Extending the greatcoat on the Russian conversions

Alright here is the last step in the Russian in greatcoat conversion.

Mix up some 2 part putty and work it into a log rectangle and then wrap it around the bottom of the greatcoat and use your wooden sculpting tool or something similar to put it in place. Have a small cup of water to wet your sculpting tool and help shape the putty.  You,ll have to go under the sword case as you wrap it around.

Once you have the putty set in place take your sculpting tool and begin to shape the putty. A bit of water or even spit in a pinch will help shape the putty. A nice rounded and smooth wooded tool will get nice crease detail. You can even use the back of an old paint brush or carve and sand your own tool. Its good to have a couple of different tools and a carved one also that will reach under the coat to pull it back out because as you shape the putty it will push in and have to be pulled back out.
You can do the putty in 2 stages if your having a hard time getting the shape and detail you want. In the first stage just get a base for second stage of putty to build up on. Make sure you get the creases and folds in the cloth to match up with the ones sculpted into the figure. the tool shown does a good job of this.

Repeated passes of the tool with water will smooth the surface of the putty a second wooded tool held under the coat will keep it from pushing in or you can smooth a bit then reach under the coat and pull it back out.
Working time with the putty will vary with different types of putty, tempature or how much of part A to B that you mix. Some putties you can change the KICK time by adding more or less hardner in the mix to make it set faster or slower.

Once that first layer has set you can add a second more detailed final layer of putty.
I used milliput for the second layer so you can see the second layer better and its a softer putty and it works well for this type of stuff. It gets really fine detail when used with water.
A combo of the wooden tool and your fingers and thumb will finish off the second layer.

Well that,ll finish of the Russian conversion unless you want to go more accurate to a real Russian uniform and add the strap across the chest and the shoulder straps.
I just went for the quicker easier conversion. I might do a few more with more detail added and I did the cross straps on the 2 figures I converted from Conte figures.
You can do as you wish on your own and even skip the coat extension all together if you wish.
Russians also had shorter greatcoats also.
There were many uniform variations in the field and they wore whatever they could get at times.
Some plates show brown and tan coats others show grey ones. Here is a uniform plate with both the short brown coat on one figure and the other with a grey coat wrapped around him.
Most show the long brown and tan coats though.

Once you get the hang of working with the putty you can strip just about any figure down and sculpt your own greatcoat around them and add parts and pieces from other figures And make just about any type of greatcoated figures you have the heads and parts for. I plan on doing some Baravarian and Wurttemberg greatcoat figures with Hat parts(backpacks/heads) also just remember to cut the greatcoats from the top of the packs or use ones without the coats on the packs!
Here are a couple of pics of my work in progress for the Russians. I,m using mostly stripped down Conte figures here.WWII G.i.s, Mexicans and civil war figures. And Russian parts From Hat and BlackCat.

This is a figure made from a Conte WWII G.I.running figure with a putty coat and straps made from plastic strips shown in the tools post.

The wounded figure was made from a stripped down Conte Mexican with Putty coat and styrene straps.
Here are some others figures still in various stages I,m working on.
Notice how all the detail has been removed from the figures and some real ruff early stage putty has been started on a few.

I will try and get into more details of these types of conversions in future posts and maybe do a step by step post of one of these guys also???  Click on the photos to enlarge them. Till next time!
FISH! <")))><