A Visit to My Miniatures Junkyard

As I sat down yesterday to start painting 6mm WWII French infantry, I felt very cramped at my paint table, as it had grown rather crowded with various odds and ends that had been accumulating on it for quite some time, again.  Mostly waylaid miniatures, some with broken or missing parts; things that I'll get around to, eventually.

I figured I'd clear the clutter off my table, gather them up and put them in the wooden box that has become my catch-all box for  things like this, but as it turned out, all six of the box's trays were already overflowing, mostly with micro-armor.

There are some old GHQ tanks that have long been re-sculpted and don't match the newer models I've gotten over the years, a handful of Cold War Soviet tanks with broken barrels, damaged 26 years ago, when we moved into the house (revealed along our front walk, a month after moving in, when the snow had melted).  A batch of T-55s that I bought on E-bay, that arrived as Chinese Type 69s with side skirts.  Some old CinC T80s that I've been meaning to sell, various bags of less than obvious contraptions that needed assembled, and on and on.

I ended up sorting out a lot of the stuff, threw out some things that I no longer "couldn't live without", and deciding that "eventually" had finally arrived.  I selected a number of models for assembly and/or repair.  Most notable was an GHQ Mi-8 helicopter bought in the 1980s, never assembled as it arrived missing the front landing gear.  There were 15 AFVs in need of repairs, mostly barrels, a BMP needing a new turret (miscast), a bunch of Sherman oddballs with parts all mixed up in a bag, etc.

So the day was spent recovering 16 broken models, and assembling a similar number of other odds and ends.  In the end, I cleaned up my paint table a little, emptied about one and a half of the "miniatures junkyard" trays, and enjoyed a nice relaxing day.

Most of the tanks needed new barrels, made of brass wire and tube.  The GHQ BMP now has a spare CinC turret, The Mi-* sports new wheels, Sherman Calliopes and mine rollars finally assembled, along with some un-mangled Soviet 100mm ATGs, and some H&R (or maybe Scotia) 85mm Soviet guns assembled.  That reminds me, I'm out of primer...