Hunting Elephants for Colonial-Era Gaming

David talks about
Constructing
Hunting Elephants
for Colonial-Era Gaming

The Basic Model
The basic elephant is a medium-soft-plastic toy sold by U.S. Toy, whose name is ironic in that one would be hard-pressed to find a toy there which has anything to do with the U.S., other than being sold there. It is sold through the U.S. Toy catalog as part of a set of large zoo animals (set 2019N) for US$3.00 plus shipping. The elephant alone is easily worth the price of the set, but at the U.S.Toy retail store in the Dallas area, the contents of the baggie sets are emptied into bins, and the toys are sold individually. My three elephants cost me 30 cents each.
Elephant Toy - Side

The elephant has good sculpting, animation and proportions, except that, to my eye, the trunk is slightly too long (or perhaps merely too thin) and the tusks are too thin. Unfortunately, the molding is not particularly good, with flash and mismatched parting lines evident, and a bit of clumsy die-work on the trunk between the tusks, but at 30 cents, I can put up with doing some trimming and epoxy-putty work.

One problem for gamers is that the elephant has the large ears of the African elephant, which is not domesticated. One could trim the ears, but it was easier just to invent a new species, the Ouargistani elephant, which is small like the Indian elephant, but has ears like its African cousin. (It's great to have your own subcontinent!)

The Problem
The design problem for gaming with the elephant is how to get figures to ride in the howdah without standing ridiculously high on the back. One could create special seated versions of the standing figures, but it seemed better and more flexible to cut out the elephant's back for the howdah, and simply let the figures stand.

The notching is a fairly brutal process, and should be done BEFORE altering the pose of the elephant. It can be done in a vise with a razor saw or hacksaw, but I ended up using a fiberglass cutoff disk and a 3/8" rotary-file bit in my motor-tool. A hot-knife might be a good tool for this job, but I didn't have one.

Changing the Pose
Seeing the elephants together, it became evident that having all three in the same pose gave an artificial and distracting effect. I heated a coffee-mug of water to near-boiling in the microwave, and dipped the trunk of each elephant in it for a short time. Pulling it out, I bent the trunk to a different curve, with a bit of side swing, and plunged it into ice water to set it.This helped, but it was not enough to differentiate the elephants as much as I wanted.

I used a razor saw to cut off one of the elephant's heads, bent it downward and angled it off to one side. I drilled a shallow hole in the head and body to give the putty something to grip, then filled the gap with green epoxy putty and textured it to match the elephant's skin. The effect looked good and very elephantlike, as if he were shaking his head in that way that one sees elephants do on the nature documentaries.

Elephant - Back Notched I shortened the trunks with flush-cutters, but decided to leave the small balls on the ends of the tusks, having seen pictures of Indian domesticated elephants with balls on the tusks to reduce damage if the elephant gets rowdy. An alternative would be to clip the tusks short, as many domestic elephants have their tusks sawn off.

This picture shows the elephant with back notched, putty filling the mismatched mold line in the leg and trunk, head lowered and neck puttied.

Early Howdah

The Howdah
The first howdah I made was a two-person ceremonial howdah. I was very pleased with it until I rented the Errol Flynn version of The Charge of the Light Brigade, which has a lengthy elephantback hunt at the beginning. Then it became obvious that the howdah was too low and too simple. So for the next two elephants, I made wicker hunting howdahs, similar to the ones in the film.

Wicker Howdah -Test Fit

The movie howdahs allow two riders side-by side in front and a loader sitting behind. They feature a pad, like a saddle-blanket that hangs down below the howdah, and ladders slung along the sides. I designed a fold-up howdah on the computer (downloadable version), and printed it on some stiff buff-colored paper on a laser printer (after 15 years, I finally have a use for the Macintosh's rattan pattern fill). I cut apart the panels of a second print and glued them to the inside for added strength and to allow the wicker pattern to show on the inside. Rather than fiddling with gluing broomstraws for the railing, I just printed it as part of the side and cut carefully around it with a SHARP X-acto blade. I stiffened it with white glue, but it is a bit fragile, I'll admit. The picture at right shows the hunting howdah being test-fit on the elephant, without the ropes, straps, ladder and other details.

A few design tricks can help the howdah. Note that the figure's bases actually go down lower than the apparent floor of the howdah. The pad disguises this, and it curves outward to give a bit of extra room for the figure bases. This helps the howdah to look like it is sitting up higher on the elephant's back. In addition to the notch, I used the motor tool to hollow out the back end of the elephant's haunches somewhat, to give more room for the base of the rear passenger. The howdah is still not quite high enough and is a bit too wide for absolute realism, but I can get three standing figures into it and I am happy with the compromise.

By the way, this is not a project for those who like large figure bases. I use thin 5/8" (15mm) bases whenever possible, and these barely fit in the howdah, with judicious overlapping. 3/4" or 1" bases would be hopeless.

Three Elephants Final Details
Two ropes cross on the pad to go under the elephant's stomach, and one goes under the elephant's neck. These can be made from common string, stained with thin brown paint. The ladder is cut from brass HO scale ladder stock from the hobby shop. It is held on by two small hooks curved from brass wire and glued onto the howdah. The top panel on the front of the howdah is bent outward to approximate the tray on the front of the actual howdahs (or at least their Hollywood counterparts).

The mahouts are Ral Partha's Mounted Zulus (something else I thought I'd never have a use for) that I got in a package deal of used figures. The goads were made from soft metal spears.

To see the elephants in action, go to Safari to the Psgheti

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