Artillery piece of the month and workbench

Artillery piece for June is the Perry Miniatures Wars of the Roses cannon I bought for Guy's mini Bosworth project but never got time to paint. This is the first artillery I have painted for my Wars of the Roses army except, as mine is the Earl of Oxford's and I have painted it as Richard's Royal artillery then technically it is for another force.

These guns had barrels constructed from welded iron staves held together with hoops. They were breech loaders with separate chambers that could be pre-charged. Two of the figures in this set are depicted with these chambers. The breech chambers were held in place by a wooden wedge but the power of the gun was lessened by the gases escaping through gaps between the breech and the barrel. The stave constructed barrels were also not strong enough for the new more powerful corned gunpowder (where the constituents were mixed with water, dried and formed into granules) either.

My next Wars of the Roses figures will be some of the plastics which I have assembled but I need to get some more half finished figures out the way first.

Looking at my half way through the year painting totals I have not done too badly; having painted 98 figures compared with 213 for the whole of 2009. I am hoping to do much better in the second half of the year and shortly we will be off to Cowes where I always get a good batch done (largely as there is no television there). I am now starting to think about what to take with me to paint and I am thinking that it is time to paint some more Sudan figures again. Maybe I should be really brave and just take my Gordon Highlanders. Other possibilities are Zulu War British and maybe some WW2. I'll probably have changed my mind again by the time I leave! In the meantime I am going to try to get another unit finished and my Indian Mutiny figures are looking to be a high probablilty. This is mainly because Mutineer Miniatures have come out with another load of great new figures, including a splendid mutineers command elephant.

Looking at what I thought I would be painting and what I actually did had its usual disconnect!

This section includes armies I thought I might paint and did:

Darkest Africa Force publique 21
Carthaginians 14
Zulus 6
Elizabethan sea dogs 4
Lord of the Rings 3
Great Northern War 2
Normans 2
Gladiators 1
Schleswig War 1

These are armies I thought I might paint some figures for but didn't: =

Darkest Africa Masai
WW1 Germans
Louis XIV

Figures I had no plans to paint but did, included:

Wars of the Roses 11
Indian Mutiny 8
Spartans 8
Zulu War British 5
Darkest Africa Baluchis 4
Pirates 2
Pulp 1
Vikings 1
8th army
Trojan War 1
Mexicans 1

OK, no plans going forward other than to try and finish some more units...