CONVERSIONS V - COLONEL GALBRAITH OF THE 66TH

Early this past Summer I wanted to find a figure who looked like Colonel James Galbraith, commanding officer of the 66th Regiment, does in the above memorial plaque, which was raised to his memory, in an Irish church, by his brothers and sisters -- down on one knee, with a colour in one hand and his sword in the other.

I searched for some time to find the right figures and finally settled on the two below, both from the Empress Miniatures Anglo-Zulu War range...

(1) ...a kneeling British infantryman:

(2) ...and Colonel Anthony Durnford on foot:

Plus a beautiful STANDARD from Rick O'Brien, the FLAG DUDE, all shown below:

First up was cutting the rifle out of the infantryman's hands...

Next I used an X-acto blade to slice the sword-hand off the Durnford figure and the empty right hand off the infantryman, making room to attach Durnford's sword-hand...

Since I didn't have a narrow enough drill-bit or screwdriver blade to safely drill a hole all the way through the infantryman's left hand, I decided to use 2 separate pieces of flagpole -- one between the bottom of his hand and his base, and another from the top of his hand, holding the flag.

I used a push-pin to make a guide-hole in the underside of the infantryman's clenched left fist, then widened the hole with a jeweler's screwdriver, in preparation for inserting the small length of flagpole.

Now came the VERY TRICKY part! I struggled for a LONG TIME -- close to a half-hour -- trying to insert the small length of pole into the hole in the underside of the hand -- without success -- until the solution finally hit me: DRILL AN ACCESS HOLE THROUGH THE BOTTOM OF THE BASE, which would enable me to simply slide the pole straight through and up into the hole in the bottom of the left hand, like so:

It was all downhill from there! Superglue the sword-hand onto the infantryman's wrist...

...then remove the HOLSTER from Colonel Durnford and super-glue it onto the infantryman's -- or should I say, Colonel Galbraith's -- belt:

With the surgery completed, Colonel Galbraith and the Regimental Colour of the 66th (courtesy of the Flag Dude and now flying on a cut-down pole, to make up for having to be glued into the top of his hand!) were shipped off to Igor (of Igwargminis) for a fine paint-job: