The Latest Labour of Love - a heads up

You could buy your Hinton Hunt figures with painting instructions researched and produced by Marcus Hinton. These were duplicated sheets of paper (remember Gestetner machines, anybody). Where they survive they can be hard to read, as they are in effect poor carbon copies, around 50years old. I have some originals, and others which people have scanned and sent me, which are also hard to read. You can find many of them posted on this blog here. I have since learned a little more about effective scanning, for example using an black background to prevent show through from the other side, and the use of high pass sharpen in photoshop to improve the images.Also it is possible that I now have a better scanner then when I made these posts a few years ago.

I therefore decided I would transcribe all the sets I have, so that they were clearly legible, and could be made available through this blog to those who would like them.

I don't have a complete set but I do have an index of those in my possession, so if anyone has others please contact me via a comment and I will be glad to add them to the list.

Marcus Hinton was not 100% consistent in his spelling, layout and punctuation, and mostly I have followed his text for each painting instruction, only altering them where this is necessary for them to make sense - they are as near as possible verbatim versions of the originals.The collection and transcription has taken a considerable amount of effort so I am afraid you'll just have to take or leave them, being made available on my terms.

I need to work out how best to make these available, this will be in pdf files as I don't want people to be altering or amending them and different versions starting to float around.

I therefore need next to look into ways of making these files downloadable, using Dropbox or other means, or other wise sending them out on request by email.. I am also thinking that I may keep them in separate documents - AN -Austrian, BN - British, DB - The Netherlands,  FN - French, HN - Hessen Darmstadt, PN - Prussian, RN - Russian, and WTN - Wurttemberg - rather than in a single but unwieldy document. I hope to do this in the next couple of days.

As anyone who has followed the link to Marcus Hinton's scrapbook from Stryker's Hinton Hunt Vintage Wargaming Figures blog Marcus Hinton took his research seriously and the painting instructions are useful to collectors and gamers today as they show how he intended his figures to be finished. Hopefully a modern transcription will make them more accessible, usable and hence useful today.

I'll make an announcement here when the transcript(s) is/are available - this will be in a week or ten days. Meanwhile of course the comments system is available if anyone has any suggestions or wants to register their interest.