HMS Victory and Le Redoutable at Trafalgar (1/300)

[Dan K]

Exquisite work, as always.

[GewoonWouter]

Wowzee, another masterclass in modelling. This is just gobsmacking Marijn. Each and every time you think it can't get better, it does!

These last couple of updates got me into watching documentaries about Napoleonic warfare again and more particular HMS Victory. She is still on the bucketlist to visit together with the Tank museum in Bovington.

Thanks to a mate I managed to revamp the modelling hobby after a 2 years of doing absolutely nothing. Heck, he event got me in visiting a scale model event for the first time in 10 years. And that event was KMK Scaleworld a couple of months ago. I was very impressed in general but I was especially impressed by Victory and Redoutable. When you see that in the flesh it's even more impressive than it already is in this thread.

And although I do some 1/350 scale modelling when I was at KMK I initially was looking for way larger ships than yours actually were so I almost missed them . Needless to say I can't wait to see this one day finished and in the flesh again. (and hopefully - dare I say it - in print)

Keep up the good work skipper!

[marijn van gils]

Thank you very much everyone!

Wow Wouter, thank you very much, also for coming to the show! But next time, please come over and say hello! Just ask one of the KMK guys with a blue shirt and they'll point me out for you.
And great to have you back in the hobby BTW!


About Sagres: I think using single piece (non-twisted) wire should work fine for that rigging in this scale, Jim. We shouldn't forget that twisting adds a fair amount of work and time to the entire process...
Soldering sounds very interesting too, but again would add to the workload. As you know very well, there are a lot of wires needed for a ship like that and and there is a lot of wastage while rigging it...

I got most of my wires from this company: https://wires.co.uk/index.html
I mostly got tinned copper wire (which feels a little stiffer than regular copper, but not much so it may just be in my head), but they have all kinds of stuff, also Constantan.
They're UK-based, which is not that interesting for me (ordering direct from them did go hassle free, but of course not tax-free), but is great for you Jim.
Certainly worth looking around at all the options!
Maybe there is also something with a light colour that is not silver?

But otherwise, painting is the only option...
I use the technique described by Philip Reed: drag each length of wire through a puddle of enamel paint, removing the excess by letting it drag a little over a piece of paper (for light colours, a black paper provides better visibility). I hang them to dry from the edhe of a shelf with some double-sided tape. And then I repeat it, because two coats are needed for proper coverage.

And for the twisted wires, I give them a drybrush with a lighter colour before installation (I tried after, but that didn't work well...) to bring out the texture and have some variation in the tonality.
But for single-strand material, I would rather give them a thin wash instead to get rid of the uniformity of the colour, and probably only the thicker lines.

BTW, the very stiff and hard metal wire I used for some lines is this one: https://shelfoddity.com/index.php?route ... duct_id=73
Great material! I'm guessing it is the same stuff as the Modelkasten wire? For 1/350 metal warships, I would use this a lot more! Easy to use for straith lines, but it can take a gentle bend or sag too. But it's hard on cutters/scissors, so I cut it with (disposable) scalpel.
I paint it the same way.

[wefalck]

wires.co.uk is where I get most my wires from (well Brexit doesn't make things easier, but when I had more frequent trips to the UK, I also had stuff sent to friends or hotels). They have coated copper wire in various colours, such as black, white, 'champagne', brass, brown, etc. The champagne-coloured one is like pale brass and useful for brass-rails etc. where the real brass-colour may look too 'kitchy'.

The Shelfoddity-wire could be molybdenum. Very tough and kills most cutters ... It is readily available on the Internet, because it is used by mobile-phone repairers to separate broken glasses from tactile screens. I think the thinnest I have is 0.03 mm diameter. It is very springy and it is impossible to straighten out kinks. The normal colour is a very pale brass.

[EJFoeth]

Ordered from them too, but momentarily

EU Shipping Notice: Due to the new EU PPWR / EPR regulations, we have paused shipping to EU destinations. We apologise for any inconvenience.
Online Catalogue

Noticed some "solderable" wire down to 0.025mm... might actually be ok for slightly overscale twisted wiring for railing

The soldering might only be useful if you want to make it slightly stronger, bending twisted soldered brass is more difficult. Otherwise not really needed, but also not a lot of work if you work in batches compared to the twisting effort (probably via electric drill).

[marijn van gils]

Noticed some "solderable" wire down to 0.025mm... might actually be ok for slightly overscale twisted wiring for railing

I bought that one too!
I tried twisting, but it is so thin that the twist was not visisble anymore at all (only barely with optivisor, but then disappeared again under a layer of paint).
In 1/300, it would be a 7,5 mm line in reality. That's thinner than any of the actual rigging lines on Victory... So I could only use it for seizing. But also with that, the lines tended to become one mass under a layer of paint, so I resorted to 0,05 mm wire instead. A little overscale, but at least the texture of reramins visisble...
But it may be great for modern cable railing, or other thin cables. But very fragile of course, and so easily kinked...

[EJFoeth]

indeed, the kinking might be a serious issue. For railing you only need a couple of cm per session (many interruptions were present) but have to put it through stanchions with a 0.1mm hole. If I go through with that… I had a lot of trouble with a massive 0.08 wire for the steam launch ‘s steering wheel/rudder cable. Just looked up the diameter of the main mast stay cables, the thickest lines, already only 0.1mm…

[JIM BAUMANN]

Good at all

Having done some very expensive wire shopping of small diameters copper and nickel silver at Wires.co.uk,....
Today I bought some cheaper wires for structural stuff
( like long forestays for flying jibs etc )

I can use the 0.046 and slightly larger Nickel Titanium wires wires from model kasten for spans that are unloaded and glued.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_titanium#

but as the clever-but wretched stuff will not stay bent-
which can in instances be desired -- eg to attach when using a bend or loop is desired to be formed

I just went shopping on e-bay
cheap enough for an experiment...

