"Lance pennons;wrong all these years?" Topic

I have attached pennons to many a French cavalryman's lance. I have contentedly wrapped those lovely GMB swallow tails around the shaft just below the spear point, until I learnt from Outlaw Tor that this is incorrect!
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I went back over so many brilliant depictions of lancers in 28mm on this site and we have all been getting this wrong! Check Haythornthwaite's "Weapons and Equipment" and you will see the three studs are to hold eyelets on the pennon, so, in a sense, the seam goes only on one side of the lance shaft. Going back to Joineau and every Osprey picture if you look close enough…….the correct pattern is as I have tried to show below. Outlaw Tor, having broken this news, then asks the rhetorical question "Does it really matter?" Maybe I need to get out more, but my answer is "Oh yes"…………..

If you are using the thick Perry lance the answer is easy. Cut the pennon, thin the seam and attach as below. What do I do with my scale ones though?

Hmmm, nice to know but probably too much work for me. But as I say, nice to know what "corect" is.

Aha! Definitely nice to know! My OCD tendencies thank you. :)

Best,
Bob

Let me stress, in about 5 years of modelling 28mm figures, many lancers, I have never spotted this. I cannot find any lancers on this site showing them as they should, despite the most amazing painting skills.

We can blame or praise Outlaw Tor, depending on how much this news distresses you.

Look at Rousselot plate Nr. 1 – there you clearly can see how the French did it – three buttons at the side of the lance – onto these the pennon was buttoned to.

I admit – I was unaware of this as well – I alway call it the betrayed eye, one is just not looking close enough – and one lost the ability to observe – very often, so thanks for the eye opener

outlaw tor is indeed correct, however from a practical point of view, I find the wrap around pennons far more convenient on small miniatures. I used to glue some pennons on one side of the lance but they got damaged quite easily, after all they are wargames figures not pure collectables and lances are already a vulnerable part of the figure anyway.

Too late for me! I will live with the disaster…

Interestingly when I look back at my own post examining lance pennons, you can actually see in the museum photo that they are probably as you described, rather than how Front Rank and others model them:
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Interesting how the eye overlooks such details!

It was just an observation, not a call to action, heh. Many of us take the details of the era to the limits of what we can see and what we can depict in our creations. Some of the precision in depiction is really limited by ability or practicality or even just time involved.

Pennons are often printed single sided to be folded around the lance as good registration of two sided printing would be harder. deadhead's solution is a fairly simple solution and with a bit of super glue even as durable as those wrapped pennons that always seems to come unwrapped or glue free.

We often see the comment that they are your miniatures and you can do what you want but at the same time it probably doesn't hurt to know the details that you may or may not want to include in your work. This is where your pet peeve in your work can be listed…<G>, button counters beware of that rabbit hole. I have a few details that nag at me but I usually work around in interests of time or convenience or hold my tongue in the case of others work.

I think I'm going to have to fall on the side of the wrap-arounds. glued-to-one-side pennons don't seem to be durable enough for gaming…

I agree absoluty with Outlaw Tor

Good to know.

It seems as though the correct eyelet/stud method means that the lance pennons were easily removable. Does this also mean that the pennons were more often packed away to keep them clean and undamaged? Were they only taken out for formal occasions? Would it be more proper for our lancers not to have any pennons at all?

Looks better to have lance pennons, so I'm likely to have them.

Just like I'm highly tempted to have some Colours among my Northwest Frontier troops, even though I'm 20+ years too late for deploying with the colours.

It is always a good to learn something. I am not stressed by incorrect details on figures though.

For others I can see this would be irksome.

Bob

Would it not be easier to apply by 'wrap round' and paint the lance back on the spine- then three spots of brass paint for the studs?

When I did my 8 Vistula Lancer figures years ago, I did 4 with lances, and made the swallowtails our of brass! Liquid steel epoxied to brass rods. It did not take long for them to flip off!

But I understand that the regiment may have lost its colors and some/most pennons in their baggage, while fighting in Spain! No pennons for mine since!

GdeP

Hi All

I have just stumbled on this thread while thinking about how to model the lance pennons for my Victorian Colonial era Bengal Cavalry.

While considering this I stumbled on this auction lot:

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Since wrapping pennons around the miniature bamboo lances doesn't seem to be workable, I am going to attempt to emulate the example above.

More on my blog

Cheers
JJ

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But as John Ford would've quipped, "That's the way the lances should've been."

Or maybe that was Ridley Scott?