and 9 (note the countersinks on the inside of the visor in Photo 9.)
Now comes the horticultural bit – the creation of the garland of hazel leaves which Frederick and his allies used as their medieval IFF device. Photo 10 illustrates the first part of the garland underway, using the same .2mm wire that I employed to create the barbed wire on the Messines diorama. Once again, the core of the design is a double strand of wire, one end secured in the chuck of a pin vice and the other clamped in the mini vice, the pin vice is then rotated around with thumb and forefinger to create a twisted double strand. Onto this core, a series of small ‘branches’ are wound using exactly the same procedure, take a short length of wire, fold it double and clamp the loose ends in the pin vice. Thread the open loop over the core and slide it down to the rough position and then ‘twirl’ the pin vice, tightening up the short length until it is attached to the core. Finally, secure it in place by soldering, applying the solder at the joint and also running it along the core and branch. Eventually, after snipping off the excess protrusions you have a long enough length complete with ‘twigs’ to be able to form it around a circular object roughly the same diameter as Frederick’s helm as shown in Photo 11 and soldering the ends together.
The next part is something I was very pleased with – after scouring Plymouth looking for ready made ‘crafty’ type leaves and coming up empty handed, I had to think up a way to make them myself – the result was not only just what I wanted – it was completely free as well!
Photo 12 shows yet another piece of my Mum’s expired eye ointment tubing, cut open, flattened out and washed off before paint-stripping the tube printing away. This is the same material as used to make the corrugated iron sheets in both Messines and Scramble. I am really getting worried about my stocks of this metal, back in August of last year there must have been a contamination outbreak in the factory which produces this ointment – all the existing stocks were re-called and the date for re-stocking the chemists has been pushed back and back, first it was December, then February and now the latest is April or even June! Poor Mum has had no eye ointment on her prescription for four months (the only alternative has also been withdrawn) and what am I supposed to do for building materials!! (Only kidding Mum!) (Since found out the entire factory had to be stripped down and examined as tiny pieces of black plastic was found around the tube nozzle due to the machine which tightens up the tip doing it too hard!)
Anyhow, as you can see, I’ve cut off a thin strip of the metal the same width as the hazel leaves and this strip has been scored down the middle to form the spine of the leaf, (see close up in the corner). One half of the leaf shape is then scissor cut away and using the reverse side of a modelling knife (the aluminium handled variety), the veins have been scored into the leaf as shown in Photo 13. The hazel leaf has a sawtooth edge to it and the scoring replicates this nicely. This is then repeated on the other side, this part being the most fiddly as there is now almost nothing to hold the leaf down with to score the mirror image of the veins. The final task is to create a little concave ‘dip’ at the fat end of the leaf with a couple of knife cuts, the final appearance is shown in Photo 14, the gold ones are scored side up, the silver ones embossed side up. The finished leaves were then stuck to a piece of masking tape on a coffee spill for grey priming on both sides. I half expected the first grey side to pull away on the masking tape but it went surprisingly well and both sides were soon primed for gluing and painting.
Photo 16 shows the garland after the leaves have been fixed to the twig circle. The garland was first given a couple good coats of Admiralty Wood Brown and once dry, the leaves had a tiny strip of primer scratched off as did the wooden garland before each leaf was attached with a small drop of super glue gel. Photo 16 shows the leaves upper surface painted with Vallejo Medium Olive Green whilst Photo 17 shows the bottom surface still in grey primer after each joint was further re-enforced with a drop of liquid super glue for good measure.
The last two Photos 18 and 19, show the finished garland, in isolation and just balanced on top of the helm, (minus the visor as I was still working on the other half at this stage!) Note the little pale green splodges on the twigs, these are the tiny buds found at every leaf base on the hazel branch, ready to sprout out if the leaf is lost. Apologies for the yellow tinge on these two pics, I didn’t realise until too late I’d switched on the old workroom low wattage light by mistake – all the ‘proper’ photos are taken under a pure white light from a double strip of LEDs stuck across the ceiling!
In the next, thankfully shorter instalment, the full helm is painted and ‘metallised’ with the silver leaf and enamel wash, and you can finally see the finished steel effect properly!

Until then Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin.