Union Major General Winfield Scott Hancock

Here are some pictures of a Union army command stand I made for use in the game Field of Battle, by Piquet. Again, the miniatures are from GHQ. The commander miniature is actually specifically meant to be Winfield Scott Hancock. The rest are various extra command figures I had.

The other mounted figure is a cavalry guidon bearer. His right hand was open so that a pole could be placed in it, and it ended up looking kind of silly without one. He just looked like he should be holding something. So I tried to cut a pair of binoculars off another figure, and actually managed to get them off sucessfully without destroying either the binoculars or the figure they were attached to. This was quite an accomplishment, requiring a great deal of skill, patience, and a steady hand. But it was a wasted effort, since I then managed to immediately drop the binoculars on the table. They took a bounce and disappeared forever. I scoured the table, chair, floor, and entire room, but they were nowhere to be found. They're just way too small to see. It turns out converting 10mm miniatures isn't easy.

But I still had to put something in that empty hand, or he'd look really strange. So I took some "green stuff" modelling putty, and tried to make a very tiny, roughly rectangular blob shape. The most difficult part was actually just trying to knead together that small of an amount of the putty. For those that don't know, the "green stuff" comes in a strip, half of it blue and half of it yellow. When you knead together some from each side, it turns green and activates, which makes it harden after a while. With such an increadibly tiny amount of it to be used, it was really hard to get it mixed together enough to turn green. But I didn't want to waste any by mixing way more than I needed.

So, I got it into roughly the shape I wanted, let it dry, and glued it into his open right hand. It still ended up being too big. I then tried to paint it somewhat like a pair of binoculars, including some light blue dots on the top to represent the glass lenses. It doesn't look perfect, but definitely better than an empty hand posed like it should be holding something. So, if you were wondering what that guy is holding, that is my attempt at sculpting binoculars in 10mm scale. It definitely gives me a new appreciation for the people that can actually sculpt things that look good in that scale. I sure wish I hadn't lost that pair of binoculars I cut off that other miniature, but I guess it turned out okay.