rybakov

Bricks are made from wood and colored with a mix of water based colors from Samana paint. This paint does an excellent job on wood. However, for the bricks, water is added to obtain a more "transparent color". If I do not do this, all the lines which define the brick contour will disappear and we will not see the individual bricks.
 
On the 2 last photos, we see the planking of the second deck. To make the treenails, there are 2 methods, the long and difficult one:  with a draw plate and a pair of pliers made to pull. Or there is the EASY way to make treenails: toothpicks. Up to few years ago, toothpick were made from wood like birch. Today, toothpicks come from China and are made from Bamboo. Each end of the toothpick is turned taper. This means that a broad range of diameters are covered with a single toothpick. The largest are for the knees each side as in the front. These treenails are for the "look", they are not very deep. When I really want the treenail to act as a real nail, I drill the hole much deeper up to come in the wall.
 
Cherry is a pale wood, treenails are also made from a pale wood. It is important that the treenails do not contrast too much with the wood, in this case cherry. At the opposite, if we use a dark wood for a pale structure, the contrast will be too great. The same think will happen If I would use brass nails. Visually, there should not be too much contrast, or the effect will lose his elegance. The thing is like this: If we look at the model, the hull by example, and we will only see an extreme abundance of head nails, we will not see what is behind, this is not the desired effect. I hope my explanation is clear enough.
 
 
 
 
 

A very Happy New Year to you too, Carl, and every body. In fact, it was "fer blanc" which translate as tin. Effectively, aluminum conducts the heat, as well the electricity. I would be inclined to think that they covered with tin to protect the brick. I guess that you are right about the insulating properties of salt between the fire and the deck. If you look in (#825), first photo, under the oven, there is a drawing on top right, salt is colored in yellow. The oven is about 4 feet high, so the salt layer is about 1 foot thick. 
 
Nothing is glued yet in that part of the deck, so I might add another layer under the oven, just above the deck. To prevent the embers from burning the floor, a layer of lead was added. Also, as protection, on the top of the oven, under the forecastle, a large sheet of red copper with 2 holes for the smoke evacuation was added. I guess, it would a fair statement to say that the fire was surrounded by metal !
 
The oven is fixed to the decks from above and below with 8 iron pegs attached by ropes. This way of fixing the oven, makes it independent of the ship, because if it was united to the boat, it would dislocate brickwork.
 
And for the last question, about the boat, the answer is easier than you could think:  I just wanted to check color rendering, the white balance ,we could say, just before a shooting, for my wife. I could have photographed any object, but I choose one that I knew well.
 
 

Hello modeling friends.
I wish everyone a successful 2021.
Most of all, stay healthy.
Karl
 
Update
 
   
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T_C, a great idea should always be acknowledged.  This one, I shall not soon forget.
 
I have to say that, while the making of window frames is labor intensive, it is an enjoyable process.
 
One cause for satisfaction is that the original drawing is quite a mess, in this section:

The reduction of windows from five to three just really de-clutters the whole design.  Also, ensuring that the top and bottom rails of the windows are parallel improve the overall sense of balance.
 
A brief montage:


This is one approximate idea for doing a stylized false window.  It isn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it is an idea worth playing around with a little.  I’ll make some extra panes to experiment with a few different looks.



By including the top-rail ornament, I ensure that there is consistency with the corresponding stern windows.  If I had made simple frames, without these ornaments, the windows would appear too tall.  Another nice thing is that, for a change, I have a really clear idea what the underlying structure of these windows will be.  Constructing them should be relatively straight-forward.  Anyway, it is a work in-process.
 
I tried to get a decent zoom into this portrait of the Battle of Barfleur by Peter Monamy:

The well-documented stern of HMS Britannia is easily recognizable.  There is a strong likelihood that the French ship firing on her from the starboard broadside is Soleil Royal.

 
Like all potentially credible portraits of SR (Monamy is in the upper echelon of period marine artists), these thumbs are too small to read for detail. This portrait may still exist in the Glasgow collection, though.  I will have to send an inquiry.
 
’Twas a dark day for America, yesterday.  Hopefully, more sane days are on their way.
 
Thank you for your likes, comments and looking in!

Happy New Year everyone😁
 
I've started on the deck planking, completing the first belt and the lining off the remaining two belts.
 
The planking remains unsanded and looking dirty and discolored at the moment. The only cleanup was to scrape most of the PVA off the joints after gluing. The final cleanup will come later as I move onto the second belt. There will be more room to sand without the risk of knocking down the outside plank edges. All of the deck fittings are removable as well which will make things a whole lot easier.
 
I extended the line onto the margin plank after lining off and I also marked where the butt joints are located.

