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.

Hinton Hunt Painting Instructions: and 1001 posts

Today I have mostly been adding around 60 sets of original Hinton Hunt painting instructions to the blog. The catalogue described these a "for the collector who likes to paint his own figures" and were typescript single sheets of paper. A recent joint purchase of a big Hinton Hunt collection included a large number of these - thanks to John C for scanning these. This is the kind of ephemera which can easily disappear so I am very happy to be able to make them generally available through the blog.

After a little thought I have decided the best thing to do was to add them to individual figure posts. There are now (I think) 139 posts including these instructions - some covered four or five different figures - eg all the foot artillery poses, or 1812 fusiliers.

Searching using the "painting instructions" label will show you which posts now include these. However, I also thought it might be useful to have a list of which figures are covered so I have produced one and attached it below. It goes without saying that if anyone has copies of any further sets of these which are not represented here, I would be very glad to receive them or scans of them for inclusion here.

Although the painting instructions date back to the 1960s Marcus Hinton was a thorough uniform researcher, not least because for his 54mm collectors figures. This is also apparent from his scrapbook. The painting noted for Napoleon, his marshals and generals are particularly interesting.

While going through this exercise I also realised I needed to add a post for FN 304, French Imperial Guard Red Lancer. What I failed to realise was that this made post 1000. So I have missed the millennium, but only just.

Stock Take

This blog now has postings for all Hinton Hunt figures, with the exception of the very small Restoration range, and the Ancient ranges, of which I have few examples.

I have also just been through the blog to make sure all figures without pictures have been tagged with the "missing picture" label. This means you can now use this label to identify thoose figures for which I have no pictures - if you can then send me photos (or even examples of these figures!) that would help make the coverage of the blog more complete.

I also intend to continue to add pictures of painted units as I complete them - these should include Napoleonics and Medievals.

However, the cataloguing function of the blog is now as near as complete as I can get it, barring further assistance with missing pictures as above. I remain surprised and pleased how well blogger has worked to do something for which it is not designed - providing a catalogue.