Make-Do and Mend

… that’s mostly what’s been going on here this last weekend. A little mending, re-touching and refurbishing of models and set-ups that had been damaged.

First up was a hunting scene which I first put together several years ago. It’s made of tiny white metal figures which I bought as a kit at a model railway fair, painted up, and arranged on a suitable base. I took it to one or two shows, but then somehow it got damaged and ended up in my ‘customising drawer’ awaiting repairs. It knocked about in the bottom of the drawer for two or three years, sustaining further damage and being generally unloved, before resurfacing recently. With my British Breeds Live Show coming up in a couple of weeks, I realised it was high time to tidy it up so I could take it to the show.

By this time, all the figures bar three of the hounds had become detached from the base, all were coated in the talcum powder which I had used to make the grass look frosty, and several had small rubs to the paintwork. So firstly, they all got a dunk in a bowl of water and a little rub over with a cotton-bud, to shift the talc. After that, it was a matter of touching up the paintwork wherever they had been damaged, or where it was still looking a little dull. Finally I reattached them all to the base using superglue. Here’s the result:

It’ll be entering the ‘Working Horse/Scene’ class at my live show in a couple of weeks, and I’ll let you know how it gets on. Incidentally, for pedigree assigners, most of these horses were painted with the bright idea of using them as ‘bodies’ for my retired ‘paper racehorse’ geldings, but I still haven’t got round to officially writing down who is who. Maybe that’s the next step…

Anyway, while I was on a roll, I decided it was time to tackle the little queue of horses awaiting treatment for broken legs, smashed ears, and so on. A few of them had come to grief, either at live shows or hurling themselves out of the display cabinet at home, and again had been waiting for quite some time. So I carried on with the glue, the paint, and a little sandpaper where necessary, and pretty soon they were all on their feet again:

L-R: H-R Shetland repainted by me to Welsh; H-R mule repainted by me; Breyer SM Arab Mare reworked by me; Breyer SM Quarter Horse Stallion repainted by Jackie Radwanski.  It’s true that two, if not three of them will not be live show quality again – the leg repairs are still visible because I haven’t taken the time to rub down the mend, refill if necessary, etc – but at least they can stand on the shelf and look pretty again.

The other thing I was doing this weekend was trying to decide on a breed for this guy:

He’s a fairly simple repaint that I bought at a show last year, and probably not going to be a big winner, but I’m a sucker for a roan and I like him. With regard to breed, the first thing that came to mind when I acquired him was Dutch Draught, because he reminded me in pose of a picture of a Dutch Draught in a book of mine. However, having shown him once as this, the judge pointed out to me that really he is not heavy enough for that, and the more photos I look at, the more I agree with her – Dutch Draughts are humungous.

The ‘obvious’ choice, if you like, is probably Ardennais, and perhaps I should just go with that; but he keeps telling me that his name is Alois, or possibly Albrecht, both of which are German. German heavy horse breeds are not terribly well-known outside their native land, so researching them required a bit of Googling in more than one language. The more I look, the more the Rhenish Kaltblut seems to fit the bill: an attractive horse of the right build, often occurring in bay roan, and reasonably well-documented on line. In particular, many of the photos of this breed seem to show it moving with a good deal of action, as this model is. My one reservation is that perhaps he has too much feather for a Rhenish, and from this point of view an Ardennais would be better; but amount of feather seems to vary between individuals in both breeds.

Comments welcome – watch this space while I make my mind up, and then set about looking for a pedigree!

Apologies for the bits’n’pieces nature of this post – it’s how I am at the moment. Normal service with proper pedigree assignment posts will be resumed once the live show is over.