02 September 2012

WW2 British / Commonwealth Infantry Conversions

The old Matchbox British Infantry and 8th Army sets have a good all-round mix of figures, and greatly inspired by the pictures of converted Matchbox figures posted by Paul on his 20th Century Wargames Blog, and Al on the Plastic Warriors Blog, I decided to try my hand at adding more variety to the poses offered in these sets.

So, armed with a scalpel and geared up into a Dr. Frankenstein mode, I chopped and swapped various plastic body parts and came up with the following results.





These are really bad pictures by the way. I took these snaps in the evening with my mobile, and the yellow light from an "energy efficient" fluorescent bulb is nowhere near as bright or defining as a good old 100W tungsten filament bulb.



The different coloured figures come from sets spanning around 35 years.

The radio operator with the beret conversion above is the oldest and was very brittle - his original head didn't even need slicing off, it just snapped off.

The dark green officer figure in the middle above and the olive-green figure below are about 20-25 years old but no brittleness to be found, and the beige figures are new Airfix/Hornby re-releases.



The head on Jack the Knife on the right there is a copy I made from a 2nd version Airfix commando. The arms are off a Matchbox crawling British Commando.



Quite pleased with the way this one turned out. The hand-gun that the original figure was holding looked more like a water-pistol, so I replaced it with a revolver from a pistol brandishing Esci British Infantry officer.

The final batch of WWII British / Commonwealth figures, a mixture of Airfix, Caesar, Matchbox and a couple of old Hong-Kong rip-offs (in dark green).









And what a difference a nice bit of sunshine can make- it makes the first lot of photos look abysmal.

16 comments:

  1. Super job John, they look a treat.

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    1. Cheers Paul, your plastic figure conversions and Al's were great inspirations for these.

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  2. Great work. Really great work.

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    1. Hi Nick, thanks very much.

      By the way, I've seen some very tempting pictures of HOTT games on your site.

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  3. John, you are the best. Those conversions are fantastic. Greetings and thank´s for your visit.

    Eli.

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    1. Hooola Eli !! Thanks mate :-) See you in the shop tomorrow ???

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  4. Unbelievable work with those miniatures, truly the master of custom figures.

    Keep it up!
    FF

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    1. Thanks FF. I just checked out your blog - 1/72 too - good stuff !

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  5. Some cool looking conversions, great to see how these paint up.

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    1. Cheers ! If they come out as half as nice as the Brits you recently posted on your blog I'll be more than happy.

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  6. Nice conversions John, please give us a tutorial...! Pleaaaseeee..... ;)
    T.

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    1. Hi Thanos !

      I was just going to say that I have a page on converting plastic miniatures on the main miniaturezone.co.uk site but I looked to give you the link and couldn't find it !!!

      When I revamped the website I must have overlooked the article.

      I just found the old post (it's about 10 years old) and it's quite a long-winded affair and needs some editing but I'll put it up tonight or tomorrow.

      Thanks Thanos.

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  7. I think you're going to get a great group, very natural and believable.

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  8. Thanks Pablo.

    The Airfix Brits are the new ones I got from Teide Hobby by the way some months ago :-)

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  9. AnonymousJune 09, 2014

    NICE job , what did you use as a glue

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