 
I glued some short alignment strips to the deck and up against the fixtures to keep them centered on the deck

 
For the mast partner bolts I used some 20lb black monofilament drilled with a #76 bit. No gluing necessary.

 
I almost got into deep trouble when I tried gluing the cabin floor with PVA. It started to warp quickly and being boxwood made it hard to bend back. Luckily I was able to get it into position and down tight to the false deck, albeit with a few sore fingers. Stay with medium CA on this one. Trust me!
 

 
Mike
 

With all the frames fitted and trimmed down to size I have started with preparing the rivets. It's boring. 
 
Take a bristle. Hold it close to a flame (but not in it or it will burn) until it melts to a bead in the end. Then press the bead to a flat surface to get a flat head on the rivet. Repeat some 1500 times...
 

small advances:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continuation. 
 



 
Pawel

Thanks so much, druxey, and a better new year for all of us!
 
I proceeded with the spline idea. A little jig for the mill made quick work of the slots in the standards themselves:


 
For the slots in the deck beams, I made a little marking jig, ensuring the slots would be laid out parallel to the sides of the beam, on the center line, and also the correct distance from the end of the standard. Then a few holed drilled out to hog out the main waste, and then chisel work to clean up.
 


 
I did discover a slight flaw in my plan. If I made the splines as long as I had expected, the standard could not fit over the spline and then slide under the upper deck clamp. So I had to shorten the splines and keep them as far out from the sides as possible. This allows me to fit the standard down on the spline, and then slide into position while completely flat on the beam. But still more than enough area for gluing.
 
Three down, just 19 to go....
 
Mark
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Good morning.

The work continues on the second fore deck. We have 3 ovens on this 74 guns: 1 for the bread on the first deck, and 2 on the second deck: 1 for the pastries and the last one for the kitchen.
 
To be homogeneous in their manufacture, the 3 were made with orange bricks. Emphasis was places on the different layers of the kitchen oven: plank, salt or layers of bricks, brick and sheet metal. Is it the salt or the brick which dissipates heat best, I do not know. As for the salt, we know that the salt can resist to the heat, by example in a recipe of salt crusted fish, but how the salt would resist to heat  in a long period of time is another question. We can guess it can resist, because if not, they would not have used it.

Now I have all the frames cut out and fitted to shape. What remains is to thin them down to about 2 mm thickness. I do that last now when I know that the shape is good in all other dimensions.
 

In the end I cut the two first and two last frames from solid pieces. I determined the shape using the same method as for the other frames, that is using card and copying the angles of the planks to the frames. It worked OK, but since I could only fit the cards to one side at a time, I got the shape of two frame halves. The angle between the halves was a bit hard to get right. For one of the frames I ended up splitting it and gluing it back with the correct angel.
 

Happy New Year fellow modelers! I hope this first day of 2021 finds you all well and I wish you all the best in this new year. 
 
Just a small update today. Work is progressing on the upper stern balcony, making the decorative railings, and fitting the various pieces. 
 
I do find that carving polystyrene plastic to be far easier than wood and it does take and hold detail very well. Granted, much of my issues with wood in the past has been more from inferior quality blocks of wood that was too soft for fine carving and lack of decent carving tools. Regardless of medium, neither wood nor plastic bestow talent to carve, and for that, I will need more practice.  While I do that, I am still satisfied with the results I am producing if for no other reason than I did them. 
 
 

The middle balcony railing is coming together. 
 
 

O.C., Marc, thank you both for the kind words and thank you to all who have followed along. The co to using support is always welcome. 
 
More work on the stern and I now have a complete taffrail upon which I can now fit and carve the ornamentation. This also allows for the balcony railings to be designed as I now know the spacing I have to work with. 
 


 
For the railings, the structure framework I plan to build from wood, the decorations, as with the carvings on the taffrail, will be made from plastic then painted. I have a bunch of time off work coming up till the end of the year and am hoping to take advantage of it to get some of this done. 
 
Best wishes to all of you for happy holidays whichever ones you celebrate, and here’s to a better 2021! 
 

Happy New Year to all of you some photos of the small advancement of the Victory.

‘Just a quick update.  Corbels are painted and in-place.  Yes, I will fill and fair that joint at the top 😉:


I have the port side and stern quarter windows drafted:

One of the problems/complaints, concerning the Berain/Vary drawing is the sometimes confounding inconsistencies between the irrefutable Berain stern drawing and the quarter drawing.
 
Because the, now, concrete reference points of the model enable me to make reliable drawings for this next phase of the build, I decided to address these inconsistencies.
 
The reality of the kit meant that the actual space available for these windows is taller than what I initially drew:

One way to effectively deal with that real height discrepancy, while also helping with consistency, was to include the same window ornament, along the top stile, as seen on the stern.
 
