Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Marche!

I don't remember anything like this in the book,
but I admit it's been a long time since I've read it.

Dogsleds have held a fascination for me ever since reading Call of the Wild and White Fang way back in high school.

1/72 sets that include dogsleds are made by Nikolai and BUM, but both are rather pricey and not particularly easy to find.

However, I recently ordered some huskys produced by Mick Yarrow Miniatures as part of his 15mm Warriors of the Late Ice Age line (Inuit 11), and they look to be perfectly sized for 1/72 huskys (and at £2.20 for 8 dogs, the price is eminently reasonable).


The huskys come in two poses, and can probably also double for a number of other types of sled dogs if you are not too picky.

I used some Siberian Husky color profiles created by Sedillo-Kennels on DeviantArt as painting guides.


M.Y. Miniatures also has some dogsled team sets - Sledge and 3 team with cannon balls (Inuit 102), and Sledge and 3 team with light cannon (Inuit 103), which seem perfectly fine as smaller Inuit sleds.


Obviously we have moved beyond the stone age with these sets, and the sleds are appropriately built to more modern standards out of wood instead of whalebone and antlers.

I'm trying to figure out how to do the basing on these right now. I'd like to have the dogs and sleds separable from the tug lines so that they can be used in a number of different hitch patterns.

A nice explanation of the various hitch styles and their strengths and weaknesses can be found at the Old School Alaskan blog.

Traditional fan hitch

Single file hitch

Gangline hitch - dual hitch lead dogs

Gangline hitch - single lead dog


2 comments:

Lobo said...

Cool post, as usual! love the White Fang theme!!

EY said...

Thanks for reading Lobo. Your comments are always welcome!