Charter33

Allen is correct, Caldercraft is inaccurate. I couldn't find any definitive information in John McKay's 'Anatomy of the ship' book, Longbridge's 'The Anatomy of Nelson's ships' or any of the other published works I have in my library, so the following is based on personal observation so can only be regarded as a guide for consideration.....
It also assumes that your HMS Vanguard's rudder and that of another vessel of the same scale are reasonably comparable.
Longridge, plate 35, is a good photo of Victory's rudder and the chain in question. Using the thickness of the rudder as an appropriate datum it appears that this is equal to 10 chain links.

Comparing my Victory's rudder to the chain the kit provides shows the model's rudder is equal to 5 links. To be closer to scale accuracy a chain of around 40 links per inch is possibly closer to what it should be.
Graham.

good evening everyone, thank you for comments and likes, and interesting to see new followers to my ever continuing process of purchasing good kits and making them badly lol
day 3
 
ensuring the ends are flat to enable fitting into the chassis

wheels being made up

brass banding around the boiler, was a pain, trying to avoid marking the paint work

running gear

another test fit after chassis paint has dried

here she is for the another day tomorrow, nothing is fitted yet

 

Day 2
the boiler colour was to light and now i have gone too dark, but will stay this way now, after all would not be a Kevin build if i kept to the correct colours
 
chassis, made up of wood, MDF, castings and PE

 
Tender
wheels need the most cleaning up, from the tabs

just a test fit of the wheels, these are still to be made up, boiler in her new colour, and matt black 

 

Part 04
 
The power lines were the next thing to install, then the last cherry branch. I built them in place, so as to avoid breaking them, though I managed to break one of the supports anyway. I made the mistake of pressing on the vertical part of the hanger. A few minutes holding the joint in place while the glue set, fixed it.
 

 
The righthand support has the line attached only on one side, the other is printed with an insulator graphic. This side faces the front.
 


The next step is to assemble one side of the box, the spine and the back book cover. The picture below shows the other half of the base is in place to help- with aligning the two upright sections. Both sides of the base have an upper (printed) plate and a lower un-printed plate. In the picture all four are in place.

 
I glued just the book back to the spine corner first, and then after it set, I glued the base to both. This let me play with the alignment to get that corner right for a little longer.
 
I then glued the front and back edges of the two right hand base pieces. I clamped all the joints I could and let it sit overnight. The width of the two base pieces is slightly different, I assume to help align the two sides later. The lower base piece is a little wider than the top one, so I stuck a piece of the scrap from the MDF between the underside of the track and the lower base piece. This allowed me to clamp the base to the side, without damaging the track.
 
Notice the slot at the front corners of the bases, after the case is assembled, there is a two prong MDF staple that will lock the two base sections together here at the front.
 

 
Here is a closeup off the scrap piece I used to extend the edge of the upper base piece, for clamping. It has a blue lower edge.
 

 
 Next, I installed the tram. The instructions have you do this now. I should have done this before attaching the base to the side, as I had a hard time locating the tabs in the pedestals with the ones in the base. The tram completely blocked viewing this connection. I ended up having to sand the tabs down and add a little extra glue in the sockets, to get this in place.
 

 
I initially clamped the tram to the base, but noticed that it was causing the tram to lean to one side. I removed the clamp, and set the assembly upright on the workbench. I let gravity do its’ thing, overnight.
 
Now it is time to work on the other side of the model. The instructions have you attach the base to the side now. As I am gluing the joints, I will wait until everything is ready to go together to do that. The fitment of the base sections to the side on this assembly is not as tight as the other section, and the “wall” will not stay in place. Glue will be required, so waiting is best for now.
 
I attached the two passengers to the sidewalk block next. You are to glue the sidewalk to the base, at this point, but once again I’m going to wait and glue it in after the case is assembled.
 

 
Here is a picture of the sidewalk/passengers just set in place for now.  At the front bottom edge of the sidewalk, you can just see the scribe mark for locating this assembly.
 

 
Next some scenery elements are installed behind the sidewalk area: a train sign, some grass cutouts, and a couple of white rabbits.
 

 
This is a picture of the MDF staple used to hold the front of the base halves together (Part F13). In the shot you can also see one of the other features of the kit, there are extra copies of many of the smaller parts, in case any fall into the black hole that such so typically disappear into.
 

 
Here is the staple being inserted, and after it was forced flush.

