Wagons & Drivers
I'm in the process of putting together a participation game which involves the Austrian ambush of a Prussian wagon train (which one - answers on a post card), and decided I needed some wagons.
The starting point for the horse teams and drivers was the limber horses from the Karoliner range, these are fine, however, for most of them I replaced the heads with ones from the SYW range, as I think they fit in better with the rest of my collection.
The wagons and caissons are all 3D prints of Napoleonic types based on files purchased from Najewitz Modellbau. The files for the wagons are hidden within their Napoleonic terrain packages (which is where the building files for my buildings were obtained). I appreciate that the types may not be historically correct for the Seven Years War, but I decided they would be close enough for what I wanted.
I also decided that I wanted to have some of the wagons to have their drivers on foot. My initial plan was to use the artilleryman with rammer, cut off the rammer and then bend down the arm a little so he looked as if he was leading the horse. However, knowing that the artillery were sculpted digitally I pushed my luck and asked Chris if he could do that for me digitally and send me the STL file so I could print them myself; he exceeded my expectations and sent me an STL file for a new civilian figure in the pose I had suggested.
Here he is with a Napoleonic field wagon; the hand is a bit higher than ideal, and being semi flat, even with part of the base cut off, the arm is also quite a way from the horse. Unfortunately resin prints do not easily bend (they bend a bit if heated in hot water first), so I decided to live with it - they look good from a distance.
There is also a Napoleonic ambulance, again probably not accurate but looks good.
One thing I did change as printing progressed was the wheels. The ones with the Najewitz files are those on the ambulance above, the joints in the wheel rim are just nonsense, with some of the joints over the spokes - they would just fall apart. I replaced them on later models with wheels rescaled from a French Napoleonic cannon, as the ones on the caisson at the top.
For the later wagons I wanted to remove the driver's seat, which looks a bit later than SYW, so had a go at mixing, matching and rescaling parts from several models. The body is from a different wagon, the cover and axles from the earlier field wagon and the wheels from the cannon - I think it looks more SYW.
And it can be filled with barrels....
The caisson is probably the least accurate as it should probably be more like the one below.
So I rescaled the cover to the wagon and arrived at this - which is much closer (I suppose it could be closer if the body was shortened and the cover made to overhang a little).
The reason I have shown so many photos is to show what can be done using 3D printers. I have no sculpting ability (too late to learn now), and have not used a sculpting program. This has all been done within the actual printer slicing package by just rescaling parts in varying ratios to better match what I was trying to produce.
Civilians
Chris produced the wagon driver in digital form and let me have the file to print for this participation game - there are no plans to put these into production.
Does anyone think there would be a market for a few civilian types (or perhaps soldiers in waistcoats), in poses such as that leading the wagon, or perhaps carrying out engineering tasks such as digging with shovels, swinging pick axes or carrying logs??????
As always comments appreciated.
