HMS Victory by Erik Nyren - Caldercraft - Scale 1:72 - slightly bashed

[Erik Nyren]

Hello

 

Finally after looking at the box for almost ten years I have started on my Caldercraft HMS Victory. A lot of other projects has gotten in my way during the years and this will be a parralell build to my HMS Kingfisher build. Dunting task one might say but I could not help my self there are so many inspiring logs around here

 

I had recently started my Corel HMS Victory all those years ago and during some research on the web for that build I came across some pictures of the CC HMS Victory beeing developed. Having realized that it was actually a kit and not a scratch build by someone, I had to have it !!!

When I recieved my kit the first thing that struck me was the shere size of the thing. My daughter actually fitted inside the box

Now that I have started the build she does not fit the box anymore

 

Erik

[Erik Nyren]

On to the actual kit

I know there are a lot of pictures of the content of this kit on MSW then again if one considers this kit theese pictures can be beneficial so I will post the all the same. The Caldercraft 1:72 HMS Victory is a high end kit to say the least and by far the most accurate representation of her on the kit market.

Excellent manuals and 18 sheets of plans but everything is BIG so space is important.

 

[Erik Nyren]

I was a bit disappointed and surprised over the quality of the wood strips which was pretty bad actually so I actually sent the picture comparing the Caldercraft wood to the Corel strips, to Jotika and they promptly sent me a complete new batch of wood strips free of charge. Actually they sent me two batches because the first one dissappered in the mail. I guess the wood guy at Caldercraft had a bad day when setting my kit up.

The new strips were ok considering that the whole thing will be sealed painted and coppar plated. Of cource If one wants to build her with no paint I would suggest to get extra planking elsewhere, then again I bought the kit almost ten years ago, perhaps somone who more recently bought the kit can comment on the wood strip quality as of now.

 

In short Jotika has an excellent customer support.

 

Note that because of the situation described above the pictures shows about twice the amount of wood strips than is actually included in the kit. They were not sorted in any way or at least they are not sorted anymore (might be my fault) so I guess a lot of time will be spent searching for the correct strips or sorting the in to appropriate bundles. 

 

The ply bulkheads are sturdy and of great quality, there are some that are slightly warped and so is the keel. This however I suspect has occured during storage in my house as there were defenitly no warping when I first got the kit and did inventory. 

The warping is nothing alarming and when everything is locked in place the whole thing will straighten out but I´m going to watch out when assembling the keel and bulkheads to ensure squareness to the assembly.

 

Worth noting is that Caldercraft has spared no expence on their fittings, no doubt the best I have seen in a kit and there are no generic parts the fittings are developed for this kit as far as I can tell.

[Erik Nyren]

Theres a lot of stuff in this box

 

Erik

[Shipyard sid]

Hello Erik

And another caldercraft victory, the more the merrier. I look forward to following your build throughout its progress. For those who have asked about the size of the ship, well there's the box it came in!!! ..... Regards DAVID. Enjoy your build

Edited April 28, 2013 by Shipyard sid

[Erik Nyren]

Starting out with some dryfitting

The bulkheads fit exact into the keel, no adjustments needed and the tight fit makes a rigid assembly even without any glue.

 

Í will use the Admiralty series of acrylic paints specially developed for the kit.

 

The last pictures compares this kit to the Corel Victory (1:96 I think) and dont worry I´m not using the grand piano as a building board but the CC Victory will replace the Corel kit eventually.

Edited April 28, 2013 by Erik Nyren

[NAZGÛL]

Hej Erik, this will be fun to follow! Good that they have a nice customer support.

[Erik Nyren]

Some preparation to the keel and bulkheads, they are painted to make them less visible through the gunports. Some notches and holes were made to accomodate a LED light system and the bearding line has bee defined.

 

It turnes out that my keel is about 8mm shorter than the picture on the sheet plan.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Is the plans not a 1:1 scale representation of the model, if not messurements can be tricky

 

Now.....BBQ- sunday dinner

Regards

Erik

[Kevin]

Hello

 

Finally after looking at the box for almost ten years I have started on my Caldercraft HMS Victory. A lot of other projects has gotten in my way during the years and this will be a parralell build to my HMS Kingfisher build. Dunting task one might say but I could not help my self there are so many inspiring logs around here

 

I had recently started my Corel HMS Victory all those years ago and during some research on the web for that build I came across some pictures of the CC HMS Victory beeing developed. Having realized that it was actually a kit and not a scratch build by someone, I had to have it !!!