 
I next assembled the book cover side to the base and spine, the top was left unglued, as the overhead light assembly still has to be made. I also glued the sidewalk assembly in at this point.
 

 
I temporarily inserted the top, to hold everything in place. You can see the gaps between the top and the upper edges where the light assembly will go.
 


 
The rest of this build will continue in January, after all the family holiday activities are done.

Part 01
I decided to start on one of a new type of kits I’ve seen. They are book shaped and sized dioramas, with color printed, and laser cut wood parts. Some of the more complex kits have printed paper sheets that you have to cut out the parts from. The idea is to slip the diorama between some real books, on a shelf. They include battery packs for the LEDs, but I will be building a dedicated power supply to power the several kits I have. They are basically the wooden equivalent of the Plastic “Snap Tite” models. They are designed for 14 years and up, so most are not too difficult, but make an interesting, different type of build. All my finished models will be displayed in an enclosed display to keep the dust off them. While they are called “Book End’ kits, they are too light to serve as such, though if you attached them to a horizontal piece that the real books sit on (like a regular book end) they could be used, as such. They would definitely have to have, at least, the shell pieces glued, in this case.
 
This one is one of the less difficult ones. All the model parts are printed on laser cut MDF pieces. Some of the others in my queue involved cutting out and assembling parts printed on paper sheets. Two of these are, a library and a book store, where you have to “assemble” the books by gluing covers on blocks, and building and fabric covering the chairs. None should take over a week. This kit would be a weekend project, maybe one day, if worked on for the whole day. Mine will take a month or so, as I only get a couple of hours at a time, and the Christmas holiday, family time is coming up. As far as I can tell, this kit is out of production, though an, if possible, less detailed and more expensive one is still made.
 
This kit is a train/tram coming out of a cherry tree lined area, with a couple waiting to board at a stop. It is set during the Cherry Blossom Festival time frame. I have a companion kit showing the tram going across a town street. Two interesting notes: Both Japan and China have this type of festival, and the type of cherry tree the festival celebrates produce non-edible fruit!
 
This kit is printed plywood, a battery box for the LEDs, and a mirror at the back to deepen the scene. There is only one tram car, but the placement of the mirror makes it look like there are two cars. Most of the parts are printed on both sides, except where the one side will be hidden.
 
Below are photos of the kit contents. Part 2 will start the construction. I plan to leave the laser cut edges as they come, this is not supposed to be a highly detailed model, just an unusual one.
 
The only complaint I have with the kit, is that all the pictorial instructions are rather crudely printed on one side of two regular size pieces of paper, with small pictures. I scanned them and blew up the graphics, but the blocky graphics are still hard to read sometimes. At least the part numbers are clearly marked on the wood sheets.
 
First are a couple of pictures of the boxed kit, and a finished model.
 

 

 Next are both sides of the plywood sheets. So far in the construction, all the tabs have been keyed so that the parts can’t be assembled incorrectly, and all the tabs and slots have been a tight secure fit, though not so tight as to make assembly overly difficult.
 
Here are both sides of the front and back “covers” of the “book”. I scanned the picture on the front cover, so that I can glue one to the back side, later, if I find I want to.
 

 



 
These are both sides of the other sheets
 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 
Forgot to take a picture of the back side of these sheets, unfortunately.
 

 
This is a picture of the tray with the LED and battery box, mirror, screw driver, and a few parts that fell out of the sheets, while I was handling them. There is a protective plastic sheet cover on the mirror.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Construction of the anchors was well within the scope of the reduced 'building facilities' with my usual 'shipyard' temporarily little more than an A3 wooden drawing board on the dining room table illuminated by a clip-on flexible LED lamp.
After cleaning up the castings and adding the anchor palms I made stops from some of the left-over photo-etched frame from the stern decorations, in this case from one of the thicker sheets. Once bent to shape they were soft soldered, cleaned up with a needle file and glued in place.



Anchor stocks glued together and carved/sanded to achieve the tapers ......

...... and after a light chamfer to the edges the iron bands were fitted, this time utilizing the fine brass strips recycled from the thinnest PE sheet frames.


The rings were fabricated .....

and the anchors painted.

After fitting the rings, darkened using 'brass black' solution, I looked on-line for advice on how to do the puddening. The search engine brought me straight back to MSW. Lesson learned - forget Google and just use this site's search tool! 

Cheers,
Graham

Catharpins are short lengths of rope, with an eye spliced on both ends. Rope and eyes are served using 0.1mm rope. The main challenge is to make them of the right length. Although they slightly increase in length from fore to aft, this is hardly noticeable. 
 
