New project!
But with very old roots�
Flashback 29 years ago: this is me at age 11, proudly posing with my just finished Heller �Le Gladiateur�. Cute, no?
Of course I didn�t know it is a fictitious ship, and I probably wouldn�t have cared. I remember I truly enjoyed building it, and it was by far the most complex model I had tackled by that time. Surely one of my best childhood modelling memories!
In the (toy)shops where I would find kits at that time, there was always a healthy selection of plastic ships of the age of sail. That, together with the decorative (sailing) ship models one often sees, made me believe this must be the most popular modelling subject.
Of course I learned later on that this is quite far from the truth�
But anyway, I had an interest for ships of the age of sail anyway. One of my all-time �dream models� is the Heller 1/100 Victory, already at that age. This plan faded when discovering the Verlinden magazines a couple of years later and getting into AFV dioramas, but it never really went away.
So now it is finally time for a man o� war, and HMS Victory it will be!
But since I�m a diorama modeller at heart, this is the scene I want to depict: Victory and Le Redoutable in close combat at Trafalgar:
This painting is just inspiration, I won�t simply copy it but follow all the research I can lay my hands on.
1/100 scale would make for an enormous diorama, and many years of work. Too big for me� So I chose 1/300 scale instead, which enables me to use the Rod Langton kit of Victory.
Here is a beautiful build of the kit by Dr. Kerry Jang: http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery ... index.html
It is an expensive but nice kit with a resin hull, white metal decks, fittings, masts etc., and a couple of large PE sheets.
The diorama setting with lots of battle damage demands however that I will have to rework a lot of the kit items or replace them completely with scratchbuilt items.
But still much better than Le Redoutable, which I will need to scratchbuild completely!
The kit hull is a solid casting, meaning that most gun ports are mere recesses in the hull sides (to be painted black) with only a gun barrel sticking out of them. This can be fine for a solitary model, but for a ship in action I want more feeling of depth to the gun decks.
The hull is shaped very well and has some beautiful details. I found the horizontal planking seams scribed in the hull sides a bit too heavy for the scale though.
So, I filled the plank seams with putty and sanded them.
Next, I hollowed out the hull casting. I started by removing a central block by drilling around it with an 8 mm drill bit. Then I removed more material with a big round headed burr and conically shaped sanding drums in my Dremel. Next, I cut out all gun ports and windows (roughly with a small burr in the Dremel, then with scalpels and custom-made sanding sticks), and thinned the hull further with the sanding drums.
The stern windows, and especially the galleries, proved a bit tricky at times. But with some smaller round headed burrs and some patience I managed.
And to give you a feeling of the scale:
There is not too much to see yet, even though this has taken me a fair number of hours. But all of this preparation should pay off later�
Next will be the instalment of the lower gun deck.
Cheers,
Marijn
