On the West side of Scotland, near the Inner Hebrides, one tends to make use of what Nature throws up on the shore, if possible. Besides firewood and every plastic botfie "Boots" have ever though might beguile the public into buying shampoo, cleansing cream, detergents, etc., sometimes enigmatic things float up. The object that presented me with this idea was a bit of dense expanded polystyrene with 4 galvanized roofing tacks - one in each comer. "This stuff could come in useful for somethin2! " was the immediate thought. It has; but to use it for its new purpose I had to extract the roofing tacks. I looked anew at the roofing tacks as I came back into the kitchen (a warm place where little fiddly things get done as well as cooking). Seeing the tacks in a row sitting on their heads - I only half took them in - "What is that row of figures doing there?" I thought. They are about 15mm "in scale" and the head makes a good round base to stand on (Figure 1). "What about making infantry, at least, from them?" I thought. Two sides, painted up red and blue, the points painted up into the Slade era helmets, a dab of pink for the face and hands, rifle painted on "at the short trail" (Figure 2). 1 have still to find something to make cavalry but for artillery I have used an offcut of that same dense expanded polystyrene: I have cut a gun and limber out of it, using the other side (of course) of the kitchen chopping board (also incidentally made from a double sided bit of plywood with Formica bonded to both sides - also flotsam). I just cut the polystyrene with an "Opinel" pen-knife, made in France, quite cheap and good for that, paring ewes hooves or skinning dead lambs. The blade takes a very sharp edge. It isn't stainless however. Next time I go to Fort William I'll pop into the hardware and buy a few "regiments" - keeping an eye open for "cavalrypossible" objects too. Have you any ideas? Back to MWAN #96 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1997 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com