Kevin-the-lubber

Oh dear, Henry, I have a horrible feeling you are going to be the cause of many more fretful evenings for me. I’m still in the early stages of my 1:100 victory, which is supposed to be the only major kit I’ll ever do, but the Soliel in your hands is becoming a siren call. Please keep posting, I’ve only grazed your log but, if I am foolish enough to buy this soon, I’ll be using your log to guide me through.

William, are you still out there? If so I’d really appreciate some detail on your copper patina on the hull. I’ve still got a ways to go before I start painting mine but that’s exactly the colour and look I’m aiming at, so any info you can give would be appreciated.

Hi Mark, I probably will do that, but retrospectively, as and when (maybe more if and when) I complete a stage, so that even if I never finish the model or have another lengthy hiatus, the “chapter” itself is complete. I’ve always felt a bit guilty that I started a log on Pete Coleman’s site but then quickly faded away. On that topic, does anyone know if it’s possible to still access Pete’s forum, there were some wonderful contributions, Maurice’s work springs to mine - obviously Dafi’s is easily found here.

Now that I'm a member proper I wanted to post a more comprehensive reply on this, for the benefit of those who may not yet have started on hull thickening. Firstly let me correct the sizes I gave above - in fact I used 3mm, 2mm & 1mm respectively, approx. metric measurements as evergreen comes in imperial. I'm attaching some photos here to illustrate what I have to say. One photo shows how I thickened the port side, by 'boxing in' around each gun port. I copied this idea from somewhere though that builder probably did it much more tidily. My thinking was that it wouldn't show from the outside so the scruffiness wouldn't matter. I'll come back to that presently. After creating the boxes around each port I then lined the inside of each one with 0.5mm evergreen, cutting strips from a sheet and leaving it long on the inside, trimming off the excess later; there's a photo of this. I tried to cut the liners as accurately as possible, to avoid filling and filing later, and set the liners depth in the port by eye. This whole process was, to be honest, very, very tedious. In some ways it led to me parking the project for 5 or 6 years, because by the end of it I'd realised there was a better way, thought I ought to start all over again and re-do the port side, but couldn't face it. I even bought a second kit cheaply on ebay a few months later but still couldn't find the motivation! (I started again in January this year, why is another story for another day, but in any case with a strategy - this should be pleasure, not torture, so I stop when I'm getting bored and only pick up again when I'm in the mood. If it takes me another 10 years to complete it, fine.) Another photo shows how I 'strip thickened' the starboard hull. In this instance I set the long evergreen strips on the two lower decks perpendicular to the horizontal rather than flat against the hull, so the sills and lintels would be true to real life, otherwise it'll look weird and there'll be hardly any space for the guns to poke through. I haven't worried about that on the upper deck as, at 1mm thickness, it doesn't really have that effect and a little filing before lining sorts out the top. I then (obviously) added the short verticals either side but didn't worry about precision as any gaps here are very easy to fill later. For the liners, this time I used 0.5mm evergreen of three different widths, 4mm, 3.2mm and 2.mm respectively, setting the back edge in line with the back of the thickener and tweaking once all four pieces of the liner are in place and the glue is still wet. I also didn't try so hard to cut the liners accurately, close enough is good enough, and have used vallejo filler to seal the corners and joints. This has been a much, much better method than that I used for the port side. It still takes a lot of time, I'd guess 10 or 20 hours including filing off the poorly moulded liners and tidying up, but the end result looks more like it's part of the ship than boxing in. Incidentally, I've found that vallejo is the best filler for that particular job as it has a very fine nozzle and you can run the filler into the corners quite nicely. It is also very easy to scrape and chisel rather than file off the excess, giving sharper lines. To return to the scruffy port side. Having dry fitted I can see that the boxes on the upper deck will be visible so I'll need to tidy these up and make them look the same as the starboard side. To me at least the starboard side looks great through the deck, the port side dreadful. I suspect other builders would have known this beginners error from the outset, and I'd point you to foxy's build on this site (7732-hms-victory-by-foxy-heller) as an example of a really tidy piece of work. Of course I only discovered that last night! Note though what I said in my original post about wide evergreen fouling the line of some holes.

Lovely detail, especially the sails, I’ll need to read your log to find out how you made these.

Wow, That’s amazing progress in such a short period of time. Correct me if I’m wrong but it looks like you’re building straight out of the box I.e. no mods. I’d love to see pics as you go along as I have a sneaking feeling that all the labour I’m putting in to thicken the hulls, recreate the sidesteps etc isn’t worth tuppence unless you’re up close and a modeller yourself.

The thickness of the hull is thickest at the bottom, tapering as it goes up. I think I used something like 4mm on the lower deck, 3mm for the middle and 2mm for the upper. If memory serves, I learned (the hard way of course) that it’s better to use thin evergreen e.g. 4mm x 2mm, 3 x 2, 2 x 2, than square because if it’s thick you interfere with the tiny holes for the gunport hatches and when you drill through Sod’s law says you’ll hit the edge of the evergreen on occasion, break the drill bit or find that it fouls other parts. Thickening the hull has been, for me, the most tedious task, because each port is unique so I couldn’t find a way of “mass production” here and wish I’d known the above from the outset.