Peter Small

Hi Eric, outstanding build of Cheerful. I’ve used wire holders when rigging guns etc. I got the tip from Robert29 in his excellent build of Victory. You find his tip at the foot of page 7 when he was rigging his guns. They were easy to find and cheap on Amazon. Maybe a board with appropriately spaced holes to fix the pins would help with the tackle seizings and give you a spare hand to tie knots etc.

Thanks for all the welcome messages. Andrew, please do visit the Venerable, but you need to phone ahead. The centre is open for visitors Monday, Wednesday and Fridays 10am to 2pm. Somebody can take you around if you would like. I have surfed the National Archive and NMM websites to see what I could dig up (the painting was one of the sources), but didn’t use log as a reference. Predecessors have done searches as well and the “model” has been based on Admiralty plans. One of the last modellers to work on the Venerable, Fred Gooch, used to build models for the shipyards. There is a display of his models of ships and buildings in Sunderland - they are simply amazing. I shall also ask my questions in the forum you suggest. Gary - I plan a trip to London to check out Kew and the NMM records as some of the sources don’t upload on the websites. Mark - I appreciate colour hues vary, but if you check the painting below, the Venerable was not painted in “Nelson” colours (as is the current plan) and I would not want such a large model to be incorrectly painted. I look forward to updating those interested in Venerable in the future. Yours aye Peter

Greetings from the North East of England. I have been following many posts and builds on this excellent website for a while now. I suspect like many members, I have reinvigorated my model making skills (such as they are) in the last few years as I approached retirement and can lay the blame on the Covid lockdown in 2020. That was when I pulled out a half built model of HMS Victory from the attic and was able to sit down, undisturbed and complete the build. I am in no way as good a modeller as most on this site, but have built many kits over the years. These have included the Scottish Maid, Clara May, HMS President, The Dallas, HMS Victory (1:98 scale version), Sherbourne, a Viking longboat and most recently HM Brig Badger. I am currently trying to complete the Norske Love which I bought many years ago (pre-laser cutting) with it's sparse instruction manual. Fortunately I have been able to find many helpful bits of advice here. I do now seek help with another project, which has featured in Model Ship World a number of years ago - the 1:10 scale model of HMS Venerable in the Sunderland Maritime Heritage Museum. I have volunteered to help progress this build which seems to be collecting a generation of modellers. We are planning to paint the hull as for the Battle of Camperdown (1797), but I cannot find any guidance on what colours were used. The closest I have got is from paintings of the battle, but as the artist would not have been present, I wonder how accurate the scene is. Maybe some experts in RN ships of the line could tell me or point me in the right direction? Another advance we are planning is the stern decoration. We have the LotS guide book for HMS Bellona, an earlier 74 gun 3rd rate ship, which shows detailed stern decoration. However, HMS Venerable was actually of the Culloden Class so again I wonder if the stern decoration might be different. If anyone is interested in this project, please check out the heritage website below https://www.sunderlandmaritimeheritage.org.uk/?page_id=257