AWI Project - Perry Miniatures Plastic American Continentals

While I have been busy working on the World War II project I have been dabbling in the AWI behind the scenes. It began when I introduced my wife to the move 1776. While it plays a bit fast and loose with history it did grab both of our interests in the period and that it was followed by a flood of books (that's pretty typical with me and my wife shares my interest in history you should see her collection of books on Eisenhower). I started off with the biography of John Adams by David McCullough. I highly recommend this book right along with his books 1775 and 1776. 

With the Fourth of July celebration going on I decided that I would at least put together the plastic Continentals from Perry Miniatures. I have to say that these were a real joy to assemble and I thoroughly enjoyed the couple of hours I spent working on them. The only real trouble I ran into was assembling the command group and I'm not really happy with that part of the effort. I'm also not happy with riflemen in hunting frocks. Quite frankly they just look fat, the hunting frock was just sculpted over a miniature that was already sculpted with a full uniform underneath and my understanding is this is definitely not how they were worn or used. I think Perry and Fife and Drum will end up being the bulk of my AWI forces in the end.

Here's a quick look at the assembly process:

A sprue of five American Continentals. Three types of hats as well as the ability to put the musket on the right or left shoulder. There are also backpacks and bedrolls. I have plenty of parts left over to cut from the sprue that might well be useful on other projects.

I elected to build the box just one sprue at a time since each one is self contained. This first bunch is left shoulder arms. There is a some variety on the left arms so making each figure unit is not an issue. Each of the five men on the sprue is in a slightly different pose.

And the right arms are attached. Right now they look like a bunch of little Ben Franklins!

And with hats! That was really the finishing touch. As I moved on to the other sprues I opted to glue the hat on first so I didn't have to shift it if the musket I selected didn't fit. I also elected to just leave off the bedrolls and backpacks at this point. I fiddled around with them but I just wasn't happy with the look.

All the troops are finished and the command group is being worked on.

The full 38 miniatures in the set including the four riflemen. I probably won't be using these, I'll see how I feel about them later on.