A little progress: 40pdr and Gatling gun limber

Most of today’s effort has gone into applying the first coat of varnish to twenty-odd Hadendowa rifle-armed and gun crew figures, along with Burnaby, Wilson and Prior.

I also spent about five minutes on the Gatling gun limber and a couple of hours on the 40pdr.

Yesterday I did most of the cutting and trimming to narrow the two carriages for the smaller weapon. It’s the first time I have worked with resin, and it’s brittle stuff, requiring slow careful work to avoid disastrous chips and breakages. I had one of the former, but a bit of filling was required in any case.

I added larger diameter trunions to the barrel, drilled the gun carriage for the wire rope, and added a pair of leavers, one each side. I need to add small wheels to the rear of the carriage, and model the elevation mechanism. The latter needs some investigation. I also need to source some blocks of a suitable size for the tackle … so quite a bit still to do.

The limber is nearly ready for priming, while the 40pdr is going to take a while longer.