The Ship Model Forum

The upper hull of my model is painted with Revell Black and Ochre matt acrylic. The lower hull is Tamiya XF6 Copper, dry-brushed with various shades of brown craft acrylic paint and with touches of greenish-grey craft paint drybrushed near the waterline. The deck is Revell Earth Brown drybrushed heavily with Revell Stone Grey.

This is just my personal opinion, but I'd advise not using the rigging loom machine. This is very tricky to use and the shrouds + ratlines created don't usually look very convincing. What I did with my Victory model (and all my other sailing ship builds) was to drill a small hole in the end of each "deadeye" (the things that the shrouds attach to), tie/glue a length of black thread through the hole in one, pass the thread through the hole in the mast top, pull it tight, then tie it through the hole in the deadeye on the opposite side (hopefully this explanation is reasonably clear).
This sounds tedious and time-consuming, but actually isn't any more so than using the loom thingy, and the results are much neater.

If you do want to use the loom, however, white glue and water should do the trick for gluing the lines together, if you leave them a day or so to set once glued.

I'd also advise on either building the model without sails, or replacing the vacformed plastic sails in the kit which are very flimsy. However, I'm not really sure of the best technique for making realistic-looking sails out of other materials. You could try posting on the Finescale Modeller forums - [url]http://cs.finescale.com/forums/7/ShowForum.aspx[/url] - there are several sailing ship modellers who post there regularly and should be able to give you more advice.

Yup, that's the exact one. I'm not sure about Ultramarine Blue- it seems really light compared to what I see in the pictures. What are the three colors I can see on the hull of yours?

Oh, and with the rigging machine thingy, do I need a spray fixative or can I just use white glue and water?

And what about sails? How would I go about painting those?

Oh, and should I use the strange plastic-y sails included or make my own?

Which Victory kit is this - the Revell 1/220 (sold as "1/146") or the Airfix 1/180? If it's the latter one, you're probably lucky that the paints were gunked up and useless - the paints supplied in the boxes of Airfix/Heller kits are very "cheap and nasty" acrylics, lumpy and cover poorly, and are often the wrong colours in any case (from my experience).

If you're familiar with GW paints, I've found their "Ultramarine Blue" is a very good match for the blue on the Victory. It's not a dark navy blue, though it's represented like this on some models.

I use Revell Ochre for the ochre colour on 18th century ships (and the buff colour on many pre-dreadnoughts), which is a pretty good match, but if you use Vallejo paints you've probably found a better match in their colour range anyway.

For metallics, I usually do things the other way, paint black and drybrush with Boltgun Metal or another metallic - but it's up to you! Note that the cannons, anchors and other metallic fittings on Victory were (and are) painted as a protection against rust, so it's best to go for a very subtle metallic effect. I dry-brush lightly with "Graphite" craft acrylic paint (sold in craft/hobby shops) to get a "cast iron" look.

Here's a photo of my Victory (built about a year ago from the Airfix 1/180 kit):

[img]http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pinniger/models/ship/victorycomplete1.jpg[/img]

Good luck with your model!

Well, I've been painting miniatures for years, but yesterday my hobby store had a 70% off sale so I decided to buy a model ship (the HMS Victory, to be specific). I decided on this because it contained all the paints, thread and everything I'd need to build and paint it. So I took it home, opened it up- and realized all the paint was gunked up and utterly useless.

F$%&!

So, I need some replacements, as well as advice on painting model ships as opposed to miniatures- but especially what is different between the two. I know highlights are much more subtle on realistic figures, but beyond that I have no idea.

I really need to find a Vallejo color that matches the navy blue on the Victory. I also need to know how I should paint rigging and sails, and if metallics can be done with the same colors as on miniatures (GW Boltgun Metal + black wash...?). Should I prime with black spray primer, or just paint over the plastic? I assume I should paint before assembly (it has several decks, after all...)? Lastly, is wood grain possible on a model of this scale (1:275-ish I think... it's just over a foot long), and will I get a good wood result if I use a brown wash over VMC Yellow Ochre?

I'm really interested in the detail of the models, it's a far cry from what I'm used to. If this goes well, I'm thinking of trying a Chinese junk.