Drabant Vikings WIP 1

I have split the Drabant vikings into two batches, the first being these combat troops, the archers can wait. Cleaning metals is never easy for me, I much prefer plastics or resin, but these are a little bit different to the typical metals. They are a bit softer, so much so that any attached weapons were bent in an alarming fashion. Luckily, I was able to straighten them out without any breakages. The up side to the softer metal is that they are easier to clean of mould lines. There was no flash at all, I suspect any that is present straight from the mould is cleaned before they are packaged, which is a nice touch.

Some of the weapons, mostly the swords, are separate to the main figure. This means you have to drill a hole into the hand, clip off the pommel and part of the handle, and insert the remains of the handle into the hole. It's not too bad if you have the right size drill bit - mine of course was slightly too small, so much faffing about ensued. It was relatively easy to file down the sword handles to fit into the holes, but the spear was impossible. In the end I had to use a paper clip, which was too small in length, so I had to use two and pin the spear head onto one piece. After all that work, it looked wonky so I started again and used an axe instead. Historical hands and weapons are the bane of my hobby life! I cannot understand why the weapons and hands are not cast as one piece, to be simply glued on at the wrist.

Now that the prep is complete, I can look forward to painting them up. Normally I rush through historical figures and get them done to a tabletop level as quickly as possible. As these are such fine sculpts, I am going to take my time and give them a better paint job.