Jonathan_219

Thought I'd show what I came up with, used Victory yellow for the sideboards and stained the risers (walnut) with the lightest stain I had. I also added a 1x1mm strip on the front of each sideboard as I didn't like the look of the grooves for the risers showing.

Thanks Trevor, I'm running through some ideas and will make a decision soon and move forward.

Trying to determine what to do with the finish on the first companionway ladder I'm coming to in my Victory build. Google AI says a combination of the black and yellow, while in the pictures and videos from current Victory it looks more like a natural light brown, like varnished pine but I can't find anything with great lighting so I'm not sure. Going for the Trafalgar look and if anyone has thoughts I'd appreciate it. Also considering whether all the ladders are the same. Slightly side note, the current Victory companionways look a little different from the Caldercraft kit, I'm thinking that's for the safety of visitors but I would think the colors would still be right.

Thanks Trevor, I've been leaning to following the current retrofit but some confirmation of this thinking is nice. I really wish I could visit her but that's just not in the cards right now so I have to settle with pictures and videos. Thanks again.

Building the Caldercraft Victory and while the instructions say to paint the inside lips of the gunports the same color as the adjacent hull the pictures of current Victory have those lips painted the red/orange ochre same as the interior of the gunport. I'm going for a "best I can do" recreation of Trafalgar Victory and wonder what the current thinking is on those gunport lids. Both Caldercraft and the HMS Victory foundation seem to have done a lot of research so I'm not sure why they disagree, of course it could have been both of those ways at some time in it's history so I'd like to get as close as possible to Trafalgar. Appreciate any thoughts anyone has on the matter.

Follow Up: I got the Vallejo Gloss Medium (70.470) and I added 3 drops of it to a brand new bottle of Vallejo Black (70.950) and it gives me what I was looking for which is just the slightest bit of gloss on the, to my eyes, very matte Vallejo Black, it's still quite matte just not as much as before. For me this is a very simple way to getting some control on the amount of gloss on the paint I use. For some reason too little or too much gloss just doesn't look right to me so I'm happy that there are ways to adjust the gloss. I tried taking a picture of the normal and gloss-added black paint tests on some wood next to each other but I just can't get a picture that shows the admittedly subtle difference. Thanks for all the ideas and suggestions, I may end up coming back to them but for now I think adding the gloss medium gets me what I wanted.

Thanks for the info, I really like Vallejo paint too, I'd just like to be able to adjust the finish some and hoping that's possible. I have seen the black gloss Vallejo, I'm just thinking that it's going to be too glossy. If flat matte is 0 and full gloss is a 10 then I'm looking for a something around a 3 on that scale of glossiness.

I'm working on getting the colors and paints selected for my Caldercraft Victory. I like the Vallejo Black (70.950) but it's a little too matte for my taste. I found a Vallejo product that appears to add some gloss finish Vallejo Gloss and have ordered some but wondered if anyone has used this or a similar product and has any tips or suggestions. I'm hoping I can somehow measure how much I add so I can replicate the same finish if one bottle of paint doesn't finish the job. I have the Admiralty paint set for the Victory but the Dull Black provided is a little too glossy for me so I'm hoping there's a way to gloss up the Vallejo Black a little bit. If that doesn't work is there a way to find a black with the finish I like without having to buy a sample of a bunch of blacks and try them out. I also wondered about mixing some of the Vallejo and Admiralty blacks but I'm concerned that duplicating that mixture and getting the results the same could be difficult. So far I've just been testing on scrap wood to try and get the color/finish combination I want and the finish is almost harder to get right than the color. I think I've found a yellow I like and hopefully the gloss additive will work on it as well even though it's not Vallejo. If you're curious, here's the color I picked for Victory Yellow: Victory Yellow, The samples I've done have turned out a tiny bit darker than the sample on my monitor but I think it's going to work. Any thoughts or tips on adjusting the finish gloss/satin/matte on acrylic model paint would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, I've learned so much as I've been doing this ship. I wish I could go back and fix the mistakes.

Lower Stays and Shrouds: Finished the lower and futtock shrouds plus a few miscellaneous pieces of rigging to break things up some. Will do the upper shrouds next and will continue only serving the forward most shroud to protect it from sails rubbing. Will probably do the ratlines once all the shrouds are in place. Still trying not to tie off lines as long as possible to make any adjustments easier but I think I'll need to tie off the bowsprit rigging pretty soon just to tidy things up for rigging the foremast. Started reading "Rigging of Ships in the Days of the Spritsail Topmast" by R C Anderson and I probably should have started this book with the kit just to give myself time to digest all the information in it but I'll try to focus on the areas in the book that correspond to what I'm working on and try to rig as authentically as possible. There's still a lot of guesswork involved but can always fall back on the plans (for better or worse) if needed.

My Solution Well here is what I've come up with, not thrilled but it's ok. If the one cross piece didn't have the slight curl to it I'd be really happy but I think I will leave it. Thinking about this I had two factors that drove the construction, the first was that I needed to use rings to tie it to the futtock staves since I didn't feel there was enough space between the shrouds to add more fairly thick ropes and the second was I needed to construct as much of it as possible off the ship as working in that space is pretty tricky for me. The two main pieces are Syren .88mm dark brown, served and then seizing the rope around the ring, the inner length was 40mm end of ring to end of ring and the outer length was 45mm, longer because of the spread of the shrouds as they lay on top of each other coming off the mast. The two cross ropes were Syren .76mm dark brown, served and then seized over the first ropes. Each was 13mm. The four cross ropes were Syren .30mm and seized to the rings left quite long to aide in putting them in place once the main piece was attached to the futtock staves. Installing it was easier than I expected, I just pulled one corner up at a time and then put the four cross ropes in once it was in place. I expect the next one to be better but it will be a while before I get to them so I thought I'd post with the first one. Thanks again for all the great input.

