Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Half Measures

The weather finally turned gray and dreary, so I went out to the local Salvation Army Store and bought several cuts of vintage Hawaiian fabric from the 1970s. About 15 yards total?

They are colorful and vibrant and full of possibilities, but at the moment I have no idea what I am going to do with any of it, other than reserving at least one piece of it as a future live show tablecover.

(And if they ever have a Hawaiian or South Seas-inspired BreyerFest, I am all set!)

It was also a bit of a consolation prize, since I missed some fabulous high-end Mid-Century Modern furniture in the same store literally by minutes. There’s actually quite a bit to be found in the Metro Detroit area, but this was (a) an entire matched suite and (b) at Salvation Army prices.

Sigh. Anyway. Back to horse stuff.

Here’s another item from the collection I recently purchased that included that fabulous Buckskin Indian Pony: a partially Chalky #62 Saddlebred Weanling!

It’s difficult to capture in the photograph, but in person you can definitely see that the plastic is only Chalky in spots, with no rhyme or reason for the location of said spots. Her blaze, for instance, is half-Chalky, half-not!

Because high-quality translucent white Cellulose Acetate was in short supply in the early- to mid-1970s, it wouldn’t surprise me if Breyer initially tried to salvage some of their culls contaminated with bits of colored regrind with this technique. 

Tried, and then quickly abandoned, because I could imagine how much of a pain in the butt that would be for painters to do these random touch-ups. It’s much easier to just give them all a thick, solid basecoat – whether it was molded out of solid green plastic, or just flecked with regrind – and call it a day. 

When I bought this collection, I didn’t think of it as anything more than a really nice lot of models in really nice condition, and I was happy with that. But the more I look into it, the more I wonder.  

One thing I do know for certain is that I am definitely not going to go down the rabbit hole of Saddlebred Weanling variations. Different socks, different blazes, different shades of Chestnut – been there, done that! I’ll stick to Traditional Man o’ Wars and #48 Black Morgans, thanks.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I noticed some of the chalkie Hwins sold at Tractor Supply a couple years ago were chalky only in places, and that made me wonder if they were trying to cover up flaws in the plastic or perhaps a painting mistake. For example, I have one somewhere that only had a chalky face but not the rest of the model. That made her face very expressive.

Also, I had a 50th Anniversary Saddlebred in palomino that had been repainted at the factory. I picked him out to customize because the masking looked sloppy. Once I started wiping him down with acetone to smooth the seams it was clear that he had been factory painted over (in the same palomino color). So he must have gotten messed up and they painted over him which means they masked the mane/tail twice, hence the sloppy masking! But I had no idea that's what was going on with him until I stripped some of the paint with acetone.

It's really kind of nice they go through such effort to salvage some of these models.

GWR said...

I see a lot of current RRs that are basecoated, but with the white markings masked off. My chestnut TB foal from the BoB Foals set is like this, I saw a Classic (I refuse to call them "Freedom Series"!) Palomino Morgan at the store that was like this as well.

Denise said...

That Saddlebred Weanling is a super nice example and with being an oddity makes him even more special! Would love to see pics of the rest of the group he came out of!

TxMiniatureHorse said...

I have one of those cool half and half weanlings. Her head is chalky, her legs are not.

And I DID go down that rabbit hole- I have 15 or so SBWs in chestnut: different blazes, four socks, two socks, one sock, hind sock on the wrong leg...

PixelPerfectStables said...

The blaze on this gal is also wider than most of the ones in this blaze pattern. So cool! My favorite mold. I definitely have gone down the rabbit hole of variations and want to get more!