Tillsbury

Magnificent, thank you Daniel. I have a few bits of wood here I'll try knocking it out with, and report back with progress. I need to do the topgallant masts too anyway.

Thanks. I can probably guesstimate most of it because it will naturally be a scaled down version of the main and fore topmasts, but it would be nice if someone had the actual part there just to confirm. Also it's not like the odd millimetre is going to be critical here.

If you look at the very first photo in the thread you can see that this chain/cable doesn't go to the deckhouse at all -- it goes through it to a vertical post and then on to another set of posts at the other end of the boat and back down to deck level. The deckhouse is just built around it.

Just getting started here, but I've found these two prints very useful for my 1:100 Victory and of course they could always be rescaled if desired. The prints have integral supports and a base plate including something to hold it by. You can just load the STL directly to your printer's software and hit the print button. They have 20 of each in the file, you will need two of each (which you could easily print in one go). Set your printer to a fairly high resolution, at least 0.05mm layer hight. The photo shows a part-used stack of each, printed on a very very cheap very old printer, so you should get better results than me. And a close-up of the parts installed and with a first coat of primer. Hope they're useful to someone... Rigols curly.stl Rigols round.stl

Which leads me to my first plea for help (of presumably many to come). I seem to be missing the mizzen topmast, part 422. I cannot for the life of me see where it's gone (and it's not on the sprue where it should be). It's not a crisis, as it seems to me that given it's a single-part mast it won't be suitably strong and it would be better to fettle a better one from wooden dowel anyway. But I don't have the template now. Could anyone with a not-yet-assembled Heller model please be kind enough to give me the dimensions of this part?

I'm undecided on the way to do the rigging, and although I won't be rigging every invisible cannon I will certainly attempt some of the more visible ones. To this end I've been working on parameterised blocks with the 3d printer, and seeing how easy very small blocks are to thread. The ones in this picture are 2mm and 3.5mm overall, each with 0.8mm holes (I could go smaller but this makes life much easier to thread). Also on this picture examples of the two types of rigols, which are about 13mm overall. Shout if you want me to upload the .stl files.

And realising that there are times when things need to sit and dry, and times when you need a change, I am also starting work in parallel on the masts such that I can get them all completed and partially rigged by the time they're needed. The lower main mast has a void in the middle, which is just over 4mm wide and 11.5" long. Gentlemen of a certain age will immediately recognise this as Meccano part 13 (11.5" axle rod). And sure enough, it fits perfectly. With the aid of a few layers of masking tape at various points down its length to force the plastic to be spaced evenly from the axle, I used CA to add the axle to one side and flooded the inside with further CA, then glued the two halves together. The result is a decently hefty mast with excellent stiffness and nice and straight (as long as you start with a straight Meccano axle). The foremast takes a slightly shortened one, the mizzen needs it somewhat ground down to 3mm at one end, and the fore and main topmasts find an ideal centre in the axle from part 198 (the hinged flat plate), which again many sheds must have a surplus of. And even the bowsprit perfectly takes a 5.5" rod. Everything nice and solid to start with. The colour was picked out as a fairly muted pale yellow ochre, which I like at the moment but it will remain to be seen whether it works with whatever yellow I end up with on the hull.

Hello all, I might as well take the plunge since receiving this model unexpectedly for my birthday. Still at a very very early stage and experimenting with many new-to-me techniques and tools. Here's where the hull is so far... The plan for this build is to be relatively out-of-box with a few improvements here and there as they become obvious, and a particular emphasis on the rigging. I'm trying to keep away from absolutely bonkers modifications principally to avoid it taking too many years to complete. But given my tendency to want to go over-the-top it'll be a constant battle to moderate the plans somewhat. For the overall look, I'm going for the no-Admiral-entrance look (i.e. as per model). Given that the vast majority of the contemporary pictures of Victory don't show it, I'm tempted to avoid it (and this wins for simplicity too). I'll not be going pink, but neither do I like the extremely bright yellows, so something in between is probably where it'll end up. Yet to be determined I guess. I have softened much of the fake wood grain, and removed the lumpy rigols and replaced them with home-made 3d printed ones, which I'm happy with at the moment. I did order some from Dafi but he appears to be on holiday at the moment so thought it would be easier to just get on with printing some. Haven't yet decided what to do about the "closed/fake" ports, nor the doorway at the stern. I have gone ahead thickening the hull around the ports on the middle gun deck but am still waiting on supplies of 4mm styrene to do the lower deck and more 1mm sheet to line the upper. First coat of primer on just to see where the imperfections are and decide whether there's still too much wood grain. It's not as bad as the photo in real life, as this is fairly ruthlessly lit from the keel.

Hello Isaac, I did exactly the same thing as you just a couple of weeks back! Well, my wife decided she could buy the half-price model kit for my birthday. Naturally, the discount is imaginary as I've already spent several times that amount on updating my tools and equipment, but that's how modelling works! Do not, whatever you do, look at the thread on here of Dafi's build of this kit, as you will end up so far down a rabbit-hole you may never come out...

Thank you very much for these files, they have printed very well and look superb. I printed them vertically although they do still need supports to ensure that the base adheres as there are tiny rivets on the "bottom". But avoiding any supports on the sides of the barrel makes for a much easier time at 1:100.

Welcome! You should try New Zealand. On the other hand, I guess China is slightly nearer and that's where pretty much all of it comes from anyway. Model shops have long been places that wildly overcharge for average-quality gear for the most part.

Welcome, and please do start a build log even though you've already started. Are you planning to paint at all or leave as wood? Although I'm nowhere near the rigging stage with mine I am looking forward to that as a highlight. To me, that's the main point of modelling a ship...

Thanks, but it doesn't look like there are any STL files there. Is it that they can't be uploaded, or just that no-one does?

Thanks for all the welcomes, everyone. Stuart, do you know of a repository of parts anywhere? So much dross is on the usual generic 3d printing sites, it would be good to have a place such as on here where Victory parts could be shared...

Hello all, I'm new here too. Just received the 1:100 Heller Victory set for my birthday, rather surprisingly. This of course has the huge advantage of being the perfect excuse if my wife thinks I'm spending too much time modelling 😀 I did do some N-scale railway modelling twenty years ago, but otherwise not a great deal since childhood. There seems to be a pretty large rabbit-hole dug by Dafi and others that I'm exploring, and I'm waiting for delivery of all sorts of tools and bits and pieces because my stash is all over 20 years old and spread around various boxes by house moving etc. The expectation is that this is likely to take a number of years, as I'm not going to be building it "straight from the box" but will be aiming for something about half-way between a box build and what better modellers have achieved. And I have a family to look after not to mention many other projects on the go. While I'm waiting for parts I've been having an initial play with 3d printing, trying to develop appropriate blocks for a start. Please excuse the crummy string from the box but I guess it has its uses even though it's oversize. It's probably about 7" circumference scale so shouldn't be what's around a 9" block (0.6mm in 3mm block). But as a sailor I am keen to attempt to get the look of the rigging and splicing better over time. I don't sail traditional boats but have been watching things like the rebuild of Tally Ho online and that kind of thing has always appealed. Would love to hear from anyone either locally, or building the same kit, or to share hints and files for 3d printing, or any other reason I guess... Tillsbury