All things Jacklex: Artillery

Showing posts with label Artillery. Show all posts

Saturday, 14 March 2020

Mahdist Gunners

Some eagle eyed viewers of the post reviewing Jack's colonial armies spotted a set of Madhist gunners and I have had a couple of questions about them and whether they ever went into production. The simple answer is 'no' they are my conversions.

I have to confess that once Bob laid out all the figures we started asking ourselves why Jack never got around to making certain figures, and why over all the years we hadn't noticed?

We had gone over the thorny ground of 'Senior Command' command figures with him lots of times, but in Jack's wargames they really didn't count, so you only come across them in the ACW range. Same with Standard bearers and the struggle even Stuart Asquith had trying to get him to make them for the colonial range. I still remember Jack shaking his head and saying they never had them and finally bowing to pressure and making them but never casting or adding them to his collection.

Anyway, back to what struck us as missing. On the Mahdist side we both felt they would benefit from some artillery. Guns were captured during the war and turned on the British and Egyptian allies. From what I have read gunners were often Egyptian artillerymen captured and forced to work the guns or indeed deserters/converts to the Mahdist cause.

Having done lots of conversions for my S range armies I figured it must be possible to do the same thing for the Jacklex figures. Looking at the figures on the table, I came to the conclusion that the simplest and quickest way to give the Mahdist some gunners (we had plenty of guns!) was to use the Indian artillery figures. They have turbans after all so I was a good way there, Mark Lodge (jacklexminiatures.com) very kindly set me a couple of sets and I set to with my scalpel and sandpaper and removed all the belts and pouches, not to difficult. I then added a little bit of 'green stuff' to hang down from the turban and already the figures looked different. I them added more 'green stuff' to extend the jackets. The paint job hides a multitude of sins as I can never seem to get it right with that stuff! Jack always used 'Plastic Padding' so I am going to try that in future. Anyway, in terms of conversions I made two crews, we didn't need lots and all eight figures didn't take very long at all. The longest bit was waiting for the 'green stuff' to harden. Yes, exactly like watching paint dry!

This has spurred me on to do a set of head swaps to give the Egyptian/Sudanese contingent a set of gunners in white with red fezzes, should look rather fetching, using the British artillery figures as the basis. I will post some pictures once they are done.

Saturday, 24 August 2019

The Phoenix Rises – The Return of Jacklex

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of finally meeting Mark Lodge the new owner of the Jacklex range of 20mm figures. I had been in touch with him on the phone and by email and it was good to put a face to a name.

We met at Jack’s and had an enjoyable time sitting in his garden and exchanging wargame tales. However, the real purpose of the meeting was to take the opportunity to go through some of the piles of moulds in Jack’s garage to try find any missing figures or moulds to help complete the Jacklex range. To Mark’s huge delight not only did we find some moulds but we were able to find some of Jack’s masters for the wagon’s and guns. These were truly stunning. When you consider they were made over 50 years ago in plastic the detail on things like the barrels on the Gardiner Gun or the structure of the Wagons was amazing and tell of Jack’s skill as a model maker and craftsman.

What all this hunting around means is that the relaunch of the Jacklex range complete with it’s own website and logo (see below) at the end of September will see the most extensive range of these lovely figures ever.

Mark's aim is to try, over time, to fill in some gaps in some of the ranges by producing some conversions/new additions. To date these include a wheeled machine gun and crew for the Russians in the Russo-Japanese war (or for imaginary struggles with the British on the North-West Frontier), together with a Russian Standard bearer. In the Boer War series there are Staatsartillerie Pom Pom gun with limber mules and crew and the Pom Pom gun with its field crew. Mark kindly sent me a set of these figures and but for the cataract that has appeared in my left eye I would have painted them for these pictures. Unfortunately, I do not think that I can do them justice at the moment tempting though it is to give them a go!

Once upon a time there was a diorama in the Harrow Model shop of a Pom Pom gun and it's crew.

(photo of Harrow Model Shop diorama)

The moulds for this had disappeared in the midst of time so it is wonderful to see Mark's beautiful recreations

The prices for these and the standard infantry and cavalry figures is to be confirmed, but I thought I would wet your appetite by showing some pictures.

In case you haven’t come across it, the South African Military History Society have lots of information on their website on the First and Second Boer Wars and later wars, including information on uniforms for the Stastsartillerie http://samilitaryhistory.org

Tuesday, 5 January 2016

Jacklex 20mm Artillery and Sailors

A belated Happy New Year.

Continuing my trawl through Jack's boxes of colonial figures here are some of his artillery and Sailors. As with the previous posts, these were painted by the man himself nearly 40 years ago. There are more wagons and machine guns and light guns I have yet to take pictures of, but for now......

These are shown with 4 horse teams, but because of the way Jack set this up horse teams could be as big as you wanted. The RHA in my British Zulu War army is a six horse team.

Colonial Gun and British crew...

.....and now the same gun with the Indian crew.

More 4.7 inch guns than you would know what to do with. Gunners are shown in both Khaki and Royal Naval uniforms.

As with the artillery teams, you could add as many pairs of oxen to this set as you wanted. It looked pretty spectacular with 6 pairs of oxen although it took up masses of room on the table.

The great thing about Jack's colonial range was the breadth of it. He made sailors to go with the infantry, making naval landings and support possible. My apologies as these are not the best pictures.