James H

1 hour ago, Vane said:

I just had a look at the Caldercraft Surprise prototype... they never finished it, but the photos are still up on their webpage. Let me put it like this... there is a slight difference in the look and details... 😛  

and that’s an understatement! 

Possibly ‘Advanced’

The decal sheets are printed by Eduard and Chris has already taken delivery of 500. 

If you want to use something different, maybe look at Letraset or something, or have custom decals made.

For the last day or two, I've been concentrating on some of the smaller stuff, as I usually do at this stage in a VM build. I like to get some stuff out of the way early, such as guns, grates, etc. This update will look at the main guns and the stern chasers. The main guns are constructed like Indy, meaning the barrels aren't actually fitted until the model is almost complete. This means the capsquares in the carriage sides, are open at the front, allowing the builder to slip the barrel through the port and glue the part in place. The stern chasers are more traditional. Here, the barrels are fitted through whole capsquares during assembly. 

Fourteen on the main guns come complete with name decals. When the cart is painted, some gloss varnish is applied and when set, the decals are added to the carts before being sealed and matt varnish applied. Here you can see the names.

PE is used for eyelets and the small stop bar which sits between the sides. The latter is painted ochre to match the cart.

Wheels are now added....remember, large ones at the front, so as to deal with deck camber.

The barrels are NOT glued at this stage. The carts will plug into slots in the deck, and the barrels will be one of the very last things you fit as you build Surprise.

Chasers: Almost identical in formula to the main guns, except the barrel is fitted as you close the carriage sides.

I'm currently working on carronades. I might be able to update today, but maybe not. I have a visitor later who operates the Modelkits Stuff YouTube channel, and he's coming for a preview of the work and sheets of parts etc. 

On 8/9/2025 at 7:29 AM, Jase said:

Maybe a D-Day landing craft next Chris 😬

Chris loves a bluff bow.

I use Titebond. I'd also suggest removing that and trying to manipulate the front into a curve first. As it's thick ply, I'm out of suggestions. I don't know if soaking would ruin the part. I'm be inclined to make that part from two thinner laminations which will be easier to bend. 

1 minute ago, LoydB said:

That frame looks rock solid, I love all the bracing.

I can definitely say the frame is solid!

I've worked quite quickly here, so I thought I'd bring you totally up to date with work on this.

This does mean my next updates will be in real time, with some work on furniture and fittings while the hull sits on my shelf. I'm also aware that because so much of the skeleton is built at once, that you may need to look closely at the photos for the changed. I'll eventually add some arrows on a good number of these pics, so it's evidently clear as to what you're looking at. This photo shows the hull with all the cannon ports installed. A total breeze to do this. Just remember that every vertical port piece is unique to its position. 

I now focus on the stern. These parts are very obvious. Note the inner, middle, and outer engravings, and all will be fine.

The blank panels can now be removed from the stern bulkhead, allowing the previous parts to be fitted. Just take care with the strips protruding at the rear. These are quite strong, but exercise caution. 

These parts are now slotted into their respective positions and glued. 

Another two horizontal strips now sit atop the previous ones (slotted into the bulwark ears), from bow to stern. You can see the deck beam positions engraved on them.

The quarter gallery doorways are now installed.

Note another horizontal strip fitted to the outside of the rear bulwark ears, strengthening that area.

NOW....we can glue! Your keel should be 100% straight by now, so it's time to solidify the hull by painting in some slightly dilute wood glue into the various joints and seams. I now leave this to set for a number of hours, while I edit the photos and do this update.

Here is HMS Surprise as she currently looks. She's sleek and very impressive!

More, when I've created the content 🤪

The hull is coming along quite quickly, so I'm almost catching myself up on updates.

As you can see, this is quite abridged, and I'm more showing key elements of the work so you can see the main progression. Remember, at this stage, I haven't even flipped the hull over and painted in glue. Allowing some movement at this stage can be helpful in ensuring that anything not quite seated, should be able to joggle itself. Also, aligning the bulkhead ears with the longitudinal strips will also help to positively and accurately ensure that everything else is correct.

Here you see the hull with two full length longitudinal beam sat across the bulkheads. As well as being another alignment tool, these also serve as the footings for the gun deck beams. Those strips are also engraved with the gun deck beam numbers, so you'll have no problem identifying which beam locates where. 

The beams are all cut from 4mm pear and are numbered. You can tally these with the numbers on the strips I just mentioned. These can all now pop into place with glue. This is about 2/3 of the beams you will need to fit. 

With all the beams securely glued into place, more longitudinal strips slot in across the deck beams, as well as per parts through which the masts will fit. 

The bow on Surprise is quite round, so we'll do things a little differently here. The bow starts with the foremost posts being built and installed. The small doublers on the outside of these will provide a point for the bulwarks to positively connect to, while the bowsprit will fit through the blanked off hole that glues between those posts. I'll leave the blank in place until the bulwarks are complete. 

