During the build of Fokker LF70 32/15 I decided that I just had to have 'Papa' Reuschke leaning against his machine as seen in the photo. After contacting several very talented sculptors of 1:32 figures I decided that the price tag was a little out of my league and that I should give it a go myself, hey what could go wrong?
Also this project has been stop go, stop go since I completed the LF70, now the DH.2 has stalled due to the pending arrival of the last turnbuckles I came back to 'Papa'
Now I have never tried anything remotely like this before however many of the kind gents I contacted were more than happy to give me a lot of help in the purchase of materials for this, big thank you to Masahiro and Dean who gave a lot of help.
One of the strongest suggestions I received was to convert an already existing miniature for my needs, sadly however there are no Marine-Fliegerabteilung figures so it would mean some heavy modifications.
First off, the miniature to be butchered!
I went for the ModelKasten 'Set B' as it offered me more value for money as not only have I never sculpted figures before, I'd never actually painted them either, this set would give me 3 usable subjects. (sorry nurse)
I choose this set due to the German officer, one hand was already in the pocket and he had the peaked cap and as the model came in 7 pieces it would make modifying the posture easier - well I assumed it would.
The first job was to cut the figure at the knees and ankles removing about 1mm of material by sanding - I then made the posture easier to manipulate by rejoining the limbs with 5mm brass wire.
With that done it was time to fill in the gaps and mold the detailing back in - a lot easier than I though.
As the bust of the figure was already separate it only required a little sanding and filling to get the posture correct.
