DavidG

nice looking build so far. I love this ship, would be nice to see more of the build.

chainplates next. I used the kit channel parts, reinforced by pins, painted black. The kit offers an easy solution for the chainplates by the use of wire, hooked into a pin, the issue of having the gunports in the way is bypassed by simply omitting the problematic ones. As much I wanted to make it a little bit more correct, there is no solution for the setting the correct angle due to the placement of the ports above and below. That's why I settled on the perpendicular arrangement, when it was possible (but had to make some compromise on the main mast). I used 5mm deadeyes, stropped by wire, soldered the links and installed the lower links, which are from my leftover parts box. These are fastened by two nails, cut to length and glued in. The kit supplies nice 3mm boxwood deadeyes, which I will use on the mast tops.

..and the most difficult part, the headrail. The kit provides a straightforward approach to build it, and I saw several examples where builders made it as suggested and came out fine. Not for me. The rail pieces was simply too short, probably due to my modifications. When I remade them in correct sizes, they met at the wrong angle. I had so many failures on this part, I gave up the experiments and didn't touch it for several years. Then following a more or less successful card template, I cut it from 3mm solid wood; I always thought the kit piece is too thin anyway. I had to use boxwood sheet for this, as the walnut ones split along the grain. There is a decorative element, supposed to be glued on top, which I didn't made separately and cut the whole thing from one piece. Finally, when the rails were in place and I inserted the bowsprit, I realized the tip is off center. So took them apart last time, adjusted the angle of the brackets, and finally painted the decorative part brown. Wasn't able to paint a sharp line, and used a thin styrene strip to define the edge. still need to add a lower rail and build up the forward grating , but happy to be over this part. I have to figure out, how the gammoning will the cross the bow platform.

this is the fore section of the upper deck. I used the cast belfry kit piece, but remade the rail around it. Also, made some columns for the gangway supports and added the skid beams from below as I saw on several models, opposed to gluing it from the top, as the plan suggests.

The Victory is for the experienced builder indeed. Having built a Corel model before, I don't think the written instructions are much of help, neither I believe there is an update, as these are pretty old kits. Corel kits are share the same design principles though, and you can find several examples on this site. I recommend going through the great Belllona log, which shows quality work and very detailed: The Corel Victory is a popular subject, and I saw great models built from it. Start a build log here, and ask, if you have questions. Support of fellow builders will be much more help than any instruction book you find. Good luck for your build.

I saw a test somewhere, where a speed regulator was used to control a fix speed disk sander, and while it worked to lower the speed, it took away so much torque, the tool became useless. I know the Brynes one is a powerful machine, so it might not apply, but the impact will be probably there.

one thing to add to the gun rigging. for the breeching ropes, I untwisted the strands of the rope and inserted the cascabel. For the several attempts I tried this delivered the most satisfactory result for this small scale.

thank you OC and other for looking in. I run out of old pictures on the build, so I'm using the present state for onwards. Most of I can show it still old work. As I caught up with the build start to see the difficulties for such a long break (the project is 12 yrs old now), get the same shades of stains is impossible, also I just forgot what did I use. let's catch up with the upper deck. not that much of details like the gun deck, but still a fair number of guns, racks and loads of railings around. the upper deck guns are smaller versions of the ones placed on the gun deck. I found 26mm cast barrels which are perfect fit to the carriages. I fully rigged them with 2mm blocks - the square ones, which were available that time - now we have more choices. The capstan is the kit piece, not glued. I filed the dome head flat to make a bit more realistic, but the proportions are just not correct and the whole thing is too small. I have to make a better one, I think I have to scratch build. a shot of the aft area. Having no better options, I used the kit wheels, despite being a bit on the thick side. If I find a better one I might change it, but not going to scratch build. The wheel supported by a simple stand I made, the 1mm decorative strips extend below the deck and hold the structure in place. In the background is the hatch, which I made after the Caldercraft Diana.

before the upper deck fittings were made, I worked on some hull details. here the curved rails are being built up by small sections. after sanding, they will look as one piece, especially painted black. making the galleries, I reverted to the kit casting pieces, but attached a lip on them to allow planking. the back side if the lower casting is awful, required a lot of filler, something I still have to deal with. the planked surface allows building up the window framing, I used a scraped moulding horizontally, and formed the columns by gluing 1x1mm walnut dowels side by side. the windows will be framed with very thin white styrene strips. I don't have a photo of it, but visible on the first picture in this log. Later I stained the wooden elements dark brown, which much improved their look. Similar to the stern, I saw very good results made with kit parts only, so at the end not sure, it was worth the effort. the plan show sweep ports across the wales, suggesting to interrupt the middle wale at regular intervals to form rectangular openings. I wanted these to be closed, and finally decided only to hint the outline of the port but add some hinges to them. The sweep port outlines were cut from regular paper -it barely sticks out - and added the hinges, which were Amati rigging hooks in their previous lives. and their (pretty subtle) final look, painted black, but no varnish yet.