The bow is formed from these pieces, plugged radially int the bow base, as shown here. 

These are then bolstered with reinforcement strips, including the hawse hols positions. If you look carefully, you see the port side one installed. Also note that three more longitudinal external strips have now been installed on each side, with the upper two providing the top and bottom to the gun ports we'll now add.

The gun port parts are all unique to their particular position. The longitudinal strips have the gun port vertical part number engraved onto them...GP1, GP2, GP3, etc. Here, GP1 and GP2 are fitted, creating a complete gun port.

And STILL the majority of the hull elements aren't glued! 

More later.

7 hours ago, EspenT said:

Fantastic. Can we still hope to find it under the Christmas tree this year?

I'm doubting it. 

August is almost done for me due to my holidays, and after that, there's 4 straight months to Christmas. Not a lot of time for me to completely finish and rig a model of this size, and for the kits to be made, plus the manual etc. to be made and delivered.

There are two sub-decks to fit. These add a whole load of rigidity to the hull, as well as securing the longitudinal beams in place. Again, the decks aren't glued at this stage, but instead they are held in place with a series of pegs that slot through the bulkheads, at upper deck height. 

The forward, main deck section now receives the same treatment. 

Each deck section is then fitted with an engraved lime faux deck. For these, I just added glue around the edged and centreline, and held them in place with clamps until set. Clamps will remove any threat of deck curling at the edges.

Even though this place will barely be seen, the deck gets the full grates treatment, and even a set of ladders leading down into that little orlop area. 

The bow now has a little attention. You'll see here, and from Chris's photos, that this is a little different to previous designs. 

More later.

All those loose bulkheads can now be locked into place.

To do this, we use doublers, either side of the keel, inserted from above and then pinned into position, all the way through all three keel layers. 

After this, we add stability to the outer portions of each bulkhead, initially with these three pieces, inserted on either side of the keel.

More longitudinal bracing is added, and it won't be the last.

More later.

1 minute ago, limsm2 said:

Does “tang” in I used tang refer to Tanganyika, or does it have some other meaning that I’m not aware of?

 

Also, the deck beams look quite thick—what could be the reason for that?

Tang is indeed Tanganyika. Those beams are actually jigs that keep the sides the correct width apart whilst planking, and protecting the construction.

10 minutes ago, glbarlow said:

Not sure what that means, so are the rudder and stem two halves glued together or a solid piece?

Legacy is referring to general construction of POB model kits. Instead of ply sides with gun ports lasered in, the ports are actually framed into the hull, like was done with Indy and Sphinx. The rudder and stem are typical of the last VM releases. Take a look at those and that's what you'll see here.

No ply at all in this kit.

Time for an update.

Apart from making the cradle, work starts on both the bow and stern assemblies, as these will need to be installed to the keel very early in construction. The format you see here will surely be quite familiar. 

All parts are beveled using my Dremel (nice and cordless now, too!). Lines are included for a gauge, with the parts being finally shaped during hull fairing. 

The stern is built up in the same way and the parts are cleaned up with some regular hand sanding. The tape on the stern is there to protect the infill piece from twisting out whilst being handled and sanded.

The bow assembly is now slotted to the keel. There is NO glue at this stage, and for quite a few more. Early construction is all dry fitted. This makes sure that the complex shapes all slot properly and the user doesn't introduce any twist into the hull. If you have a problem, you simply roll back the sequences and re-fit the parts. 

Bulkhead #2 is also bevelled and slotted to the keel, as are bulkheads #3 thru #8.

The hull is now spun around and bulkheads #9 thru #14 are also dry fitted.

Lastly, bulkhead #15 is fitted. Make sure you fully push this one home as there's a little more resistance here, but not too much.

More later.

5 minutes ago, chris watton said:

If decals are used in a kit, I will always put the depth markings on that. You will also have double the amount required, so if you make a mistake, you can try again - and you have 4 stern names, with one required, so you can use a couple to practise on.

 

No 0.8mm ply for the decks in this kit design for the first time ever!

As you'll see, the lack of the ply under-deck and the subsequent fitting of the actual deck, will be a breeze. 

20 minutes ago, Jase said:

Decals for the cannon names?  Intresting Chris has gone for Decals for depth markers also.  It will be nice if the long table fits the cabin for those wanting to emulate the film.  Looking forward to getting my hands on this, following the prototype build with intrests.

Decals were used for the depth markers on Indy too. They are nice and easy to apply to the copper when it's been sealed with some gloss varnish. The same applies to the stern for the ship's name. 

I'll do a few furniture variations in the build log. Maybe for those who know the film well, I'll get a consensus of best iteration 😁

5 hours ago, glbarlow said:

Been waiting for this ever since Caldercraft showed a prototype they never finished years and years ago. Let’s go! 
 

Hoping that’s a spare rudder and stem another something made from two layers?  Those gun carriage sure make use of available space:-)

This kit will have a modern design and not legacy.

