20mm (1/72) Vietnam Commission

A customer contacted us about a 1/72 scale (about 20mm sized) Vietnam commission. The commission would use figures made by both Italeri and Pegasus. He wanted both sides done at the same time to he could start gaming immediately.

The PAVN (North Vietnamese) were manufactured by Italeri. :

  Close up view of the PAVN:

Next up are the US Marines. These figures were manufactured by Pegasus:

Both kits were made from a softer plastic, with the Pegasus kits the softer of the two. I washed the sprues and then set about finding the right glue. I took a trip to the hardware store and picked up a few packs of glues made for softer plastics. Then I cut off a few pieces of sprue and tested the glues.The best that I found is the one pictured below:

This glue formed a nice solid bond. The packaging is easy to use with a fine dropper hole making it very easy to control the amount of glue placed at the bonding site.

We used our usual cheap Walmart flat black paint for a primer. I did a test spray first to make sure it would bond to the softer plastic and it worked like a charm. Next both sides received an airbrushed base coat is an appropriate color, then the brush painting began. Despite the horror stories one hears of the difficulties of working with soft plastics the job went pretty smoothly. The figures took paint well and I used a bit more of a washing technique on these than normal to pick out the details better. I'm quite pleased with the way they turned out.