"Draft Horse Tack, Reins Etc," Topic

I would like to add (at least some) "tack" to my draft horses (and maybe oxen too) but can't seem to find any clear pictures and/or descriptions. I'm tired of looking at my teams of horses walking along in perfect sync walking in front of a seemingly self-propelled limber, carriage, ambulance, wagon, etc. Not to mention the drivers/riders who are at the mercy of some unseen power that directs where the guns, supplies, etc. are to go. It might be nice to provide them with reins
Do any of you add the appropriate tack to your models? Xan anyone direct me to clear pictures or diagrams that would help in my quest?

Best sources of info that I have (Napoleonic only);

British; CE Franklin's British Napoleonic Field Artillery (encyclopaedic level of detail)

French; The various Histoire and Collections books esp covering Imperial Guard and recently Artillery

Your draft animals will come with harness moulded on. Just remember the wheel horses, the pair nearest the vehicle, have a more complex set of straps around their hind quarters to allow reversing/braking. For the same reason each has a chain from the front of the centre pole to the lowest point of their halter. The rest is just attaching ropes to swingle trees, which are usually moulded onto the vehicle's pole (see below). I use picture hanging wire in 28mm and beading wire in 15/18mm. First four horses pull the pole basically. Any more after that pull the horse behind them….no more woodwork. Drivers have reins for their own horse and obviously draped across their driven horses back.

The very old Almark book by Michael Head nicely showed the French set up.

If you do want to follow the link below you will see close ups in 18 and 28mm from my recent Britschka and my first ever crude Napoleonic Berline (actually it is a Berline Coupe).
imageshack.com/a/n7JM/1

What scale and what nations are you planning? How detailed do you want? Personally, I think that if you just have the drag ropes alone, that will transform your models

Oxen don't usually have a harness. They have a yoke which is hooked up to tongue of a cart or a plough.

Gibbon's "The Artillerists Manual" also includes illustration of harness. It's available as a download online.

I agree Deadhead; The Histoire & Collections trilogy on Napoleonic French Artillery offer up some very good illustrations on harness and tack.

The cross posting suggests a variety of periods needed. So far only Napoleonic and only British and French alas. Prussian swingle tree arrangement different again of course….

Again tell us more about period and nation and I am sure we can give more info………..as long as late 1790s to 1815 anyway!

Meant to mention making reins. If you avoid both screw top bottles and the corked ones that use plastic "foil" covers, instead treat yourself to a decent bottle of wine and use the thicker aluminium foil…one side may well be black already too!

Dead, I cross posted to attempt to get input from a wider group of potential responders. AWI, SYW and War of 1812 (Napoleonics of a sort) Thanks for taking all that time to create the link. Did you just take the pics of your figs or did you have them already/ I ask because if new, I'm wondering if you could shoot some side views, especially the tongue connections.
Thanks Everyone

Karl (aka Carl)

Would love to help but Googling tongue connections/harness got me into some very strange sites. The least dodgy involved bondage…the rest…..even as an ENT surgeon it is amazing what the tongue can achieve, but I have led a sheltered life.

Cannot find out what "tongue connections" are in harness terms. Give us a clue and scale you are working….

I did find this for masses of images (respectable ones!)

link

Most of my 1:72 plastic artillery has fine wire as draught horse traces, as can be seen on my website:

link

You need to scroll down the page a bit before the pictures start.

My Napoleonic Artillery and logistic vehicles have the draught horses mounted in pairs, so the teams can be increased or decreased as necessary. The wheel horses (those nearest the limber) are mounted on to the same stand as the limber. For the others, the traces stop where they would join to the pair of horses behind them. It creates a reasonable impression from a couple of feet away.

Some of my more recent train horses are Hat, with plastic traces, but following the same principles.

I do have some oxen on my Medieval page, at the bottom of both the English and French sections.

link

Rod

Rod, I do not recall my Airfix figures looking anything like that. I did try the odd conversion eg carabiniers, but your mamelukes from a British Infantry Officer, a cantiniere from a squaw, the fact that you have mounted gunners for your HA (how few of us can do that)……amazing.