You might notice that there are two sterns included in the kit, depicting the real Surprise and the one from the books/movie. I'm sure @chris watton will be able to explain better. The parts also show BOTH cannon and carronade options, but I believe the cannon is the one to be included in the kit, and the carronade will be an option to purchase separately. 

Thin copper PE can be contentious at the moment, but the supply of it seems to be getting a little easier. You'll see that I have a PE plating set for the hull, with shaped parts for the rudder. Note the copper rudder hinges and horseshoe and fishplate parts, instead of these being in brass. Decals are included for the name and depth marks, plus names for the gun carts too

I have a nice choice of furniture for the cabin. I'll choose what looks best on layout, along with what Chris may supply in wooden form too. I might see if I can sneak a glimpse of that area from the film and base the layout on that.

Two sets of polybak parts are supplied to me for the stern and bow rail details. One is in ivory and one in natural. This is so I can work out which is most suitable and looks best for the model. The real difference is a slight thickness in the sheets. the colour is irrelevant as they'll be painted anyway. You'll also see the euphroe parts on there too instead of PE.

Other differences in this kit are the gorgeous little 3D printed hand pumps, and 0.2mm windows for the bulkhead screens and stern/quarters, so the windows and PE sandwiches will nicely fit into the timber. They also have a much more realistic clarity than the thicker acrylic sheets.

On this kit, the mast tops are made in three layers, adding a little extra realism to the completed assemblies. There will also be toggle detail for the connecting rigging blocks on the underside.

As Chris said, this isn't the complete kit yet, and it's quite unusual that I have this at a stage where he hasn't even completed the second planking layer on his own prototype. I have less than 2 weeks before I go on holiday, so I'm seeing if I can get a few bits done before then. 

3 hours ago, Freebird said:

James, beautiful ship! Just one question - what's the length of the hull without the bowsprit? TIA!

 

Best Regards .... Rick

The hull is 725mm long. 
Overall length is 1175mm. Height is 745mm and width is 350mm.

I've not photographed the planks or dowels. You'll all know what those will look like. 😉

Ok, here are the parts sheets. I've not gone to town on these too much as they won't be used in the manual. These are just to satisfy everyone's curiosity. 

1 minute ago, Ronald-V said:

Will be fun to see this one come alive!

I'm just this minute sifting through the sheets and splitting off the duplicates. 

Surprise will be just beautiful. The etched gun deck gives a good idea of relatively narrow she was. 

1: 64 HMS Surprise prototype build - Vanguard Models

Before we can tuck into a plate of 'eggs 'n bacon' next year, we have the not very small matter of HMS Surprise to attend to. We believe this kit will make many, many folk very happy indeed! There's been so much interest in this that it was about time we saw it released in typical VM style. This is the build which will feature in the instruction manual and here you'll see mostly images that will appear there, plus maybe a few other less polished photos which show the clutter that I really surround myself in!

Here's an in-progress profile that Chris is currently working on, of Surprise. This will feature in the plans, along with a whole ton of extra folding paper for you to study.

This extremely heavy box arrived about an hour ago. This isn't the complete kit either, but there are two sets of everything to build the hull up to and including planking. Chris has used an Indy box to ship this in, so those of you who've built Indy, will recognise this behemoth of a packing box. So far weighing in at around 12kg.

A statement? A fact?

Definitely one of those.

I'll shortly be digging through all of the contents and doing a few iPhone photos for this build log.

...coming very soon 🤪

Wow, this is a blast from the past!

I had a few days before Surprise rocked up here, so thought I'd spend some hours on the pretty little Avos kit from Master Korabel. The first three photos were left over and unpublished from 2019, so I're resurrected them here. The first pic shows the hawse bolster/cheek and metal tube temporarily fitted over the newly installed wales. Everything on this gorgeous little kit, fits like a dream. In this photo, the prow is temporarily fitted too so I could accurately fit the wales and gunwale.

You can now see that gap between the deck and the bulwarks. That's all fine...it's meant to be like that. The waterway margin plank is then assembled and profiled before gluing into place and completing the look. 

Deck fittings are quite traditional in construction. The companionway is built from interlocking sections and then sheathed in pear. The fit is just perfect. Grates are made from combs etc. and the stack is made from brass tube that needed cutting and setting at 90 degrees. 

The keel is now properly cleaned up and glued to the hull. 

And here we see the work, again, before Avos goes into hiatus while Surprise takes the bench. All the deck fittings aren't glued on at this stage. You can also see that I fitted the belaying pin racks. The external channels are only test fitted at the moment.

Until next time 😁

Don't worry about it. You were perfectly happy until you saw that.

I'm definitely not bothered about that change.

On 7/28/2025 at 12:16 AM, hmcarlin said:

Any further progress on this boat?  Mine is on order, and love picking up tips from a master!

Not yet. Work will resume on this after HMS Surprise.