It’s been awhile since my last blog post, between 2 out of 3 kids graduating from their respective schools, and 2 simultaneous July 1st project delivery deadlines at work, I’m stretched thin. But it’s good to come up for air from time to time, and this is one of those times!
I have 3 “FULL UNIT CONVERSION” posts to do, and this is number one: turning 12 Perry Bengal Lancers into sword-armed sowars of the 3rd Bombay Light Cavalry, for service at Maiwand. (Luckily I only had to convert 9 of the 12, since the “command pack” of British officer, Indian NCO & bugler didn’t need any work!)
(click on above pic of Perry Muslim Bengal Lancers to visit their site)
The key ingredient to make this work was tracking down loose swords of appropriate design and matching size. This took a while, but with help form the worldwide miniature wargaming community, via TMP, I was able to discover Dayton Painting Consortium, Ltd. (Click here to visit their homepage or here to visit their catalogue page including accessories).
Dayton Consortium’s LIGHT CAVALRY SABERS turned out to be a perfect fit for the open hands of the Perry Lancers, and they also turned out to be a bargain at $3.00 for a bag of 20 swords. They were a pleasure to deal with and the swords arrived in the mail at hyper-speed.
I’ll be the first to agree that gluing swords into open hands is not much of a conversion, but I feel a lot of satisfaction for having stuck to the belief over some time that I’d find a way to make the beautiful Perry Bengal Lancers work as sword armed cavalry, WITHOUT having to cut their right hands off and replace them with severed hands from Perry British Sudan hussars or, at slightly less expense, their plastic American Civil War cavalrymen.
Here’s some pics:
