Outstanding post with highest quality research info! Beautifully painted!

All the best,
Dan

Jep, I'm ok but the figure neither...

66. Day, January 30, 2018

When I took the pictures for my Cossacks-sbs yesterday and saw them for the first time in the usual fourfold magnification on the screen - I was almost hit by the blow!

On the right arm a rupture has opened in the elbow!

A damned rupture!!!





The thing is barely visible with the naked eye, but it is there! It runs through the entire elbow up to the upper arm, but becomes thinner and thinner.

And I have absolutely no explanation why that happened!



The only reason - I think - can be this....:
Maybe the primer at this point was a bit too thick applied and was not completely dried when I painted the place with acrylics.
Then the paint is dried faster than the primer underneath. And when the primer dried, there was said crack on the surface!
Who of you has a more conclusive explanation for it: I would be delighted to read here!
Anyway, the rupture has to go!
Normally, sanding, puttying, sanding again, applying texture paste and painting would be the order of the day.
But I've thought of something else:
At this Cossack bust I experiment quite a lot with "Jo Sonja's texture paste" around - and now I've tested out whether you can make away a rupture like this away.
Result: You can - and that's pretty good!
I diluted the paste with water - and incorporated a trace of it with a toothpick and a damp brush into the crack...:




The whole thing was smoothed first with the damp brush - and then with the equally moist fingertip.

Supernatants were removed with a damp kitchen towel ...:




Now I let everything dry - and tomorrow will be painted.

Keep your fingers crossed!
Cheers

Thanks a lot!!!!

Cheers!

67. Day, January 31, 2018

Everything is good again!









I think, even who knows, that there was repaired and reworked, will not see it ...


Cheers

68 Day, February 1, 2018


A Short History Of A Long Rifle


With this rifle the Russian army marched into the Forst World war...:



The "Mosin-Nagant" M 1891...:




When the new arming of the army was decided in 1890, two possible models were available:

One by Russian designer Sergei Ivanovich Mossin ...



...and a second by the Belgian Henri-Léon Nagant…:




After extensive tests, it was decided in 1891 for the Mossin rifle, which was slightly modified after the model of Nagant.

Together with the now called "Mosin Nagant rifle" weapon, the new 7.62-mm edge cartridge with round-headed bullet was introduced...:





The gun's box magazine held five such cartridges ...:




The rifle was also known as the "three-line rifle" (Russian Трёхлинейная винтовка). The name refers to the caliber in the old Russian unit "line", where three "lines" correspond exactly to 7.62 mm.

The Mosin-Nagant M 1891 was a solid constructed and robust weapon whose handling and operation did not overwhelm the predominantly uneducated Russian peasant soldiers (nearly 50 percent of the enlisted men could not or only very rudimentary reading and writing!).

Modernized in the late 1920s, the rifle - then called Mosin-Nagant M 1891/30 - also accompanied the Soviet soldiers into the Second World War ...:




**to be continued next post**

Compared with the rifles of the other warring parties, the Mosin-Nagant with 1306 mm was relatively long!

For comparison

The German "Mauser" 98 rifle measured 1110 mm ...



...the British "Lee Enfield" 1133 mm...



...and the US Standard infantry rifle "Springfield" (M 1903) had 1055 mm…:



Only the French "Lebel" rifle corresponded in length of 1307 mm the Mosin-Nagant ...:





As a result of the long run, the Russian rifle had a pretty high "V0" (the speed at which the cartridge leaves the barrel!), which meant: It shot very well on medium and longer distances!

In the Second World War, the weapon (with riflescope of the type "PE" M 1933!) Therefore preferably used as a sniper rifle. Here the often successful "Sniper" A. V. Sidorov ...:




The disadvantage: When fighting in a small space (for example, in the trench) the Mosin-Nagant rifle impeded its wearer by its length!


The misfortune of the Russian soldier during the First World War meant that the military leadership of his country would further increase this disadvantage by a grotesquely wrong decision!

The Russian Minister of War (from March 1909 to June 1915) Vladimir Aleksandrovich Sukhomlinov ...



... was not only corrupt through and through, but completely incompetent!

Suchomlinov publicly boasted before the First World War that since the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 he had not read a single military textbook or journal, because, as he said, "the laws of war remain eternally the same!"

Suchomlinov considered the new weapon - the machine gun - "unsoldatic" and long opposed its introduction into the Russian army!

Therefore, the Tsar's troops went miserably into the war with MG's underserved.

Nor did the Russian Minister of War keep anything from trenches - and he refused to allow their construction to be practiced!

"Trenches only seduce the soldier into cowardice!" he often said.

Instead, the Russian military leadership continued to rely on the classic bayonet attack to decide a battle.

And for this reason were on the - already very long - Russian rifles already in the factory 48-centimeter long triangular steel bayonets ...


... firmly mounted!

So the Russian soldier in 1914 had to learn under fire not only what soldiers of other armies could long ago (create trenches, indeed!), but he was also equipped with a weapon that was almost completely useless in the narrow ditch!



The Russian soldier had instead to run with bayonet attacks against fortified positions, from which he was shot at with machine guns!





It may be objected that he could have removed the obstructive bayonet! In some places that happened - out of sheer despair!

But where to go? Unlike other armies, the Russian soldier did not have a bayonet sheath or something like that!

And especially! - the accuracy of his rifle was also reduced drastically - because the weapons were shot in at the factory (Tula or Izhevsk) with mounted bayonet!

When the disastrous War Minister was finally driven away and charged in 1915, it was already too late:

The best soldiers of the Russian army were already dead (or in captivity) and the troop's moral backbone was broken!


**to be continued next post**

The Russian military leadership was more innovative, however, when it came to the introduction of the Mosin-Nagant M 1891 in the cavalry:

From the infantry rifle was developed the so-called "Dragoons and Cossacks Rifle" (it was actually called that!).

This weapon - produced in the Izhevsk plant - was easier to handle because it was 1234 mm shorter than the infantry weapon.

Here are both models in comparison ...:






In addition, the strap on the cossack rifle was not attached by means of a metal eyelet, as in the infantry ...



... but by means of leather straps, which were guided through eyelets on the shaft and on the piston ...:





There was no clattering and nothing squeezed!


The difference between the rifle for Dragoons and the weapon for Cossacks:

Dragoons were sometimes used infantry, so they were equipped with a bayonet!

That was not fixed!


Since there was no bayonet sheath in the Russian army but also at the dragoons, the idea had been to fix the bayonet in a holder on the saber sheath ...:








The only ones who were spared the unfortunate bayonet were the Cossacks!




My friend Heinz copied this weapon wonderfully and casted it into Resin ...:






My next steps will be to paint it...

I simply did not manage to upload my usual daily report yesterday. So I'll deliver it today ...:


69. Day, February 2, 2018


Before it's going on with priming and painting of the rifle, I added a detail to the weapon today ...:

In photos you can see that the Mosin-Nagant had a protective metal plate at the bottom of the piston to protect the wood from chipping and other damages...:




This is also evidenced by the design drawings. On it is also the attachment of the protective plate with two long screws well visible ...:




And here's the whole thing in detail ...:






I just cut this protective plate out of thick gold foil and glued it to the piston ...:






Then it was primed ...:




The miniature rifle is mounted for painting on the work cork so that only a single point remains unprimed and -painted:

The place with the metal pin, with which the weapon is later attached to the back of our Cossack ...:




And now: Have a nice weekend! We'll see us again here next Monday.


Cheers

I marvel at the level of "modeler-useful" information you have posted! Thank you!

Dan

70. Day, February 5, 2018

Today I started painting the wooden parts of the rifle!

For this I have chosen this template, which has a nice reddish-brown coloring ...:




And I remembered that three years ago, when I made my first "steps" with oil paints, it was more by chance that I managed to get a nice reddish-brown color when I painted the back of the "Kobza", a Ukrainian lute, for my celebrating Cossacks. ...:






Since I keep my old sbs's, I also had the recipe of this color ready ...:




Today, I painted the front of the Mosin-Nagant.

Here I put more emphasis on a realistic light / shadow history than on the representation of wood grain, which is not so dominant in my original template.

The visible "hint" of grain is rather incidental, because I made all the brush strokes - including the veneer - exclusively in the longitudinal direction.

In the light / shadow guide, the subsequent attachment of the weapon on the back of my Cossack is already taken into account ...:






In the photos, I just see that I forgot to paint the upper wooden cover of the gun barrel!

But no problem - I'll go for it ...


Cheers

Absolutely fantastic SBS and a treasure of information.Well done for both.

Oda.

71. Day, February 6, 2018


Just finished the wooden parts on the other side of the rifle...:




For tomorrow I plan to paint the metal (with Acrylics) and the leather parts (with oils).


Cheers