US Vietnam Headswaps in 10mm

Pendraken don’t do US Infantry carrying an M60.   They just do them firing the M60 from a tripod, which as far as I can see was certainly not  the usual method of deployment.  Update 7th August, 2010: they do one now.  I did a similar  conversion to those described below in which I pinned the head onto the body and Pendraken have put it into production – it’s available in their catalogue as V8, infantryman, standing, helmet, M60

But they do do a Vietnam  Australian carrying the M60 (AV11) and I’ve managed to use heads from one of their US infantry figures (V3 Rifleman walking) to make what I think are the quite acceptable models pictured above.

It’s a real fiddle, my fingers are too big to hold a cut off 10mm head properly and I’ve lost count of the number that have they flown off into the distance when I tried to pick them up with tweezers.  I wish Pendraken would get their act together and do it properly.

I put my success in this down to advice  from Dom Skelton on the ToofatLardies Yahoo Group

“what I do is snip both head and body fairly flush (ie. effectively removing the neck from both donor parts) and then put a very small indeed blob of blue tack onto the body, before dabbing superglue over it – the blue tack holds the head in place while the superglue’s setting, making life much easier, and is good and solid once the glue sets.”

All I can say is that the blob of blue tac has to be very small indeed.   Dom does this with his 6mm figures, I think I’ll give that a miss.