When I recieved my kit the first thing that struck me was the shere size of the thing. My daughter actually fitted inside the box

Now that I have started the build she does not fit the box anymore

 

Erik

OMG 

buying a kit and finding a small child in the box, that will never do

 

all the best

[Kevin]

as for the keel - i don't remember fitting it until after 1st planking, looking at your photos, it appears to have quite a few differences, i will follow with interest

 

all the best 

[Kevin]

in fact i am confused, the photos in post 8 dont look anything like my Victory

[Patrick Haw]

Hi Erik, and welcome to the community of Caldercraft Victory builders here at MSW.  I'm glad you got such a good response from Jotika on your concerns about the wood strips.  I received My Victory at the end of December and discovered that the box did not contain the 1mm x 4mm Tanganyika strips for the deck planking.  I notified Jotika and they said they'd send them, told me they shipped in early February.  When I hadn't received them by early March I contacted them again and they said they must have gone missing and would be re-sent.  That was six weeks ago...still haven't received the wood!  I just e-mailed them again earlier today, so we'll see what happens. 

 

There's been some discussion in the community lately about the quality of Caldercraft's instruction manuals, so it'll be interesting to see if your opinion of the excellence of the manuals changes as you progress!

 

Anyway, you're off to a good start and I'll look forward to following your build.

 

Patrick

[Erik Nyren]

in fact i am confused, the photos in post 8 dont look anything like my Victory

 

Thanks fellows

 

Kevin: I have cut out notches in the bulkheads and square holes to the keel to accomodate wires and LED lights. Could this be the difference or are there others

I would be intressted to hear if Caldercraft have made changes to the keel.

 

Patrick: Intressting remark on the manuals, perhaps I said to much, they do look good but I might change my mind when I used them for a while of cource.

 

Oh and the child did not come with the kit

 

 

Regards

Erik

[Erik Nyren]

 

It turnes out that my keel is about 8mm shorter than the picture on the sheet plan.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Is the plans not a 1:1 scale representation of the model, if not messurements can be tricky

 

 

 

Ok here is my latest thought after loosing some sleep over the issue of the keel not corresponding to the plans.

 

As I have made a dryfit with all bukheads along with the lower and middle deck and everything came together with no adjustments to any of the slots. The problem lies with the plans rather than the keel.

What I mean is that if the keel was wrong as much as 8mm there should have been serious problems fitting the decks to the bulkheads.

 

Any comments or similar experiences

 

Erik

[Erik Nyren]

Hello

 

Some progress made today

 

I figured the best way to keep the bulkheads square to the keel would be to use the middle gundeck as a jig.

This kit has such excellent precition on the plywood parts that it works well.

 

On the other pictures you can see how I fixed the LEDs into the square holes previosly cut into the keel. Theres one LED to each bulkhead compartment and placing it in the holes lets one LED illuminate both sides of the ship.

 

The wiring is done with one wire to each side a anod and katod side if you will and LEDs with resistors in parralell between the wires.

 

The last picture shows the kind of indirect light that I strive for. The ship will not be strongly lit but rather soft light in the background. The gallery however will be more distinktly lit.

[Erik Nyren]

Middle gundeck planked and finished of with some chinease tung oil then yet again dryfitted on the ship.

Chaulking made simle with a leadpeancil against the sides of the plank.

A lot of work for a surface that will barely be viseble but good practice on planking

 

Regards

Erik

Edited May 12, 2013 by Erik Nyren

[Erik Nyren]

Oh

 

The Admiral liked the colour of my middle gundeck so much she wanted me to put in a Tanyanika kitchen floor  ......... Now thats basicly not going to happen

but one wonders what such a floor would cost. I guess if I sold my car and the rest of the house along with the grand piano I could almost afford it

 

Regards

Erik

[robipod]

looking good Erik. Made a comment about a second set of lights in my build. I used the middle deck as practice too.  really like the concept of lighting you are creating. Oh the joy of planking coming up! Are you taking the wiring out the keel?

[Erik Nyren]

looking good Erik. Made a comment about a second set of lights in my build. I used the middle deck as practice too.  really like the concept of lighting you are creating. Oh the joy of planking coming up! Are you taking the wiring out the keel?

 

Yes, The wiring goes out through the keel, I have yet to come up with an idea of how to conseal the wiring on dispaly but I probably have a few years to come up with something.

 

I have had a lot of other projects during the summer but Victory has not been idle.

A rather serious computor meltdown has resulted in a lot of pictures and materials beeing lost. I really need to learn to make backups more frequently.

I rather liked the pictures that Rob has put into the gunports to give them some life. Rob has been kind enough to give me some of his pictures so I can make a similar arrangement.