Thanks for all the great information. I'm starting to understand why great reference books are so highly valued, I need to start adding more of those to my library. I have a lot to consider and the illustrations from Álbum del Marqués de la Victoria seem especially pertinent. It seems obvious that the complete lack of anything resembling catharpins in the plans is a serious error and I'll need to put something there and I'll probably try to do something that replicates this detail but I haven't worked out how I'll do that yet. I'll post a picture when I come up with and install a solution.

Not even sure that Catharpins (or Cat-harpins) is the correct term for what I'm asking but it's the only name I could find for the rigging that goes between the port and starboard futtock staves for what I assume is to counteract the pull from the futtock shrouds outward on the shrouds and stabilize the upper shroud area. My concern is that my plans for San Felipe show nothing at all for anything between the two futtock shrouds and research online hasn't given me much guidance other than they grew less necessary as stronger materials were used in construction. My gut tells me there would have been something performing this function on an early 18th century Spanish ship but would appreciate any thoughts or information on their usage or what type might have been used in this period. I've seen several examples of different types online but nothing I can tie to a ship of this period and nationality. I'd like to add them if they'd have existed on a ship like this. My Revenge build had them and looking at The Anatomy of Nelson's Ships I see that Victory had them and all the pictures I see of replicas show something there, so it makes sense to me that San Felipe which falls between the two in time would have had something as well.

Foremast Shrouds and Deadeyes: I served the entire first shroud on each side and then only served down to where the futtock will be on the other shrouds. I used the wire spacer technique for the deadeyes on each shroud with a little variation. Since the upper part of the foremast weren't glued yet I was able to remove the shrouds even with the loop served at the top so I would put on the shroud, attach the wire spacer to the lower and upper deadeyes and then pull the shroud around the upper deadeye and then use a clip to hold the shroud in place around the deadeye. I could then remove the shroud from the mast and work on serving the three areas around the shroud to affix it to the deadeye and then repeat the process for the second shroud of the pair. Once I had all the deadeyes attached on both sides I added the ropes to the deadeyes and started tightening everything up slowly. Some minor adjustments in the deadeye position could be made by adding more or less tension which pulls it down or lets it up slightly. One thing I noticed as I tightened was the tendency of the upper deadeyes to twist as tension was added so I started each deadeye pair by putting the rope through the first hole in the upper deadeye and and then pulling the rope to about the tension I thought would be on the shroud when in place. This pulling would spin the deadeye a couple of times and I'd hold the deadeye in this position when threading the rope through each deadeye. The deadeyes would start out pointing fore or aft with no tension but as tension was added the deadeye tried to spin back into the correct position so I was able to get most of them to point correctly without additional tweaking. I've tied off the deadeyes but still left the remaining rope in case I need to adjust later. One of my biggest issues on my first rigging attempt was getting a rope in place and perfect and putting a knot in it that pretty much prevented me for adjusting it later so this time I'm trying to leave everything possible adjustable. This results in a lot of thread everywhere but I'm pretty confident that I'll be able to find the correct thread if I want to adjust later and I'm not really sure when I'll start putting in more permanent knots and cleaning up all the loose thread. I believe I'm going to do the mainmast stays next, for some reason I find the stays and deadeyes really enjoyable.

One of the things that's the hardest for me to do is to tear out something that I've finished, especially if I think it's pretty well done but I had to do that. After serving the stays with Gutermann Mara 696 (Dark Brown) I decided that I would order some dark brown rope from Syren to do the shrouds and as I read what I could find about how much of the shroud to serve I decided, at least to try, serving the first shroud all the way and only serving the other shrouds a little down past the futtock. When I received the rope from Syren (beautiful rope BTW) it was a little darker than the Gutermann 696 I had been using to serve and Chuck suggested I try Gutermann 682 (Darker Brown) so I ordered some of that and it's perfect match for the Syren dark brown rope so I can serve and stop without a color change. But that left my two completed foremast stays served in the 696 and after much foot dragging I went ahead and took them out. I guess when you're learning that tearing out something is just something that happens in the process. Replacing the stays turned out to be less work than I thought and I don't think I could have ever gotten used to having different colors on the serving in different parts of the ship. So now the foremast stays are back in, and I've loose rigged the rest of the bowsprit rigging and the foremast crowsfoot. I'm going to put in the mainmast stays next and I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to attach the main foremast spar first or do the foremast shrouds first. Either way something is in the way when you do the other thing but on Revenge I attached all the spars and had all their attachments done first and it seemed to work out pretty well. I'm also working on the footropes and seeing what I can do with them to make them lay in a way that looks natural. I'm trying thin gauge wire based on something I found online and stopped that for a while to work on the stays and bowsprit rigging. It seems everything I learn leads to even more questions as now I'm wondering since the stays and shrouds are dark brown, simulating the tar used I believe, why wouldn't the ropes that wrap the masts be dark brown too? My foremast is wrapped in black and so far I don't think I'm willing to go back that far but things like this are things I need to figure out before my next build.