Catharpins in position, attached to the 4th, 5th, 7th and 9th shroud.
 
 
 
 
 

Thank you all very much for the encouragement and likes.  Update today just on the seemingly never ending rounds of filling, sanding , primer, paint, repeat!  Nearly there I think, just the odd remaining blemish to sort before the final base coat, prior to pre-shading the planking for a more interesting final appearance (I'm not after a uniform monotone white finish.)
Thought I would share some pictures of the stages I've been going through.  I just used a rattle can DIY grey primer initially, followed by an initial rub down with medium sandpaper to see what a layer of paint showed up - nothing like a layer of paint to point out your lack of woodworking skills!  I have then being using water-based plastic putty that can be thinned down to get into all the little imperfections, flat down, rub and repeat!  As the surface gets better I then start to use fine wire wool; this doesn't tend to "ball-up" paint layers as easily, then some old blu-roll paper towel to really bring out a shine to go hunting for flaws again holding the hull up to a light source.
Work is going to get in the way this week, so might not be much more progress until the weekend.
 
Thanks again for following along. 

I find myself more and more often considering stopping posting on Model Ship World.  A few weeks ago I encourage a member to continue despite some pretty negative comments by another user.  The offending post has been removed, but not after I think it was actually "liked" by one of the moderators.  Yesterday I think less that constructive language was used to describe the Occre HMS Victory model kit.  This kit isn't for everyone, it is fair to point out historically inaccuracies, or to challenge whether it is truly a plank on frame model or some thing else.  As we have recently heard from Chuck, a true plank on frame kit can be very expensive.  If this is a something that gives someone a "taste" of plank on frame at a lower cost than full on plank on frame, maybe that is ok and maybe someone will be inspired to do a full plank on frame model after building this kit.   And if some of us are not able or interested in investing the time and sometimes money to do extensive research on a particular ship, that should be OK.  Please keep helping those that what more information about the ships they are building, but no need to mock those that are simply building a kit to impress their friends and neighbors.
 
45,000 members, but how many have a build log in the last year or two.  I am not sure I would give the same advice I gave a few weeks ago about continuing to post on the site if I was giving the advice today.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Just like you and Andrew, I too suffer from 'safe place' syndrome, but with one unmentioned addition.... once the work is done and lost item has been replaced, the missing part turns up! 🤣

Allen is correct, Caldercraft is inaccurate. I couldn't find any definitive information in John McKay's 'Anatomy of the ship' book, Longbridge's 'The Anatomy of Nelson's ships' or any of the other published works I have in my library, so the following is based on personal observation so can only be regarded as a guide for consideration.....
It also assumes that your HMS Vanguard's rudder and that of another vessel of the same scale are reasonably comparable.
Longridge, plate 35, is a good photo of Victory's rudder and the chain in question. Using the thickness of the rudder as an appropriate datum it appears that this is equal to 10 chain links.

Comparing my Victory's rudder to the chain the kit provides shows the model's rudder is equal to 5 links. To be closer to scale accuracy a chain of around 40 links per inch is possibly closer to what it should be.
Graham.

Just like you and Andrew, I too suffer from 'safe place' syndrome, but with one unmentioned addition.... once the work is done and lost item has been replaced, the missing part turns up! 🤣

Allen is correct, Caldercraft is inaccurate. I couldn't find any definitive information in John McKay's 'Anatomy of the ship' book, Longbridge's 'The Anatomy of Nelson's ships' or any of the other published works I have in my library, so the following is based on personal observation so can only be regarded as a guide for consideration.....
It also assumes that your HMS Vanguard's rudder and that of another vessel of the same scale are reasonably comparable.
Longridge, plate 35, is a good photo of Victory's rudder and the chain in question. Using the thickness of the rudder as an appropriate datum it appears that this is equal to 10 chain links.

Comparing my Victory's rudder to the chain the kit provides shows the model's rudder is equal to 5 links. To be closer to scale accuracy a chain of around 40 links per inch is possibly closer to what it should be.
Graham.

Hi Ian,
The chain provided by Caldercraft for my HMS Victory, which is also 1/72nd scale, has 19 links per inch/25 mm, with each link 2mm long (as close as my old eyes can tell!)
Hope this helps.
Graham. 

