Tradition

In my youth, many moons ago one of my hobbies was painting model soldiers and on a recent visit to my mothers house I decided the time had come to repatriate my collection of figures. However when I eventually found them rattling around loose in an old cardboard box I was somewhat disappointed to say the least at the state they were in, as a number of them were damaged or missing pieces. In the case of the Charles Stadden French Napoleonic Dragoon Trumpeter in the photograph, the trumpet was missing.

Surprisingly this 30 year old model is still in production, so I contacted the good people at 'Tradition of London' who still produce the Charles Stadden range of figures and asked if I could buy just the trumpet. I was delighted when Magnus Lindstrom replied and offered to send me one for no charge, which duly arrived a couple of days later, for which very many thanks Magnus.

There was one problem however, in the intervening years the design had been changed slightly and now the trumpet came complete with the trumpeters hand attached to it. The only thing for it was to amputate the the figures hand with the aid of fine saw, a dremel and a craft knife, once done I epoxied the hand with trumpet in place and achieved I think a very acceptable result. I have now set about repainting it in the correct colour scheme for an Empress' Dragoon Trumpeter, when it's finished I'll post a picture of the finished article here.