New French Toy Soldiers

[[GG] Lord Ashram]

Okay, here is the army, so far. I figured I would put them all up here together.

There are more on the way; namely a host of fuisliers from Perry Miniatures, along with a bunch of officers and command troops (all the regular Fuisliers units will get an eagle guarded by two men with pikes.) WIP are my general and his aides, four units of fuisliers, a unit of cuirassiers, and two units of regular foot artillery. Then, who knows what?! Probably some lancers...

THE OLD GUARD GRENADIERS:



THE OLD GUARD CHASSEURS:



LIGHT INFANTRY (The have two different movement trays; a tray for the entire regiment when formed in close order, and seperate trays that enable me to deploy them as skirmishers. Here they are on their skirmish trays... note the Standard bearer in the command tray isn't finished.)









CHASSEUR CAVALRY:



GUARD ARTILLERY 1:



GUARD ARTILLERY 2:



WIP FUISILIERS:



WIP GENERAL AND AIDES:



WIP CHASSEURS:



REINFORCEMENTS 1 (Cuirassiers, artillery)



REINFORCEMENTS 2 (More Fuisliers)

[[GG] SeaDogg]

When I was going to college near Gettysburg we used to buy the cute little brass field piece souvenirs they sold at the visitors center and other shops there, always the one with a barrel abt 2-3 inches long. I had a friend who was in First Md Regiment, re-activated Rev War unit and we fired his brown bess and some other goodies a lot when we could get out in the country, (again, what a WONDERFUL Weapon!, the kick, smoke, smell- the whole package was magical). One nite we drilled the barrels of the little cannon out, they were real brass castings but good and solid, and had a false bottom in the breach area. We did it with hand held drills and 1/4'' or 3/8'' drills but we measured carefull and got the depth right so there was an even thickness of metal around the charge area.

Then we filed tiny pans into the top of the barrels and drilled even smaller touch holes, only abt the thickness of fine grained powder. We used a chemistry scale to weigh out some charges and eventually came up with some miniature measuring devices and some safe charges. We never put enough powder in the charge to blow a barrel, we even had a physics geek who watched us one nite and he said the thickness of the barrels was oversized to the scale of the barrel and the charges were probably only a quarter of what they should be, but that was fine, didnt want to hurt anything.

We had the most fun in the dorm at nite shooting spitballs in the room (and hallway when no one was looking). The room was best cause we could open the windows and put a fan in one to exhaust the smoke. There was no noise from the guns, just a tiny pop now and then, but the spitballs really flew- usually 8 to 10 feet. No spider web was safe, we always wished we could find a mouse or rat or even better a thingyroach in the dorm but never had any luck hunting that way.

It was a blast, really, and we never got caught cause we were careful to hide our ''magazine'' and ''armoury'' in a variety of different places. Oddly enough, a couple of our girlfriends really enjoyed our little target shoots, one of them even gave us a nice little set of knitting needles which we cut and carved into ramrods, swabs and other barrel tools.

[[GG] Lord Ashram]

*laugh* I did the same thing as a kid! We used a small mortar that we hollowed out, and actually fired spent .22 shells; we would turn them over and put some powder in the bottom and fire them across the street:) We eventually got it zeroed in and could tell from the sound of the "clink" what we hit:) Everyone should play like that!