 

The upper gunportpatterns are now fitted to the ship although the two lower patterns are only dry fitted in order to drill the holes for the false guns. My plan is to drill theese holes centered using a simple little jig that guides the drill. The pictures will then be fitted centering the guncarriges to the holes......Well I´ll post more pictures as I go along.

 

A small problem arose when dryfitting the patterns the middle one portrudes above the bow about 3-4 mm Im not sure if thats correct.  The lower one did not fit perfectly at the stern as I had to move it slightly forward in order not to have a bulkhead blocking one of the gunports. I dont think this will be to much of a problem though as it will all be planked over and painted.

 

More to come

 

Erik

 

I

[mtaylor]

Nice work on the ports and the drilling jig.  As I recall from seeing other logs, aligning those port strips aren't the easiest but it looks like you did great.

[Kevin]

A small problem arose when dry fitting the patterns the middle one protrudes above the bow about 3-4 mm Im not sure if thats correct.  The lower one did not fit perfectly at the stern as I had to move it slightly forward in order not to have a bulkhead blocking one of the gun ports. I dont think this will be to much of a problem though as it will all be planked over and painted.

 

yes thats what i had on mine, all ties in with the beak-head planking, heads and gratings, then not seen when the bow decoration is fitted

[NAZGÛL]

Looking really nice, Erik! Very clean and professional.

 

/Matti

[Erik Nyren]

Hello

 

Robipod has kindly provided me with some of his pictures used to make the false guns come alive.

I printed theese on photopaper which was stiff enough to be glued in place as is. The challange doing this is to center the pictures to the guns. This is what I did:

1. Dryfitting the gunport patterns

2. Usin a wood jig drilling a centered hole in the false gun support strips (shown earlier in the log

3. Cutting out the picture and centering the guncarriage hole over the drilled hole and folding it to fit btween the bulkheads.

4. Glued the picture in place using one of the false guns as a guide.

 

The last picture shows a dryfit to check the alignment of the false guns.

 

More to come

[Erik Nyren]

I realised that the lighting from the LED:s centered in the hull will not be suficiant to illuminate the gunports after the pictures had been glued into place.

I therefore decided to add one LED to each gunport, hidden from the actual gunprot so it will not be seen. I drilled  holes in the false gun support strip to accomodate theese additional LED:S which are wired separately from tha main LED circuit. This enables me to have two different levels of light. One will give a subtile light from the center of the ship where the light will mostly be visible from the gallery. The other will also light up the gunports hopfully in a not to intense way.

 

A few pictures of my work on the LED system, Oh and its run by a pair of 1,5V dry batteries.

 

Regards

Erik

[Erik Nyren]

Oh yes it seems the brittish army has started to take an interrest to my build, a little grayish in color but the soldiers will get paid in color after preforming their supervision tasks.

 

Erik

[Erik Nyren]

Hello folks

 

It turned out to be next to impossible to take a good picture of the lighting system in the dark but I´m quite happy with the result. Of cource at some angles one can see the LED:s through the gunports but that´s very hard to do something about.

 

Perhaps using a more advanced camera I can get better pictures,

 

Now a question of taste, Should I or should I not install LED lights discreatly on deck to illuminate the rigg?

Fellow modelers let me know your thoughts on the matter.

 

Regards Erik

[mtaylor]

Erik,

 

Looking great with the LED's.   I wouldn't worry about the deck though I wonder if the real thing might not have had some lights occasionally.  I'm looking at my Constellation in it's case and lighting the deck would be overkill.  I will assume a working lantern?

[Kevin]

the lighting from the build will be reduced as time goes on, all the gun ports are going to be busy, with lumps of cannon and riggingand the linings, the  hull will be thicker with planking and the gun port lids depending on the angle displayed will reduce the effect even more

[Erik Nyren]

the lighting from the build will be reduced as time goes on, all the gun ports are going to be busy, with lumps of cannon and riggingand the linings, the  hull will be thicker with planking and the gun port lids depending on the angle displayed will reduce the effect even more

 

I figured as much, the pictures does not do the LED:s credid. Right now she´s lit up like a christmas tree so I´m counting on the reduction you speak of. I would not want my Vic to look like the Enterprise

 

Mark; the idea of a lantern although appealing would involve covering up wiring in the masts and rigg. Those details are difficult enough so I´ll probably scrap the idea. Might go for external lights in the display-arrangement instead but thats very far ahead. Plenty of thinking to do until then. 

 

Erik

[popeye the sailor]

hello Erik         stumbled onto your build...........the progress blows me away!    fantastic job with the lighting and false cannons.  I'll take a seat quietly and watch your progress