Wargames Factory Persian Infantry Rifleman

I have started working on my planned conversion of a Wargames Factory Persian Infanty soldier to a Martian Rifleman.

 I picked up a bunch of the Wargames Factory Zulu rifle arms and picked the musket arm to start with. I trimmed down the shoulder and glued it onto the torso.I had to trim down the neck on the torso so that i could get the head looking where the rifle is pointing.

 My idea to convert the Persian Infantry to a rifle man originated from looking at the pictures of the Persian sprue online. I saw the arm with an open hand that I could use as the forward arm holding the rifle. Once I had the sprues in hand, I found the arm that was the center of the conversion wasn't full sized. As short as the arm is I am not exactly sure what it is supposed to be used for. I guess it is supposed to be holding a shield close to the body where you can't see how short the arm is. So a bit of  brass wire to the rescue. I trimmed down the back of the stubby arm and them drilled a hole in it. I drilled a hole in the torso and cut a short piece of wire. After some trial and error I trimmed the wire down to the correct length to hold the rifle and glued them in place.

 I let the glue set up and them came back with a roll of green stuff to reinforce to arm. I let the first roll cure and then came back and covered the cut down Zulu arm to make a sleeve. I also used a piece of green stuff to fill the gap around the neck and blend it into the torso.

 Then I went back and finished the forward arm. It took me a couple session to get the arm positioned right and smoothed down.

The next nine ready to be started.

My original plan was to make sixty riflemen so I could field six twenty man martian war bands armed with ten melee troops and ten riflemen. I have enough bits to make twenty of these musket conversions and twenty breech loader conversions. The good thing is that the bits order also came with a bunch of loose rifles and I think I will glue them to the backs of twenty models and sculpt rifle slings. They might not be the snazziest riflemen but for less than a quarter a piece and a bit of effort they will do for me.

ColKG