[Sszabi]

The new details are also amazing. It looks amazing. I'm not a big sailboat fan, but this build of yours is (also) very inspiring.

[marijn van gils]

Thank you very much Sszabi!


Short intermezzo: flags!

I like the technique of sticking decals to both sides of aluminium foil.
But I didn’t have any decals of the sizes I need. And, very importantly, I want the flags to have a similar feel as the sails. So, I used the same material as for the sails!

I stuck a piece of prepared silkspan (minus the seamlines) on a piece of glass, and handpainted the flags with acrylics:


I printed correctly sized examples of the flags and stuck them above the work, so I could follow these examples constantly during painting.

The less precise Saint George's Cross at the left is a test piece for testing weathering and shaping.

Of course, I had to paint both sides. The glass makes this easy: after turning the paper around, you can back-light it.

After painting the pattern, the bright colours were knocked down a bit with a filter of skin-tone oil paints.
Next, the flags were cut out, shaped as I did with the sails, and the shadows of the folds emphasized with raw umber oil paint.

After drying, two of them were glued on the foremast:


Union Jack on the fore topmast stay:


Saint George's Cross at the top of the foremast:

[wefalck]

Nicely done - with a lot of patience.

Another route I recently used was to print the flag onto thermo-transfer paper and then to iron it onto both sides of the paper chosen for the flag. In my case the pattern was mainly black and white, so I could use my own laser-printer. If you have a colour laser-printer, bob's your uncle, otherwise you have to go to a copy shop. It's the same procedure as used for customised t-shirts and coffee-mugs and such stuff.

[GewoonWouter]

That's a very interesting way in doing the flags. Looks very convincing. I keep this one noted for my Yamato when it ever comes to that

[Dan K]

I cannot believe you handpainted the flags. I would have thought the bleed alone would negate any chance of a straight line.

They look incredibly realistic.

[Joelle]

An absolutely excellent idea, Marijn.

I think it looks much better than decal flags on aluminum foil. I’m going to try that out on the *Mikasa* as well.

[EJFoeth]

ditto, once I know what flags were flown

[MartinJQuinn]

Those flags are fantastic and such a realistic drape to them.

[Rui Matos]

Good morning Marijn

A little "pest attack" (sorry)
You could add a little detail often overlooked regarding flags: the hoist (band of cloth in the attaching side of the flag, which has the grommets to hoist the flag).

You can see it in this contemporary flag (Union Jack):
https://www.christies.com/en/stories/ba ... ca3c1296f9

You have been putting so much details, why not one more?
Cheers,
Rui

[JIM BAUMANN]

@ Rui

WOW__ that is quite something!!!

cheers JB

>>> A Union Jack flown from HMS Spartiate at the Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805. A yard- or shipboard-hand-stitched wool-bunting flag, comprised of 31 bunting panels with canvas sleeve and lanyard, on an archival muslin backing. 91⅓ x 138½ in (232 x 352 cm).

Sold for £1,068,500 on 1 July 2025 at Christie’s in London

[marijn van gils]

Thank you very much everyone!

>>> A Union Jack flown from HMS Spartiate at the Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805. A yard- or shipboard-hand-stitched wool-bunting flag, comprised of 31 bunting panels with canvas sleeve and lanyard, on an archival muslin backing. 91⅓ x 138½ in (232 x 352 cm).

Sold for £1,068,500 on 1 July 2025 at Christie’s in London

This one!:


Mmm, looks like my blue is quite too light/bright...
But on the other hand, we all like to have some colour in our models!

You could add a little detail often overlooked regarding flags: the hoist (band of cloth in the attaching side of the flag, which has the grommets to hoist the flag).

Thank you Rui! I was not aware that these were coloured differently (white/natural hemp?) from the rest of the flag. With this flag, it seems to be pretty narrow (in 1/300 it would be about 0,1 to 0,15 mm). It would be very difficult to paint it on the already attached flags now, but I can try to do it next time!


And for anyone considering the same approach for flags:
Paint bleed is not a problem at all, because the silkspan was already basecoated with several layers of acrylic paint.
Handpainting straight and neat lines, however, is always challenging. This makes more complicated patterns like a union jack rather time-consuming to paint (you have to do both sides!). But in the end, it is not a big problem if the lines are not perfect. When the flag is draped/shaped, small imperfection become much less visible or even invisible...

But I'm very interested in trying this next time:

Another route I recently used was to print the flag onto thermo-transfer paper and then to iron it onto both sides of the paper chosen for the flag. In my case the pattern was mainly black and white, so I could use my own laser-printer. If you have a colour laser-printer, bob's your uncle, otherwise you have to go to a copy shop. It's the same procedure as used for customised t-shirts and coffee-mugs and such stuff.

The result should be sharper than handpainting, and it would be easier and probably faster to do, especially for complicated patterns. And it would still be possible to retouch this by hand if that would improve the appearance.
Thank you Eberhard!

[Rui Matos]

Hi again Marijn

Yes, they can be either in white (canvas) or natural (raw/hemp) colour, and are usualy of thicker fabric.
I never thought that you would paint in on the already placed flags

And Jim... a bucket full of ££££!!!

Will it be displayed to the public view?
Or was bought by a very wealthy person and for his/her pleasure alone?


Cheers,
Rui