C is for Carpentry - Field-carpentry

Bit of a box-ticker today, these have been in the queue since 2012, but they are common knowledge and already to be seen on the web, but with all the connectivity issues the last few days, and a big gap in the queue on the 24th (this is being written PM of the 21st), this si the best I can do at short notice!

When your soldiery aren't building heavy timber crosses . . . oh, no, that's Easter isn't it! The catapult from Atlantic, basically a copy of the old Elastolin siege engine, but more likely a copy of a copy . . . if you know what I mean, in addition to Ougan carrying the Elastolin model, various Italian and French companies seem to have knocked-out copies, and Atlantic just scaled one of them down for their ancient series; even the change from a counter-weight to a rubber-band looped over an eye came from one of the larger clones I think?

I am pretty sure this is an original - in every part - model, with both the heavy yellow rubber-band and the rope-coloured button-tread being 'as supplied' by Atlantic in the original box. The mechanism works well and will fling one of the little plastic rocks about four meters across a flat floor from the level position.

A shot of a couple of complete runners, as with everything Atlantic, they come in various colours, but tent to be kept to a range of realistic 'wood' browns, the same colours also seen throughout the Wild West range.

Another reason these images have been incarcerated in Picasa for so long is that I kept meaning to re-shoot these shots, it's not terribly clear (due to the angles I shot it at to hide extraneous background) but this siege tower (also following it's DNA back through larger piracies to the Hausser model) is moving against a shoe box with its lid on upside-down to play at being a fort!!

With all three of these machines the nightmare for collectors are the little wheel-plugs or wedges which don't stop-in, however hard you push them in, but - due to the nature of polyethylene's properties - tend to pop-out and go AWOL when you aren't looking, and I notice from the above I seem to have lost one after managing to husband 24 of them for the preceding 20 years . . . Doh!

The best kind of siege-engine is the one your enemy happily tows into his city for you, despite the oracle telling him NOT TOO! You deserve the government you get, and the Trojans got one that ended their existence, couldn't happen today . . . could it?

I have a bit of a soft-spot for Trojan Horses (which ought to be called 'Greek Horses'!) and have a half-a-plan to one day get an Action Man horse (not much different from this one in size - a tad bigger maybe?) and paint it in a timber-plank scheme, giving it a twig mane and tail, gold ears and those manic Greek-warship eyes!

The trapdoor is a bit of a 'fail' on this model, it sort-of clips on, but can only be on or off; it doesn't hinge. Being a more unique sculpt, it has less parts than the other two 'wooden-wonders'.