CLINK HERE FOR A COMPLETE INDEX TO ITEMS ON THIS BLOG

Thursday 11 May 2017

GERMAN SNIPER

I am currently in the process of building a Late War German Army for  Chain of Command. The first item I wanted to add to my  Support List is a Sniper team.
 After viewing pictures on the web of German snipers, I came across a unique pose by German sniper Matthaus Hetzenauer. 
I decided to perform plastic surgery on one of my 28mm German Warlords games plastic figures to mimic his pose.







Sniper team on the ruin Church grounds

Close up 

CONVERSION PROCEDURE
Legs:
Carefully remove the legs of a torso with a hobby knife and secure the torso upright with blue tac.
Right Leg: 
Repostion the right leg along the ground and trim to fit the torso.
Using blue tac, temporarily fix the leg in place to assist in getting the right position.
Once you are happy with the position fix in place with model glue. 
Left Leg:
Make a cut above the knee on the leg leg that was removed and position it on the ground so that it is upright in a position to support the left arm.
Note there will be a big gap between this leg and the torso.

To Pack out the gap use bits of white plastic styrene sheet and pack them into the gap and glue in place: you are not trying to replicate the detail of the trousers and leg, all you want to achieve is a solid link between the leg and torso. (later using Green stuff you can complete the gap and sculpture the detail)

Arms:
Locate this item from Warlord games German Grenadiers sprue.

Left arms:
Carefully remove all components of the left arm from the rifle.
This arm will be missing the hand, position the arm to rest on top of left leg and temporarily fix in place with blue tac.
Right arm:
trim the right arm with the rifle to fit hard up against the figures cheek.
Cut a small grove in the left arm so the rifle seats nicely in this slot and temporarily fix in place with blue tac.
Back to left arm:
Select the trim off a hand fro the spure and position it so it is covering the firing hand and rifle and fix in place with modelling glue.

Once set remove all the blue tac from the arms and fix all the components in place with modelling glue. Note large gaps need to be filled using white plastic stryene  sheet as described above.

Allow to dry,mix the two part Green stuff and with the aid of a modelling knife, contour the missing detail adding straps to binoculars and rifles.

Model a scope for the rifle using spare plastic sprue and white plastic styrene sheets.

I mount my figures on thin magnetic sheets with superglue and build up the base with Milliput. 
Undercoating, paint and flock and the Sniper team is ready to be shipped out on the next halftrack to the front line.





Matthaus Hetzenauer notorious for provoking fear amongst  Russian troops on the Eastern Front with 345 Kills.

11 comments:

  1. Excellent conversion and great paint job! I probably have to give it a try myself.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Moiterei for your comment, yes that would be great to see.
      cheers John

      Delete
  2. Replies
    1. Thanks Matt for your comment.
      cheers John

      Delete
  3. Fantastic work again John. If this set was available to buy, it would be a big seller. Wonderful scene setting of the spotter and sniper team in the church grounds. 10/10.
    Pat.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Pat for your comments,
      cheers John

      Delete
  4. Great conversion job, wonderful scenery and painting...superb!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks Ritter von Krautheim , agree you can do a lot of modifications with the plastic figures.
    cheers John

    ReplyDelete
  6. What's your recipe for flocking the base, John? Just came back for a second look at these figures and noticed how realistic looking the foliage is.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks so much for this guide, it was nice and easy to follow and given me something I'm very happy with! I can send you pictures of the results if you're interested.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Sarge, I stumbled on your sniper conversion while doing a web search, very nice work .
      cheers John

      Delete