Saturday, June 9, 2007

Hair brush ACW, progress report

Well, I hit a little snag with my hair brush armies this morning, but thankfully there's an easy solution.

When I painted up my test strip of Union figures, all was well. The neatly cut top of the brush bristle did a fair approximation of the Union Kepi. But, how to handle the typical slouch hat of the Confederates (and, of course, many Union troops too)?

I tried a little blob of superglue, but that was hard to control.

I tried heating a knife blade to squash the tip of the bristle a bit, but this particular plastic just fuses to the hot knife and refuses to smoosh.

The I got primaeval. We have these long-nosed lighters at home, to light the fireplace with. I sparked a flame and held it close to the tips of the bristles. Bingo. The tips melted and blobbed up a little, making for an abstract but very suitable bit of headgear. With appropriate paint, they'll make fine slouch hats in this scale. Or busbies. Or turbans. Or cavalry helmets.

The smell was a bit noxious and, I suspect, possibly toxic. So all further experiments with molten headgear will be done outside. And, you need to be careful with the distance. The distance between melting and burning is pretty short.

No pics yet...my wife had the camera this morning. I'll try to get some up tonight or tomorrow.

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