Oh and the extending horse train is a great idea.

If you follow his link, that is of course to the Artillery and support units……go to the top for infantry and cavalry and see the imagination that has gone into the units shown. Loyal Lusitanians…that takes me back……EEEEH Nostalgia, it is not what it used to be……

Dead, mainly 28mm…possibly 15's too.

Pure chance I came across this today. It nicely illustrates the French Napoleonic system.

A pole for the two wheel horses, but, if they were pulling, it would be via the ropes attached to the two swingle trees, themselves attached to a single cross bar behind them. If there were another pair of horses this pole would give attachment to a second cross bar and a pair of swingle trees. These were all shown above in the links.

What I like about this picture is that it shows how the horses could brake or at least slow the carriage. They are pulling back on the chains attached to the pole. That is why wheel horses have the much more complex strapping around their rear end, that is the bit that is taking the strain, not their collar!

Oh my God!

There's another person who's suffering from the same fixation as I!

I am currently doing the exactly the same thing only more or less from scratch. I recently made two wagon trains of wagons for my 18th Century Imagi-Nation armies. I am now working on modeling the horses. I need about 80 horses and I didn't want to spend $16 USD each for them from one maker which made nice models so I bought from an AC Moore store 80 horses in those little square boxed sets from "Toob." They are just about the right size for 30mm and I'm sculpting horse collars, the traces, leaders and so forth from very thin sheet lead, brass and little brass rings I formed by bending jewelry wire. Now its on to slowly mounting these with epoxy and solder and a little body putty onto the horses. I'm doing them all at once to make sure they look more or less identical.

The pictue of the wagon above put out by deadhead is excellent. I downloaded a picture of several horses in draught harness from the net as my model.

I'm about a third of the way in and constantly muttering to myself "Whose stupid idea was this anyway…" No one would notice if I just stuck the TOOB horses on the stand…. No… I would.

Tell me about it. For my first ever scratchbuilt coach I felt I had to get the harness right, so I got Perry ACW horseholder foursome etc and added all the harness (aluminium foil), blinkers and ropes you see below. Even the foxtails hanging from the bridle, although not easily seen on this shot.

I have learnt better now. Artillery horses do fine….not the French ones though. The collar is too distinctive;

Dear deadhead

I am still working on the coach and coach horses for one of my armies. It's a big berline and has completely modeled scratch built interior, with working doors and drawers that open in the underseats. The take off roof has a rack with the bolster that goes between the seats to make a bed.

Now I'm working on the springs and metalwork for the undercarriage.

Jeez, I left model railroading because I didn't want to do all this detail.

Oh, yeah.. blinkers… I forgot about them. Remembered the little sockets in the head to hold the real feather plumes. Thanks

We simply must see the end result. I would love to see work of this quality. I am still a novice and rely on adapting what is commercially available once I get beyond the carriage and chassis itself.

It is only thanks to model rail road building that we have the fine brass strips and shapes to do this kind of thing!

Dear Deadgead

That's true! Along with styrene and polyetheline sheeting and strips in minute scale, scribed work and textured work, pipes and rods and all the rest that are available. Fine architectural details, window frames, moldings, doorways and other work.

Deadhead, The pic you "…Pure chance came across…", where are they from? The "pole" pic explained a lot. I could see how the trail connections should work, but the pole was mystery…that is until now!
Deadhead, Ottoathome and Rod MacArthur, I bow to your abilities and, maybe more importantly, you attention (obsession, in the best terms)to detail and accuracy. Tutorials from any/all of you would be appreciated and enjoyed by countless builders and wargamers!
Thanks to you three and all the other contributors to my inquiry.
Carl

Dear Karl von Hessen

I thank you for your kind words.

As for tutorials, I can't speak for Deadhead and Rod MacArthur but in the case of fine modelling like this, most of what I do is cut-fit and trial and error. I once wrote a series of articles on making hexagonal based terrain or the Courier back in the 80's but that is gross heavy work more like model railroad scenery.