I don't have many photos from the later stages, but here is one with the upper deck is on. Good bye, details below I made an attempt to have as many holes as possible - left the hatches open and made some false framing on the deck, cut out a section of the ply and glued strips to the opening, then covered the joints with deck planking.

some last shots of the gundeck, before it finally got covered by the upper deck:

Failures.. I spent a lot of time on customizing the kit and tried out several ideas, some of them worked and others not. In this post I show some of my failures, as they are a natural part of model building. at least for me.. deck beams. the kit provides a flat upper deck, I wanted to incorporate a proper curve. The idea was, the laminated planking strips (glued and dried in a template) will save me from sawing out them individually. While the strips kept their curve, they were simply weak for the purpose. It would have been better to bend the whole ply deck separately before gluing on. I put these beams to the model, but the deck remained more or less flat. I also had an idea, I can build a better gallery of wood instead of the cast metal pieces. I took measurements from the castings and made some supports, with the intention of planking it later. The flow between the sections wasn't smooth though, I took this apart and I reverted to the castings later. ships's wheel.. Can't recall what did I think.. used cast Amati wheels at the end. stern.. I decided against the cast/ PE kit pieces. The decorative pattern was copied to a boxwood sheet, and I cut it with a hand saw. It took several attempts to have one which didn't fall apart immediately, and fixed it to the model. I recognized my limitations as I can't make it any better and moved to other areas. After ten years it's still there and still not satisfied. The current plan is the radically reduce it's thickness, maybe a little dome shape in section, to look like more a painted decoration than carving. To be honest, I saw way better examples of this stern using the well prepared kit piece, and this might be a final option if everything fails.

Chris, nice to see another Diana being built. You did a very fine job. I especially like how the head turned out. And your stern looks very good as well. I have the same ship on my desk for 12 years now on and off, you made already much more progress than I did. Keep on the good work.

finally finished the gundeck, it was made a bit more interesting than the kit proposal. After being 2 years in the build so far, I pretty much liked it how it came out. Another question, how much remains visible of it when the upper deck installed (spoiler: almost nothing..).

after having done two upgrades for the kit (guns + copper), I started to dislike some of the kit features. The gun deck seemed dull besides the the row of guns, so decided to add some furniture. My first adventures to scratch building parts. First remade the grating (these are the Amati ones): then I figured out, I can make a pump and other deck fittings.

thank you for sharing these. Apart from the obvious quality of your work, I particularly like the use of the tools. You might have a very sophisticated workshop, but I see you work with tools any modeler might have. The skill makes the difference.

thank you Chuck for looking in. you made a very valid point on the gratings - actually the same applies to most of the kit fittings. I replaced most of them over time, including the gratings, but this made the work very slow and broke up the flow several times. I just wonder on 1) how much other modeling I could have done without continuously removing and updating parts and.. 2) with this kind of time investment I could have built a better/ more authentic ship model. but for next time...

great find, good luck with the build. It is interesting, how little these Corel kits changed. I built one not so long ago (different ship), and apart from the box, everything was the same like yours above. The ply frames, decks, down to the design of the plan folder.

great work so far coming late into the diluted glue question... but I use the cut bottom of an ordinary beer can. there is a recess around it's circumference (where I put water) and a bump in the middle (where i put glue). this way they can be mixed on demand by a brush. after work I wash it and put away.

after I finished the basic rigging of the guns, started the coppering. from one tedious job to another.. this was my first (and so far the only) attempt on coppering a hull, but it came out just fine. I used the Amati PE plates, they can be fit in longer strips which adds to the alignment and speed. There is a thin styrene strip on the upper edge, painted copper.

and here is the gun deck with cannons added

I recently had to move a model in a short, 15 minutes driving distance, and creating a proper crate was not considered as an option. Not being the safest method, I'm not recommending this to anyone, but here goes my solution. I used cable ties to fix the base of the model to a large cardboard sheet. This prevented the model from being capsized, and any movement was absorbed by the space around it. I drove pretty careful, and the mission was succesfully accomplished. The ship shows some damage, but this comes from being abandoned 12 years on a shelf, not the transport operation.

Very nice build. Congratulations!

thank you Rick. while I built this out of the box, there are several great examples of builders supporting their build with proper research, and correct the simplifications of the kit (like the upper bow planking, correct mast top, etc). Woody Joe makes a bit more elaborate version of the same ship (link) The kit is pretty straightforward to build, the only thing I would change is the installation of the deck beams, which are added in a very early stage in the build. The protruding beam ends are very difficult to nicely plank around. I see no reason to do that, the beams could be added once the second planking finished, with the rectangular openings left open during the planking. good luck to your build.

once I had the basic hull set up, started working on the guns. I planned to populate the gun deck will carriages (instead of dummies) throughout. A very fiddly job, but I was enthusiastic about it. I purchased aftermarket cannon kits (they are made of pear) and after sanding, staining assembled them. I also changed the barrels to stock Amati items, I wanted to have them uniform, and they were just the right size. A barrel is test fitted for checking height: I fully rigged the visible guns. The barrel is only a temporary fit here, they will be painted black and the breeching rope added. I used 2mm blocks for this.