Lindberg Stagecoach

Here are some random views of the Lindberg 1/16th scale Stagecoach, which am I getting pretty close to finishing after what seems like an eternity of work. In this picture, we see the worst part of the kit: the horses. They come in two halves, and I had to resort of huge quantities of MEK and actual woodworking clamps to get them to fit together reasonably well. Even then I had to do a lot of actual heavy-duty filing to get the seams even close to smooth, followed by about four fill-sand-prime-sand cycles. BUT, having said that, the horses themselves aren't bad in terms of proportion. I decided to make them all bays, the theory being that pintos or palominos or greys would be ridden by cowboys and not used by a stagecoach operator. I painted them a very dark brown with spray paint (made by Krylon to camouflage boats, pickup trucks, and other outdoorsman-type transport). Then came a lot of sustained drybrushing with Liquitex burnt sienna, which I though gave the horses a reasonable dark reddish bay color (I varied how much I drybrushed them, so none of them quite match in redness). Then came the harnesses, which I found fiddly and troublesome to assemble and attach - I painted most of the harness parts off the horses with Testors Rubber (which despite the name actually looks more like leather than Testors Leather) and attached them with five-minute epoxy. Note that the horses haven't been detail-painted; I decided to leave all that until after the horses have been harnessed. The brass rings were supplied in the kit, by the way.

A frontal view of the stagecoach, awaiting the completion of the horses. At first I thought the figures were made out of plastic, but now I think they're some kind of resin. Note the way that the guy on the right seems MUCH larger than the guy on the left - I'm going to have to make a chest or something for the boyish-looking shotgun rider to rest his feet on. I tried to paint them so they looked dingy and faded, but I still have a little detail painting to do (for this reason I haven't glued them into place yet). In the background, behind the hand sanitizer and under the Viking longboat box, is my latest tool purchase, a micro-table saw from Micro-Mark. Haven't used it yet, but it's ready when I am. Notice also the headless Triceratops... Poor thing. Not finished at the time of writing are the whip, the brake "pedal", and the Winchester rifle. I'm thinking of scratchbuilding a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun, and I wish I could find some suitable pistols to cast replicas of and make pistol belts for.

A side close-up on the stagecoach, mostly to show the three other figures that came with the kit - a US Army officer on the right (I made him a major-general), a well-heeled townie on the left, and his wife beyond him. The paints were a mix of things - craft paint, Tamiya acrylics, Testors enamels, and even a little Liquitex here and there. The red and yellow on the stagecoach itself are barn red and marigold Krylon spray paints. Notice also the enormous ejector pin marks on the inside of the door that I failed to properly fill and sand! The kit is full of enormous ejector pin marks and obviously I didn't get all of them. Fortunately the door is operable and will be closed when it's all done - the kit supplies some brass pins so you can drill out the hinges and have operable doors if you like.

A three-quarters view of the assembled stagecoach. Most of the metalwork on the stagecoach is either Tamiya NATO black or Tamiya dark grey, intended to convey the idea of blackish wrought iron, but I touched some of the nuts and bolts with with Tamiya metallic grey. By and large the stagecoach itself wasn't hard to assemble. The instructions are not particularly clear, but most of it is pretty obvious. The most time was spent eliminating pin marks, flash, mild parting lines and other flaws. Note the large jug of Round-Up (it must be spring!) and the hitherto missing head of the Triceratops, upside down next to the Round-Up.

I've used an awful lot of Testors Rubber on this kit, as it turns out. I hunted around for a good leather color before settling on Rubber. Testors Leather is too red. NATO black is too green. Flat black is too stark. But Testors Rubber is a nice non-reddish dark brown that I think looks a lot like old leather. My wife drives horses and carts (two-wheeled sulkies) so I'm not unfamiliar with the look, feel and arrangement of horse harnesses and harness leather.