For me as I said much of it is trial and error and "as you go along." The search for materials to work with is the big ting, finding shapes and sizes small enough to be even roughly in scale to the minis we work with. The other is the right glues to use (holding together isn't the problem here but staining and lumping is. Much can be made from cardboard, paper, and aluminum foil. For me a large roll of sheet lead in very thin strips I acquired 30 years ago (and still not half consumed) makes a very forgiving medium. Model Railroad shops, Michaels Art Store and A.C. Moore are also places to look. Always troll the jewelry sections. These are often excellent places for fine shapes and small details.

If I have anything to contribute to this sort of tutorial it is this. You cannot possibly model things in the fine scale needed. If you look carefully at most minis there are always some out-of-scale items. The work therefore has to be like stage props and scenery. It has to set the scene and convey the idea of what it is representing, not the absolute verity. Thus a house in our games represents a village, a few trees a woods, and the trees don't have to e be the exactly detailed model railroaders do. For example, in the projects at hand, the leads, reins, tracers, bits and bridles we don't have to model EVERY ring and every strap, only enough to get the mind to see them and focus on them. Other details as well are merely suggestive. For example make sure to put stuff IN the wagons, not have them just riding around empty. I used a whole pile of model railroad crates and barrels and bags from Ho an O scale, simply stained them and put them in the back. I found some round tapered pugs for filling in screw countersinks in Home Depot which when given a few \bits of detail, like labels printed on my printer that said "Land O' Lakes Cheese" became large boxes with cheese wheels in them. The labels divert the eye and add to the verisimilitude.

I use the same thing in my units. I am a so-so painter but a good modeler. I made the colors for my regiments on a printer with corel draw which provides very smooth lines even in tiny detail unlike normal "paint" programs, no saw tooth. So I create wonderfully ornate flags and colors for my regiments. I put these on the troops and the eyes are diverted to that and people don't see the not so top of the line painting.

The other challenge is that the search for materials becomes even MORE critical when you remember you are not creating a diorama that is going to sit on the shelf, but a piece to be actually USED in a game, which means it will have to stand up to rough handling, including being hauled around to conventions and so forth. You remember the model railroad trees I told you about above? They are beautiful creations by those craftsmen in our sister hobby, and they look so realistic, but if you ever touched them they would dissolve into powder and a pile of broken pieces. They are meant to be seen and not touched. This is not the case with our model railroad stuff. Thus, the "rail fences" on my terrain are made of copper wire stripped out from #12 BX or electrical cable, first tied together on the upringt posts and then the tied joint is swabbed over with epoxy glue. It's a yucky nasty mess to work with, especially when you have to push the wire into position, but it forms a joint that is robust and solid. In other things careful attention might have to be made to the stand. In the "berline" coach for example, It is being modeled on a small hexagonal stand 6" across on the parallels. As the coach and team will be quite fragile in one corner of the hexagon I am modelling a large spreading tree made from Sculpy papier mache around a solid 1/4" thick steel mandrel driven into the base and joining a plate underneath. The sole purpose of the tree will be as a strut to prevent anything falling on it or a person smashing the coach by an incautious move of the hand.

But again, overall the key is the search for materials and the need for strength in the final pieces. Beyond that it's simply cut and try, and frankly, you're going to have a lot of failures before you find the method that works.

One point to remember in this is do not restrict yourself at all to hobby store or game store offerings.You have to look at everything with the modellers eye and even common everyday items filched from the garbage can be of use.

For example, want to replace broken swords? Next time you toss out that plastic milk bottle, don't. Get out a scissor and cut long thin, fine strips (it will take a little work to get down the method, and you'll make a lot of mistakes, but what the heck, it's garbage, what do you care. The strips when you get them small enough make excellent swords. They are made of polyethelene plastic which is remarkably flexible and fatigue resistant. It takes paint well and can be repainted many times if it flecks off (I use testors silver paint so it never really does). You have to drill through the hand to make a hole for the blade to plug into but you can glue in a long strip and cut to length. It remains fairly rigid and yet if you incautiously brush against it, no harm done. Now,I've come to the point of where the first step in making a new cavalry unit is I snip off the sabres of a unit charging, and drill and epoxy in these polyehelene swords from the get go.

