Jul 22, 2013

Flea market finds


This is a wooden model ship and a metal cast Prussian SYW grenadier I found on the local flea market. The two cost about 2$. I intend to restore the ship, build it a full sail clipper. First I need to remove the ugly old finish without further damaging the wood. 


Close-up on the Grenadier. He is very happy to join my armies.


Nose of the ship. I removed the remnants of the masts and the old rigging. It was absolutely ugly and a mess. I tried to apply paint to a small area on the bottom of the ship, but the finish makes it look bad. Since the taking of the photo I took most of the stuff off with nail polish remover. 


These are the parts that once were the masts and ropes of the ship. They were held to place by small nails and some sort of rubber or plastic which was again disastrous. I cleaned the broken pegs out of the brass holes for the masts, added a rudder, planking for the main deck, changed one of the buildings on deck to the thing you reach the storage through. The ship is now ready to be painted.


This map-pack was 2.5$. Hungarian Army milsurp stuff. It had some blight(?) in it. I cleaned the whole lot and let it dry under the sunshine. It still has that storehouse smell but it will go. A nice trusty piece of equipment, real leather and has a plastic sheet inside where maps or other documents could be put. These things last decades before worn off.

12 comments:

  1. You definitely scored big time, Andrew.

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  2. You hit the jackpot here! That ship is nice and will be even nicer when you've done some work on it. Clearly, I'm going to all the wrong flea markets as all I ever find are broken lamps:)

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    1. 99% of the stuff is rubbish but I can get lucky sometimes.

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  3. cool finds! great ship, will be excellent to see it all made up. the map case is also interesting.

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    1. Hope it will look good when it's done, there's a lot of work necessary.

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  4. nice haul there :)

    I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with the ship

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  5. That is quite a find, excellent result Andrew.

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  6. Jó munkát a hajóhoz! :D
    Én Matchbox autókat szoktam vadászni a Car Boot Sale-n, a 20mm-es Királyi Honvéd Gyorshadtestemhez. Ott is 99% vacak, 1% használható az arány. :D

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    1. Köszi, munka az lesz vele. A legtöbbször nem is igen veszek semmit, a nagy bolhapiacokra (pecsa, ecseri) meg még nem néztem ki.

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  7. Great purchase Andras!

    Greetings
    Peter

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