Vane

Yes I have seen the groupbuilds and they are impressive, but I think i will stick to the kits for a long while. Besides from my Snake, Granado and Diana, I have alot on my wishlist: Speedy, Pegasus, Agamemnon, Alert... and rumours of upcoming Bristol, Bellona and a 1:64 Victory. Probably enough for a lifetime !

Yes as I understand alot of the ships in Nelson Navy was designed by him when he was working for them 15-20years ago such as the Agamemnon etc. He also worked for Amati/Victory and designed Lady Nelson, Pegasus and Vanguard. And we are all waiting for the masterpiece HMS Victory in 1:64 to be released. Now with Vanguard models we can expect him designing a whole new line of 1:64 Royal navy ships. Just looking at the Alert and upcoming Speedy its clear that these brings the kitmodels to a complete new level of details and design for making it more easy for the modeller. Caldercraft really need to start upgrading their old kits if they are not going to be outrunned by the new competition. Nelson Navy was a gamechanger 20 years ago. I recently bought the amazing Diana kit. Its one of the best looking models in my view, but opening the box you realize that plans, instructions, precuts, etc is very poor compared to newer kits. Even though you are building an advanced model, there is no reason to let the modeller basically scratchbuild alot of parts and guess the details of the design. Their newer kits such as the Granado shows how much kitdesigns deveped between 1995 and 2005. And now we are 15years more into the future.

Where in the world does boxwood grow?

Perhaps its him and Chuck that reminded the old companies that they cant just sit back and rely on old successes... From one point of view there is still enough intersting kits out there which i will never be able to find the time to complete. But new kits kind of make me even more interested in this hobby. I am sure it will inspire me to build more. Caldercraft was a real booster when they created the Nelson line. Now Chris is taking the next step into a New era of kits. Royal Navy ships in 1/64 From 1750- 1815 is what i am looking for.

Thanks for the help and advice!

This info is more than 10years old. It was released when they were still developing the Nelsons Navy series. The strange thing is that they didnt remove it when the production stopped. We will see if these projects are still valid. They started to develop the HMS Surprise after the Master and commander movie. At that time it could had become a very popular kit, but maybe it is different now.

My Victory is 25yr old and still unfinished so not an unusual situation. Yes agree, its meditation and I have this personal thing that I usually turn off my phone, put on some favourite music and I often smoke a cigarr at the same time as I am building! Then we all have different strategies on what we build and to what quality and this one is so much more about quality than finilizing quickly. Much of the astonishing parts of your work wont even be visable in the end. But of Course, u will know that its there on the inside.

I am not sure how old this update is from their webpage, but i didnt see it last time i visited. Looks like exciting news! *Latest News* Recent developments: Regular visitors here will be aware that there have been few updates made to our site for some time. Our recent program of expansion has put severe demands on our time but we have been able to benefit from the recent economic downturn and, while many businesses have downscaled, we have successfully taken advantage of various opportunities, investing in and expanding our business through the introduction of new products and adding to our range of distributed product lines. The weak pound has also resulted in a surge of overseas orders for our own manufactured kits such as Nelsons Navy, Heritage Series and Caldercraft and it has been a constant struggle to increase our output to meet demand. In fact, the past 18-24 months has seen the greatest rate of expansion of the business since we began over 20 years ago! We have invested in more manufacturing equipment and taken on new staff and, as a result, we are slowly getting ahead of things again. Regular customers will be pleased to know that we are now preparing releases for some of the new kits that have been held back recently. We are also hoping to get back to more regular updating of our website as we have literally hundreds of new products to add. In the mean time, our current pricelist is available to download in PDF format from the 'Downloads' section of the website.

All modelship I do in the "Nelson navy series" have a mixture of black and white/natural rigging thread. So is there any basic rules to follow here on when and where to use the different colours?

This must be one of the more serious and outstanding builds of the forum. How many years do you think it will take in total?

OMG... definitely my next buy!

The adandoned ones usually are short and get quickly way back in the flow. But they bumped now and then by a like or a comment. But it would definitely be useful in buildlog section with some kind of system. Outstanding buildlogs deserve to get more visability and they will also inspire us avarage builders to make more efforts 🙂

Just an idea, but it would require some work from the moderators. Why not simply add the Word "Abandoned" in the title of buildlogs that havent moved for a couple of years? Especially those that are in the early stages. If the builder starts adding photos again it is easy to remove. Old buildlogs can definitely be a great source of information even though they are abandoned. However, I usually search for specific kitmodels and its frustrating when you have go through lots of threads where u see the box and some bulkheads and thats it. Another way to "promote" active and really impressive buildlogs and make them more visable would be to have some kind of system where moderators add a goldstar or something to outstanding buildlogs. I would immediately nominate "HMS Jason" by Beefwellington and "Granado" by RMC. But i know there are many that I have not discovered simply because they get burried in number of threads.

When i see this question i start wondering: 1) Why start scratchbuilding if u dont have/can afford tools? There are numerous of kits out there designed so you dont need to make hundreds of pieces yourself. Scratchbuilding is very much about extreme precision so you really need tools and even multiple saws to do different things. 2) Are powertools really that expensive today? I am surprised how many options there are out there today in various priceranges. Proxxon makes alot of highquality tools in various style.

Thanks for the update Chris. Yes, its fully understandable that you want to start small and gradually increase. Vanguard models is definitely one of the more interesting model companies these days when many dont do any product development at all. So keep up the good work and we definitely appreciate your updates. Next kit i order will of Course be one of yours.

Is it just me or anybody else waiting for updates like a kid outside Toys R Ur? 😉

Finally, inner walls done! Now on to a very delicate part of the process which will really be visable once the kit is finished: finetuning the gun ports and adding wales. So i better dont screw this up.

Iphone... who could had guessed… :-P Well there are alot of choices as you say and I have also noticed the red/yellow inner walls which I thing looks really awesome. Is that something that you came up with on your own? Black frames instead of just plain walnut or red is also abit special.

Some kits come with copper others with white or black paint for the hull under the waterline. Considering that copper is an expensive material i would guess that only the more advanced ships got plates in reality? My Granado kit didnt come with copper, but would it be completely wrong to add it instead of the White paint?

Anyone knows how this should be done in a correct way and not just by preference?

Amazing work and also photography. It must be abit tight to squeeze in a DSLR with a macro lens inside the hull. What are you shooting with?

Thanks! It worked :-)

Here are some of the better buildlogs I have found on HMS Snake. There are quite many in the MSW overview but many abandoned so my advice is to check out these first: 1) Almost finished build by Beef Wellington - Unfortunately put on hold as he is building the HMS Jason 2) Almost finished build by Jim Smiths - Great build 3) Almost finished build by drtrap - Great build 4) Recently started build by duncbe - Early in the process, but really good planking!

There are some details on my ships that I really have a hard time to decide if/what colour it should be painted in. And when i look into various buildlogs, people seem to do it very differently. One is for example the Canon wheels. Should it be no colour, black or the same as the carriage? Do anyone has some guidance rules? My models are Granado, Diana and Victory but I guess this will always be än issue to decide.

I think we are all at various level of craftmanship, builds for various reasons and aims for various quality and can devote various of time to a Project. Most important, considering how much time this hobby requires, is that you enjoy yourself and make your model good enough for you. Personally, I am here to learn more and improve my skills and I also enjoy seeing projects developing. I rather look at the buildlogs that are active and quality is just one parameter that catch my eye when deciding what to follow.