In another example for some "loads" for the wagons I used simple toothpicks wrapped around with a little aluminum foil and glued together as tents, wrapped up with sewing thread. Remember the key is to SUGGEST to the viewers eye what it is, and his own mind will fill in the details.

I should have given the link for the image above, but frankly had to search high and low. Bingo. French site, see entry for 26th October 2010.

link

Ottoathome's response……….. Brilliant. I am always looking for odd shapes in toy shops, souvenir stores and especially craft markets eg beads, sewing materials, card making and cutting, paper punches in decorative styles (eg tiny leaves punched out of brown wrapping paper) etc

Dear Deadhead

Thanks. There's a humorous side to this. One day in A.C. Moore my wife was getting some yarn for her knitting and she was walking down an aisle and I was standing here intently looking at something on the shelf. She came up to me and saw my intense gaze. I was looking at a large "doll case" sitting on the shelf which was made of wood, nicely varnished and quite handsome. It was about 10" by 10" by 20" and inside it had two small drawers, and a "hanging rod" above it for the dolls outfits. the other was open to receive the doll.

She looks at me and says "WHAT!!!???" as if to ask "What are you going to use THAT for?"

I said to her. Oh,I can use this to carry all the small odds and ends that I need to a convention and not have them all over the place. See, it has these two neat drawers, and I can take out this little crosspiece and make a magazine rack in matching wood to hold the rules, and over here I can make a series of small boxes to contain dice, and markers, and the campaign game, and the two draweers will serve for event cards and pencils and some note pad, and tape measures, and I can put the range sticks which I made sectional into here and…..

She looks at me and says "Is there NOTHING you won't scruple to pervert to use on your hobby!!!??? "

I looked at her and said "Ummm no…"

She then came out with her standard line.

"If only you could use your powers for good."

Ottoathome,

I agree with you completely about creating simplfied detail, which creates an impression of the whole, particularly at the 1:72 scale which I work at.

I like your tip about plastic milk bottles for swords. I had not thought of that.

Rod

"If only you could use your powers for good."

I say that to my dice after every def….er, game.

Ottoathome's contribution has been great here.

But see more of his philosophic thinking on the Lounge;

TMP link

The Wisdom of Solomon truly

I agree whole heartedly. Looking over those detailed pictures and diagrams, there's no way a modeler below the scale of those Breyer (SP?) equine models would be impossible (except for a guy I read about (might have been one of Tango's links) who sculpted and painted figs on the head of a pin or INSIDE the eye of a needle…insane (said he learned to slow his breathing and pulse so as to eliminate shaking. I just want to HINT at the connection between horse and wagons, limbers, etc. I've seen some painters remove the cast reins and replace them with metal strips, plastic etc. to suggest the man is actually directing/controlling his mount.
OTTO!!!! When you mentioned "…hexes" in "…the Courier…" rockets when off in my cranium. I read those articles, like on making lift-off canopies to actually place figs IN the woods and simultaneously hiding them. I got a lot of tips from your articles. I still cannot cut a perfect hex to save my soul. No matter how carefully I plot them out and meticulously cut them out (foamcore board or cardboard), they never fit together without leaving gaps. Even the GHQ Terrain Maker hexes don't fit as good as they should. Having someone cu them with a laser is crazy expensive. I met you at an HMGS con in Gettysburg. I didn't play but you were doing an ImagiNation battle.
Thanks again everyone for taking time to help me.

Carl

Dear Karl

I'll let you in on a secret of cutting perfect hexes.

It doesn't matter. If you use the compass method like they taught you in high school, you do it a few times and you'll get it close enough so that it won't matter.

Yes those were my articles In the Courier. Glad the tips could help. I've submitted hem to other magazines, and I hope they will pick them up. I've reworked them with lots more tips. One of the new "inventions" is a small town hex that allows the same thing as the forest. You can hide troops inside. it's the same principle.

Glad to be of service.

Glad you enjoyed them.

The key to success in making this stuff is patience.

As I always say "You've got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your handsome prince."

Thanks Otto. Maybe you'd send me some of the newer articles or links once they are published.

Karl