Black Hat British Infantry [2]

Hey Internet,

I've finally gotten around to finishing my two platoons of Black Hat British Infantry.

All in all, its taken me two weeks to get the thirty of them painted up and based. To be honest, it was quite a chore to get them done.

The painting itself was not bad at all, but the clean-up of the flash and mold lines was really quite arduous.

I got these figures from a friend* who had them around collecting dust, so they are quite old, and given that fact, I have no idea if they are reflective of Black Hat's casting quality nowadays.

That said - and I am loathed to give a bad review - but the casting quality really was awful.

Almost every figure had prominent mold lines - sometimes two sets of mold lines per figure! Some of them also had major 'mold misalignment' issues. There was one 'pose' of figure that was so systematic in the poorness of its casting that every last one of the 'pose' had to be discarded.

After many hours filing and cutting, I got around to painting them. The figures are 'really big 15mm' or 18mm/HO scale, and as such they possess a pleasing level of detail and paint up rather nicely.

After a good deal of 'umm-ing' and 'ah-ing' I decided to go with turn of the century Khaki uniforms rather than the more stereotypical scarlet Redcoat. This made painting them a far speedier process, which was rather a good thing as, to be honest, the whole 'casting' issue had soured the whole modelling project for me, and enthusiasm was in short supply.

I've got some more Black Hat Commanders, Artillery and Gatling guns yet to do, but I think I need a rest before getting back into painting them.

I've got the first of the 'Tanks' on the way, so I'll probably do some of them before boomeranging back into the rest.

Mr. Marx.

* cheers Neil :)

The Lead Tally - 2014

Acquired: +59       Painted: +67          Total: +7