Patrick Haw

Hello Kevin,

It's been a while since I've logged in here and here I find your amazing CAF Enterprise. What a fantastic job you are doing with her! 

My darling wife of 38 years passed away earlier this year and I've found that staying busy and focusing my mind on projects is the best way of dealing with my loss. My Caldercraft Victory is perhaps 80% complete and I've been working on her rigging and found that I hate doing it, so I'm setting it aside. I've been thinking about going over to the dark side, but don't have the skills or the tools to scratch build, so doing this POF Enterprise is very appealing...and there's no rigging to do! I have her in my cart at CAF and I'm ready to hit the button on it. I will follow your build very closely as I wade into the project!

Best wishes,

Patrick

Gil,

Don't sell yourself short! Even though you completed your Victory so long ago, it's still the hallmark of how to build this model. I'm on the standing rigging of my Victory at the moment (yes, it's taken me forever!) and I have your build log open in my shipyard to guide me all the time.

Best wishes,

Patrick

Nothing posted lately, but I've been busy working on gun ports and finally have finished them all.  As always, there's touch up here and there to do, but I think I'm pretty much finished with the hull now and can move on. Started tapering the bowsprit today!

Yves,

Fantastic work! You are the one who is basically writing the manual for this model. It looks like the manual from CAF is comprised entirely of CAD drawings, so your log here with pictures, tips, and hints will be invaluable for future builders.  Well done!

Patrick

Yves,

I am so glad I found your Bellona build log. She looks great and you are doing a fantastic job. Your explanations of difficulties encountered and you solutions to them will be invaluable to future builders of this great model. I will be following closely and have a feeling that the CAF Bellona will be on my wish list when I get my Victory done!

Patrick

I'm torn here, Kevin. As much as I want to see your progress with Enterprise, you AV is coming along beautifully. Oh well, I'll take what I can get from your wonderful work!

Patrick

Glad you got it sorted out. Your planking is looking good. Once you get your first planking on and filled and faired, the second planking is a breeze...well, sort of!

Hello Glenn,

I just found your Sphinx build log and really enjoyed looking through it. I'm so sorry that it went a bit pear-shaped on you, but I'm sure you'll recover and end up with a beautiful model.

Patrick

Kevin,

I just came upon your HMS Enterprise build and spent a very pleasant couple of hours going through it.  It's fantastic and I'm impressed that you took on a challenge like this. You've done a great job. As others have said, don't let trolls on Facebook get to you...most of them probably couldn't glue two toothpicks together. I'm looking forward to you getting back on this build and seeing your results.

Patrick

Wow Kevin! Just found your AV build log. First off, I'm glad it's not just me who leaves a build sitting to one side for a few years! Second. I love how your AV looks, especially all the brass work and turnbuckles. So glad I'm back on board in MSW and finding such great build logs as this one. Looking forward to following you.

Patrick

Hello Graham,

I just went through your build log again and your work and precision and innovative use of tools and jigs is impressive. But no new posts in over a year? Please tell me your Victory continues to progress and I'd love to see more of how she's turning out. (Of course, I'm one to talk! I vanished off this site for a couple of years before returning to my build!)

Patrick

Well, we're moving along now with gun port lids. I now have 15 of them under various stages of assembly/painting. Once these are finished and installed I only have seven more to build...whoopee! As each lid is custom-built and fitted to its respective gun port (to allow for building up wales and slight variations in size) I number them and then place them on sticky side up masking tape so they don't fly away or get mixed up once they're painted inside and out. I use the sticky side up masking tape on the painting bench too so the lids don't get blown away by air pressure from the air brush!

Patrick

We grow...in more ways than one.  Just for laughs here's a picture of my entire workshop/workbench when I started this project so long ago, followed by a couple of more pics of what it looks like today. I need a bigger garage!  Mind you, when I see some other builders' custom-built workshops I salivate...and then I think of Gil Middleton who built his amazing Victory on a table top in a condominium!

Patrick

Lovely work Sjors. Are you going to copper her? It took me about 2 months to copper my Victory, but at your rate of work you can probably get it done in one weekend!!

Patrick

Progress from the last couple of days. Port side middle gun deck port lids are all installed. I started out with the gun port lids building one at a time, then 3 at a time, now I'm juggling 8 at a time and it goes much quicker. As is always the case with the repetitive jobs on the build, you start of shaky and get better as you go along. When you finally get good at it, you've pretty much finished the job and don't need those skills any more!

Patrick

Hello Sjors,

So glad to find you're still here, and especially excited that you're tackling Caldercraft's Victory. As always, your work is fantastic...and fast! I just got back to my Victory after a couple of years hiatus and have started posting to my log again. Really looking forward to your progress!

Patrick

Welcome to the corps of Caldercraft Victory builders! Looks like you've made a great start...and a long way to go. There will be times when you will want to tear your hair out and wonder what you were thinking...but be patient and have fun, you'll get there with something to be very proud of in the end!

Patrick

Well, it has been a long, long time. My resolution to get back to Victory lapsed for a couple of years and it stayed wrapped in plastic.  In June this year I had a sort of epiphany moment following a life-threatening illness and surgery and I resolved to get back to the build...and to finish it!  I've been working on it almost every day since July and am closing in on finishing the hull and just need to to finish the gun port lids, then it'll be on to masts and rigging.  A few pictures of where it stands right now...and more to come soon!

Hello David,

So good to see you back in the shipyard.  You've long been one of my inspirations when it comes to model building, so I'm hoping that following your Diana build will inspire me to get back on my Victory which has been sitting in mothballs and carefully wrapped in plastic for a couple of years with most of the hull completed.

Cheers,

Patrick

Sjors my friend!   So glad to see you here!  I was away from my Victory for about four years but have just returned to it with a vengeance lately.  I've looked at your Aggie and she's fantastic!  Well done! Now looking at this latest build of yours.  Very, very good as always.  I've missed you and your constant encouragement!   Hope you feel better and will be back at the work bench soon!

Patrick

Away for the weekend and surgery on Monday, so she's back into mothballs again.  Hopefully not for too long and I promise it won't be 4 years this time!

Patrick

I got all the waist ladders in and rigged.  Pretty pleased, although some touch up and finishing to do.  I'm happy and feel like I'm closing in on finishing the quarter deck.  Poop ladder hand rails still to finish but I have the wooden hand rails already done so it's just a question of installation.

3 minutes ago, Shipyard sid said:

Four years on and still no dam dust !!!!!!!

 

Oh there's dust David!  We're just four years older and our eyesight isn't as good!  Just found your Diana log and will be following closely.

Best,

Patrick

Hi Mark,

I've got the canned air spray and it works.  Trouble is that after sitting in mothballs for a few years some of that dust takes some shifting!  I use a medium soft paint brush to stir up the ingrained dust and then blow it away!

Patrick

Hello David!

So glad I found your build log for HMS Diana.  I've been away so long and I've missed so much.  I've always had the idea in my head that I'd like to build Diana at some point (maybe after I finish my Victory in about 20 or 30 years!).  I'm looking forward to following your progress and expect that, as always, I will learn much from you.  As for taking a couple of years off...it's very much underrated but I'm glad that both of us are now back in the shipyard!

Cheers,

Patrick