To HMS Victory and beyond

[Strategos Augustus]

Dear Marijn, it was naughty, had to be punished

XXXDAn

Whenever I feel that I am spending too much time on a project I just need to open this thread.

Looks marvelous.

[LE BOSCO]

HI magic Dan

you push the adjective "qualitative" to a rarely reached level
superb
Cheers
Nicolas

[Colsom]

Hi Dafi,

I have looked at your Victory build with amazement. I have retired recently and am venturing into the world of model building having not touched a kit for 40 years. As a child in the 60s I did the compulsory Airfix kits, very badly as we all did. 38 years ago I bought Heller's 1:100 scale Victory. I got to the point of starting the bowsprit before the children came along, at which point that and any other hobby got pushed to one side until I retired. Victory was then resurrected, 38 years of dust was cleaned off and work recommenced. It has to be said the instructions are dire. The rigging is becoming guesswork combined with online images and some personal photos. As I have got so far with it I have now accepted that it is just going to be a case of following the instructions and building it up as best I can. Only after internet searches and looking at your build have I realised that rigging thread of all different colours and diameters is available. I have tried to contact Heller on several occasions for help but they're about as much use as BT, British Gas and Vodafone!! I suppose I should have spent a couple of years on the small plastic kits and learnt a few basic skills such as weathering etc. before tackling Victory. I can't help but feel that if I had done that though I would have pulled the current build to pieces and started all over again lol.

One bit I am really struggling with is the netting around the deck hammocks. They supply a plastic frame, as you probably know, to wrap the thread onto with the instruction to then glue the threads together to form the netting. All I could think of to glue the threads, with my limited knowledge, was superglue. What a disaster. It looks awful and wont bend. I've seen the relevant section on your build which looks really good. Did you make the netting? If so, how?

You have clearly spent a huge amount of time with your build and probably a lot of hard earned cash. Can I ask what scale it is? Is it a plastic kit which you are just using as a basic template or is it a wooden kit?. I can see that you alter/modify some of the supplied pieces and scratch make other parts. It's impressive and inspirational.

I had considered, in years to come, getting my hands on the Caldercraft wooden kit. At �900 plus tooling it's a huge investment. Is this a good kit to buy which looks realistic or another lemon like the kit I have?

Thanks for reading,

Colin.

[dafi]

@Colsom

Dear Colin, sorry for the late reply. And surprise, it is the same Heller 1:100 you are working on. It just seems you are already further than I am.

The netting is some stuff I bought and if you need some, give me a PM.

All the best and good success with your build, Daniel

[dafi]

I�ll be back! Watch this space!!!

XXXDAn

[marijn van gils]

I'm watching!

[kurusu]

I'm watching!

Me too. can't wait to be marvelled again.

[Martocticvs]

Fantastic work on this! Be careful when using the masts of the ship as she is today as reference - the lower masts are of course loaned from the far newer ship HMS Shah...

[colsom]

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the reply. Doesn't matter that it's late. Beats me how you found time to reply anyway judging by the number of hours you must be spending on your Victory. I solved the netting problem quite by chance. I was walking up the stairs one day when the net curtains caught my eye. 5 minutes later and they were 6" shorter!! Cost me a lot of grovelling to my wife afterwards Lol. However it worked a treat.

After a summer layoff to get the DIY jobs done I sat down a couple of weeks ago to tackle the bowsprit rigging. I toyed with pouring thinners over the instructions and setting light to them for what use they are. It's a good job there are hundreds of photos online. Took me a while but I managed to get that portion of the rigging completed. I then got curious about the rigging colour. I had soaked the supplied thread in tea, which was an improvement on the green thread supplied but, after some research, I found out the colours are pale grey and black and as a result I started experimenting with very thinned out enamel paint. I was quite pleased with the result and it didn't leave the thread brittle.

I would add photos but I am very loathe to sign up to a website that potentially allows people to access my files. It's bad enough trawling through the spam emails without giving people an open door to my laptop.


Colin.

[dafi]

And there she stood, well packed to be shipped far off. What the hell happend? The end of this building report?

[dafi]

In-between some necessary private restructuring, moving place, plenty of work in the office, workshop full of moving boxes, to nice weather to stay inside and other reasons I was neglecting my dear little small one. Unfortunately!

But then came the day, and a job, an important job was to be done and I was able to hold my small one in my arms again ...



... and some serious cleaning was the job of the day. Time to be surprised: "Oh how did I achieve all this? Have to read the building report in ModelWarship.com to believe."



She needed�to be look�beautiful, really�beautiful. The big mess was still the slots, intended for the insertion of the upper decks. So I had to protect her.�



But all ok, the plastic protected the lower deck from the biggest dirt from the carnage of the upper decks. Then fixed the spriketting.



Then engraved the planking in situ - should have done before - and bent the water ways.


Added sone deck beams and evened up the knees ...



... and splashed some color and it looked much more clean and crisp in the inside.



The only problem with my way of building are the breaking parts on the way, even half the complement of the heads deserted ...



Then came the moment I was finally able to do a dry fit of the middle deck.

[marijn van gils]

Great to see you at the bench again Daniel!
Great solution for the decks BTW!



Marijn

[dafi]

At least the deck was not fixed yet as I have to fix some details still.

But in order to be looking smart, neat and tidy, the stern needed some attention. Great o the outside but the inside ...



... still quite worn, so I ground down the old paint and rediscovered the two square holes on the top that I added eons ago to fix the stern quarter davits, but scraped them later as newer research omitted them.



Looking more cute. See the two metal bits on the top?



Then had to fit the stern part. Great to have good tools.



Never thought to use a plain on my plastic tub



To be able to still look inside later on, I hid two magnets in the side galleries, fitting the two metal bits



Then came the cover of the tiller head ...



... build the box ...



... removable of course



And to give a good fit, a frame on the deck was to be build. Quite tricky in that size, so did an external work on some paper, that was removed by being made wet later on.



Searched for the wheel and the binnacle, made in February 2012, made a small base ...



... and also smartened the anchor cable for protection ...





... and the deciples came to praise her!



And then simply he simply took the model with him ...

... I needed to be strong ...

[dafi]

Oh it did hurt to see her all alone in the back of the car going to a big trip. What happens if she was bored? Thirstty? Hungry? Or needs a p-brake???



And off it went for the journey, a 1000 km across France to Rochefort. Straight into ships paradise, together with another 150 models and proudly showing the flag ...



... of the german delegation together with the Amerigo from Joachim/Schiffebastler:-)



Later still came Chapman�s barge from Alexander / Foxtrott ...


... and the Sphinx from Alexander / Alex M. ...



... and me I was obsolet as the kids played all by themselves.

So I used the time ...



... to go and see her great-great-great-...-great niece ...



... together with the other german ship parents that did not have to bother for their small ones

[dafi]

And what we saw on the Hermione can be seen her on yesterdays slide show on Modellmarine.de
http://www.modellmarine.de/index.php?op ... &Itemid=55

XXXDan

[ModelMonkey]

Wonderful!

[dafi]

Funny enough the organisators eliminated all references upon Heller and plastic from the model description.

Honi soit qui mal y pense

Here a shot down the rabbit hole when she was in France, displaying proudly her colors on Trafalgar day!







XXXDAn

[Dan K]

Just fantastic work. And, travelogue.

[dafi]

For those also interested in Marine aviation, there was a nice report from the museum in Rochefort at modellmarine:

http://www.modellmarine.de/index.php?op ... &Itemid=55

Enjoy, XXXDAn

[marijn van gils]

Fantastic!


But aren't you spending a bit too much time with wooden ship modellers? A plane?!?!?

Many thanks for the reports too!