Allen is correct, Caldercraft is inaccurate. I couldn't find any definitive information in John McKay's 'Anatomy of the ship' book, Longbridge's 'The Anatomy of Nelson's ships' or any of the other published works I have in my library, so the following is based on personal observation so can only be regarded as a guide for consideration.....
It also assumes that your HMS Vanguard's rudder and that of another vessel of the same scale are reasonably comparable.
Longridge, plate 35, is a good photo of Victory's rudder and the chain in question. Using the thickness of the rudder as an appropriate datum it appears that this is equal to 10 chain links.

Comparing my Victory's rudder to the chain the kit provides shows the model's rudder is equal to 5 links. To be closer to scale accuracy a chain of around 40 links per inch is possibly closer to what it should be.
Graham.

Allen is correct, Caldercraft is inaccurate. I couldn't find any definitive information in John McKay's 'Anatomy of the ship' book, Longbridge's 'The Anatomy of Nelson's ships' or any of the other published works I have in my library, so the following is based on personal observation so can only be regarded as a guide for consideration.....
It also assumes that your HMS Vanguard's rudder and that of another vessel of the same scale are reasonably comparable.
Longridge, plate 35, is a good photo of Victory's rudder and the chain in question. Using the thickness of the rudder as an appropriate datum it appears that this is equal to 10 chain links.

Comparing my Victory's rudder to the chain the kit provides shows the model's rudder is equal to 5 links. To be closer to scale accuracy a chain of around 40 links per inch is possibly closer to what it should be.
Graham.

Just like you and Andrew, I too suffer from 'safe place' syndrome, but with one unmentioned addition.... once the work is done and lost item has been replaced, the missing part turns up! 🤣

Allen is correct, Caldercraft is inaccurate. I couldn't find any definitive information in John McKay's 'Anatomy of the ship' book, Longbridge's 'The Anatomy of Nelson's ships' or any of the other published works I have in my library, so the following is based on personal observation so can only be regarded as a guide for consideration.....
It also assumes that your HMS Vanguard's rudder and that of another vessel of the same scale are reasonably comparable.
Longridge, plate 35, is a good photo of Victory's rudder and the chain in question. Using the thickness of the rudder as an appropriate datum it appears that this is equal to 10 chain links.

Comparing my Victory's rudder to the chain the kit provides shows the model's rudder is equal to 5 links. To be closer to scale accuracy a chain of around 40 links per inch is possibly closer to what it should be.
Graham.

Hi Ian,
The chain provided by Caldercraft for my HMS Victory, which is also 1/72nd scale, has 19 links per inch/25 mm, with each link 2mm long (as close as my old eyes can tell!)
Hope this helps.
Graham. 

Hi Ian,
The chain provided by Caldercraft for my HMS Victory, which is also 1/72nd scale, has 19 links per inch/25 mm, with each link 2mm long (as close as my old eyes can tell!)
Hope this helps.
Graham. 

Welcome to MSW Simon  as for Vanguard kits they are worth it and has a good fleet of fishing Vessels if you don't want cannons festooning your models!  Hope you do a build log of them.

I favor hull form and a ship's ectoderm.  I see the artillery as being an unnecessary distraction and see no compelling reason to include it.
 
 

Thanks Canute. The ali sheet has been stored for a few years and needed something to hide all the dings and scratches. I used to use valve grinding paste and a piece of wooden dowel for this, but this time lashed up a tool using a dremel mandril, a 22 mm dia. disc of 4 mm thick softwood with the central hole recessed for the screw head, double sided tape and circles of abrasive Scotch Bright pad. The porthole faces north west and this finish catches the setting sun nicely on a good day.
Cheers,
Graham

I believe a florescent light was causing a large part of the issue. Here are some photos with that light turned off.
 
Here is one with the light turned on.
 

 
Thanks for pointing that out. I am not very good at photography.
 
 

Following a fairly long summer break, the work has started again.
First I had to finalize the shrouds of the main mast and the mizzen mast. So mainly fixing the dead eyes and the lanyards.
Never mind the gunport lids. That is collateral damage, and easy to fix.
 
 
 
Then the futtock staves: I used a 0.8mm brass rod, and served it with 0.1mm black thread. Next the futtock shrouds, meant to keep the futtock plate and lower dead eyes of he top mast shrouds in place when those shrouds are being tightened.
The futtock shrouds have an eye slice to accomodate a hook, which is put in a hole in the futtock plate. The whole length is served.
 
 
The lower end will be tied to the futtock stave in the following way:
 
 
 
More to come!