Camels from Japan

Dated: February 5, 2000.

Here's another contribution from Mr. David Hennen of Japan.

The HaT-Airfix 7013 Bedouins set comes with 3 camels and 3 horses. The camels scale and detail do honor to any Beau Geste, Khartoum, Napoleonic, or W.W.I battle scene or war gamers table. And by combining a few sets, you can have a formidable desert caravan, camel corps, or cavalry.

The camels, however, have no real saddle or saddlehorns for the rider to stay atop the animal. A simple solution follows. Cut some small square pegs a little over 1/4 inch long by splitting them off the base from the foot Arabs. Then, using the "Tamiya" hand-twist drill, drill a hole a little less than perpendicular to the camel hump and a little above the top of the blanket line about 1/8 inch deep. Then push the peg into the hole. That's it! Only one peg (saddle horn) is necessary to hold any rider, however, I put a front and back horn to lend authenticity.

By adding the saddle horns, you can then use the Arab horse riders atop them too. In fact, you can use the French Foreign Legion officer from the HaT-Airfix 7012 set, or in fact, you can use any horse rider from any set to sit atop the camel. A couple other possibilities includes Napoleon's North African campaign and W.W.I using the HaT-Airfix British Cavalry from the Royal Horse Artillery set 7005. My dream, someday, is to come to Gordon's rescue at Khartoum.

I've got about thirty of the camels which I put together from the Fort Sahara sets several years ago. They make a pretty awesome display when you mount them with the horse arabs. I don't know why Airfix didn't put the saddle horns on the camels in the first place.

Regarding the bases, I use a little "no-name" brand pen-type soldering iron with a wooden handle I picked up at the local hobby shop (a regular soldering gun is way too big and bulky for me). I recall we used to use something similar as a leather branding iron for leather works as kids. I suppose it came with different tips but I've only got the one which looks like a bent arrow head. It has a very small tip. Airfix has mounds for the holes on many of thier bases which are too high, so I cut them down to half size. Then I mount the animal to the base and carefully push the hot tip up from the bottom creating a hot molten mix until the peg and the bottom of the hoof are butt-welded together with the base. This point is the moment of truth. If you continue any longer, the hoof will melt into the puddle. After cooling, I use a razor blade bent into a half moon for trimming the bottom of the base. Once you clean all the animals and bases, the process goes fairly quickly. I did sixty-two (62) A/F U.S. Cavalry horses in two evenings (not including cleaning and prep).

Many thanks to Mr. Hennen for his excellent contribution.

Editor's notes: I for one have wanted to build up a camel corps for years, this looks like an excellent way to start. The soldering of the camel to the base has demonstrated itself to be very strong. All 4 camels survived the trip across the Pacific without injury despite the fact that the box was crushed.

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