The fact that I have reduced these QG windows, in number, from 5 to 3 helps with the overall width to height ratio.  This is different from what Berain/Vary drew, but more consistent with better understood examples of the time (SP, 1693), while also paying respect to the hard realities of the kit.
 
HAPPY NEW YEAR!

And last but not least the best known version, the ship as it stands today in Portsmouth. 
 
Like new from the egg, no wear or tear, a nice museum ship as expected 😉
 
But even though all the anachronisms and contradictions towards the few contemporary sources still an amazing artifact that allows a bit of time traveling 🙂
 
But still I think no one today can imagine the true hardship and discomfort and dangers of those days. Physical, emotional and psychological.
 

 

 

 

 
Once a death bringing fighting machine, today it is a tourist attraction. Families and playing kids instead of powder monkeys and expendables wear parts ...
 

 

 
Here are some more details to enjoy.
 

 

 

 
But even this museum ship is undergoing the flux of changes. While bringing it back to the Trafalgar condition, the color "yellow" was misinterpreted and a cadmium yellow was applied, still to be found in many kits descriptions. Once it was understood that "yellow ochre" was meant the ship was changed to the buff seen on many contemporary paintings. Sometimes the chain irons were included in the stripe scheme, sometimes they were complete black. Newest research suggests a terra cotta tone for the hull, believing that the usual yellow ochre was short in the yard and the paint was stretched with red and white.
 
Also the hammock netting I saw already dark and light, the name on the stern I know in 3 different versions - even though I personally strongly believe it was omitted at Trafalgar for intelligence reasons - the stern davits were fitted in the past and taken down again. And much more ...
So this means, even if one builds a model of the museums ship, one has quite well determinate, what year it is meant to represent 😉
 
In this sense I might close this small side project and wish you all a happy new year! Stay healthy!!!
 
XXXDAn
 
PS: I still am waiting for those furious screams of panic once they adopt more research onto the ship in P., taking down the Feathers of Wales and the side davits, build the solid forecastle barricade and best of all, close the side entry port ...

In the repair of 1814 to 1816 the Victory was fitted with the new round bow and solid hammock cases. About 1837 the Feathers of Wales were fixed on the stern, still being there today. In 1859 the ship got the last set of wooden mast, later on the steel masts from HMS Shaw. Somwhere in the 1860 the planking was removed and the new planking was flush, wales omitted. Also that time she most possibly got the stern decoration that can be seen on the early photographies.
 
But these were only the outer signs, on the inside the hanging magazines were already removed by 1814 and every change in duty caused bigger changes in the internal layout.
 
There are hundreds of pictures of the pre 1920 Victory, an appearance that lasted more than a 100 years, but still this is one is the version that is the least often build as a model ...
 

 

 
The planking was flush, the rigols were straight and the ports had window frames. In the upper and lower batterie there were still some historical guns from Trafalgar on display. In the middle battery there were 7 salute guns of modern design, 4 on one side, 3 on the other. The chain boards were shortened, the number of shrouds reduced. All along the hull there were waste pipes going down. Picturesque are all the stove pipes going up 🙂
 

 

 
The officer is wearing a 1910 uniform with flat cap and short jacket, his camera is a contemporary Agfa-Photo-Box. The sailors have their uniforms with large hat and extra large collar, one in white, one in blue 🙂
 

 

 

 
The inspiration for this scene is the sailor from submarine C34, looking up to the chains. In those days it was quite common for a submarine to be docked alongside, as their generators supplied electricity for the older ship.
 

 
But was this sailor from C34 seeing? Possibly something like this.
 

 

 

The most iconic appearance of the Victory is the one of Trafalgar. And this is also the most obscure one, as it lasted the shortest and was almost not documented.
 
Contemporary sources are very thin, as the great repair took place under pressure of time in the height of the raging war, and proper documentation did not take place or at least is not known. Quite sure is, that the channel boards were moved on top of the ports, and of course the stern was most possibly closed in.
 
Most actual details can be found in Turner´s sketches as he draw some scribbles after the ship came back. Nicely seen is the build barricade of the forecastle, other details like the anchor lining are more obscure and subject of interpretation and discussion. Also th be guessed are the thinner black stripes and the yellow gunport lids.
 
Biggest ongoing discussion is the color of the yellow. Today a light terra cotta, in contrast to the usual yellow buff as seen in contemporary paintings. The actual guess is that the yards were short on buff and stretch it with red and white witch was available. Any way my personal believe is that ships of that age - as we were before industrial RAL definitions -  were much more a patchwork of different colors, just always the surprise which shade would come out of the barrel of paint. That is also the story I am telling here, the two sailors applying the shade of ochre that the ship is painted today 🙂
 

 

 

 

 

 
Our Royal Marine now wears the new uniform introduced from about 1800 onwards, with round head, no revers and no swallow tails. The other sailors wear still no uniform yet.
 

