I bought the Waterloo 1815 Mounted officer set which has excellent figures of general Picton, The Prince of Orange, and The Duke of Brunswick. The Brunswick figure was holding a civilian style cane which I thought was a bit odd. Perhaps he had such a thing but I looked in the books I have here, and looked online, and I couldn't find any reference to it.
What I did find was several references to, and pictures of, Brunswick smoking his pipe. Also Tim Clayton's recent book on Waterloo had a nice passage that described how, at Quatre Bras, The Duke steadied the nerves of his very green troops by riding his horse along the face of their square, calmly puffing on his pipe. I rather liked this immage of the man so I decided to make the conversion.
The civilian cane was seperated from the hand, and since the Waterloo1815 set has a good mounted figure of Picton, the cane was given to a Strelets Picton, minus the umbrella, to make a figure of the Duke of Richmond, as seen in another post.
I had a spare Italeri Blucher, so he provided the pipe. A tricky three way cut because the stem of the pipe came under the thumb and up the other side, but it came away cleanly. With the moustache shaved of so he looks a little less like Blucher, the italeri figure recieved a sabre from the HaT Prussian Uhlan set and will be a very useful generic Prussian officer of some sort.
The pipe was placed in Brunswick's hand and the long thin stem was made from a nylon brush bristle. Rather than boiling water to bend the stem, I tried to cut corners by heating it above a flame. It immediately started to melt. Fortunately the melted part was exactly the right size and shape to extend the thicker part of the pipe between the bowl and the stem.
serendipity is my most impressive modeling technique.
The stem was glued on and then bent into shape using hot water this time.
One other detail. The civilian cane had a tassel on it that I didn't like the look of, so I cut it off before giving the cane to Richmond. When reading about Brunswick I found that his sword was a gift from his favourite niece, Princess Charlotte, and had a lock of her hair fastened to the scabbard. The unwanted tassel became that lock of hair and was duely attached to the scabard. And now I do like it.
Here he is with Orange and picton, I think Wellington is well served with these figures: