ACW Adventures in Basing No.8

Just a quick post to prove that, contrary to popular opinion, I am capable of multi-tasking.  By way of illustration, last weekend, whilst building, painting and modding a couple of Armourfast T34/76, I also found time to base the last of my 20mm ACW artillery.

Most of the figures and all of the guns come from the Airfix Napoleonic Royal Horse Artillery set.  I had converted and painted the figures (quite) some years ago but the guns were completely overhauled this weekend.  At one point I was considering getting some metal guns to go with the crew as I thought that the Napoleonic guns looked a bit odd, but after a bit of research on The Miniatures Page (TMP) forums I found the solution to using the original guns.

The main bit of advice was that if I cut off the axletree boxes (i.e. the boxes mounted between each cheek and the wheel) then the result would be passable for an ACW artillery piece.  And they were right.  The next thing was colour.  Again the TMP forums came to the rescue as apparently Union and most Confederate artillery were painted an olive colour (technically "liquid olive"), for which most people seemed to think that the standard US "olive drab" would work.

Finally, the guns.  Again the sages on TMP advised that brass guns (like the 12pdr Napoleon) would have been highly polished affairs, whilst the various iron guns would have been painted black.  The guns here should probably by rights be brass Napoleons, but I wanted a bit of contrast from the other pieces I had so I painted them as iron guns.  I also drilled out the bore which is something I've never bothered with before.  I must be maturing.