Going Small, p.4 - 6mm Bacchus ACW flagpoles

Proportionately, 6mm Bacchus standard bearers - or Scottish caber tossers?

You decide!


So, these are too big. And they are too fragile being made of soft lead. I should do this before I prime, ideally, but here we go:

Veeerrry, careful cut with X-acto between pole and color sgt's face [close shave day!]


Highly recommend a new blade to to a little start point for the Dremel bit. Tiny bit, btw. Unfortunately, below pic is a bit blurry but the left blade is new and has a tiny point. You have to *gently* place it where the hole will be drilled and twirl it in your fingers a bunch 'o times - *gently* or else the tiny tip will break off in the figure you're drilling, and it's a paint to remove! 

When you've made a starter point or dent, you're ready to drill. Use a small, new Dremel bit and gentle pressure on a firm surface lest you break something or hurt yourself!



There's now some flash pulled up from the hole by the bit - you can see the guy looks like he's holding a pineapple. Use a toothbrush to brush it off, or an X-acto horizontally to cut it off if you must.

Select a size that looks more realistic. Apparently, these poles wheren't that big around, sometimes Southerners used a long switch from a tree even! Left is the original, center and right are two sizes of piano wire. I'm going with the right one, it looks...right.

Sized the length by guesswork - needs to be large enough to see the flag, and it can always be cut down a bit even after being glued.
Put a little bead of glue on the end of the wire...
...then stick down the hole - but not to the ground if the figure is walking! It isn't a walking stick and would have been held waist high, perhaps in a belt loop holder.
Final result below. I think I could even go down one size with a wire.

Hard to tell in this pic - a bit blurry - but the new ones are about half as wide as the old, and obviously they're much stronger.

There's a continuous learning curve to every aspect of this project. And I probably didn't pick well when I decided to do six stands of CSA first, since they don't have uniform uniforms!

I think the most difficult part is just being able to see and paint what I'm looking at. My goal is to paint up enough for "One-Hour Wargames" scenarios and see how it goes from there. I'm hoping I can stick with it!