 

 

 
Difficult to see on Turners oeuvre is the anchor lining. But still a quite too useful installation to miss it out.
 

 

 

 

 
On the channel boards one can see the partner for the short fishing davit.
 

 

 

 

 
For the 68 pounder carronade - taken over in 1804 from the Kent - the railing on the barricade has a hinge to protect it from the muzzle flash and to facilitate handling.
 

 

 
And as mentioned already before, thanks to @Morgan for all his great hints and input!!!

Thank you Sirs 🙂 🙂
 
And here come some more detail shots.
First the in my humble opinion most beautiful appearance of this ship 🙂
 
The channel boards still in the lower position underneath the ports, the painted friezes and the hull paid with rosin.
 

 

 

 

 

 
The Royal Marine still wears the uniform from about 1780, with the tricorn, the long swallow tails on the coat, the broad revers and the stockings.
The holystoning gentlemen did not wear a special uniform yet. This was the time by the way, that the holystoning of the decks became quite excessive.
 

 

 

 
If the Victory was still carrying the original bronze guns or the newer iron cast ones in 1780 I could not yet finally judge. But to show the changes of the ship through the years I opted for the original version for this display. Other nice details are the anchor lining, the 4-piece irons with the eyebolts in between and the bolster for the long fishing davit in between the timber heads. Also a nice detail is the lanyard of the fore gunport lid that is guided elegantly up to the timberhead of the forecastle 😉
 

 

 

 


Based on the contemporary model from the Victory from 1765.
https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/66473.html
 
XXXDAn

A patient day of final shaping of the standards, and making bolts. Starboard done today, port tomorrow. then clear finish and final installation at last!
 
The Foredom drill press converted to a sander worked very well for final shaping.
 

 

 

 

 

Grande Finale 🙂
 
Finally I found the time to do the last beauty shots of my little series of my 5 slices..
 
It was a most exciting project, that started with simply trying out new resin, took off by itself, and developed into nice display on the history of that grat ship.
 
Already longer finished was the rigged version of a 1805 first rate.
 
Now come the version as build from about 1780, the actual state of my research for the iconic 1805 version, the black and white version of past 1910 and the latest version of the museums ship in its past 2016 look.
 
Here the overview.
 

 

 
Travelling times in 4 pictures 🙂
 

 

 

 

 
We start with the beauty of the as build version, with its nice friezes and - not visible - the wonderful carvings on head and stern.
 

 

 

 
 
The best known version is the least known by far. Done under pressure of time there is no known documentation. Here shown is the intermediate result of my research so far.
 

 

 

 
The biggest changes were suffered from 1814 on to 1920. The planking was removed and the new one was flush without any wales. The bow was reconstructed as a round bow, the hammocks got build cases and the masts were replaced by smaller steel ones with a reduced number of shrouds.
 
Seen by todays eyes a pity but still the historical version that lasted the longest.
 

 

 

 
And of course the version that is the best known, the almost complete reconstruction in Portsmouth 😉
Even with many anachronisms and differences to contemporary sources, this ship gives a nice impression onto how ships may have looked in the old days, a pleasure to be there and see 🙂
 

 

 

 
XXXDAn

Thank you, Mark!
 
So, the low finials are now painted and in-place.  You can see, below, the 3/16" spacing (18", full size) between the last gunport of the lower deck and the quarter gallery.  This resulted from filling-in and moving the port forward 1/4" from its stock location, at the start of the build.  Here are a few less than stellar pics of that:



There will be some re-touching to do, but I am very pleased with how this all resolved.
 
The past few days, I’ve been making the wrapping corbels. The ones the kit provides are perfectly lovely, and I had hoped to adapt them to the new shape of the lower finishing.  It turns out, though, that the new shape was too radical a departure, and the available space for them is now shorter.
 
All of that considered, though, I still found it to be an efficient process to extract the ornamental scrolls and bell-flowers.  The new corbels are shaped like this:

As was true for the QG sections, most of the work, here, was scribing these corbels to the compound curves of both the counter and the lower finishing.  Extracting and glueing-on the trim was easy.
 
I can’t quite remember who suggested it - maybe T_C - but painting these soft “lime” parts with CA is really the best approach.  The wood essentially becomes case-hardened, and after a light sanding with 220, the grain fully disappears under paint.  This is ideal, as I did not want the tell-tale signs of mixed-media.
 
I’ll prime these tonight and paint them before installing on the model.
 
I’ve been strategizing how best to represent the false windows of the QG.  I have an idea that picks up on the individual shading of panes on Berain’s drawing.

I have at least one scrapped window to experiment with.  We shall see.  I will begin drafting and making these window frames in the next few days.
 
Thank you for looking in!  More to follow.