HMS Victory by paulb - Caldercraft - 1:72

[paulb]

Thanks Bob, love your HMAV Bounty.

 

I am following your HMS Victory, Heinz. Very inspirational and showing great skill. It humbles me to receive a compliment from you.

 

A few photographs of the finishing touch of the upper deck. I decided to mount the main mast sleeve now, and to do it according to the McKay drawings and to the situation in Portsmouth.

This means the addition of a reinforcing double flooring around the mast, and a double sleeve, made from styrene.

 

 

In addition I made an apron around the Elm Tree Pump as per next photograph

 

 

Edited September 23, 2017 by paulb

[cobra1951]

Thanks Paul.

                    Once again great attention to detail and well carried out

Edited April 2, 2016 by Cobr@

[Elijah]

She's looking very good Paul, and I love your attention to detail!

[paulb]

Quarter Deck

 

 

Thanks Bob and Elijah,

 

First some last details before fitting the quarterdeck: the Skid Beam Assembly and the Fore Brace Bitt Assembly.
First the Skid Beams: I varnished the beams dark brown (Wenge), and used matt black (Revell) for the frame. This black kills the wood, but it helped to finish with a matt transparent varnish, which brings some life back.

 

 

 

 

The quarterdeck bitt pins have 3 sheaves, and the head ends are covered with zinc (I guess).

 

In the model I simulated reality as much as possible with a brass platelet on the head ends, finished with matt, transparent varnish, and I added 2 sheaves per pin (2 and 4 mm). On the quarterdeck the pin should have 3 sheaves. The manual does not mention them and there is only room for 2. After long thinking about the option of thickening the pin, I have decided to fit 2 sheaves. Not 100% true to reality, but visually OK and fairly realistic. The head ends were primed with MetalPrimer, then painted with metal paint and finished with matt, transparent varnish.

 

 

Finally a dry fit of the quarterdeck:

 

 

 

Edited September 24, 2017 by paulb

[Robert29]

Great build Paul.  I am way back behind you, will be sneaking into your build.

 

Robert

[paulb]

Following some relative rest (and waiting for Caldercraft to send me some planks), I decided to change some work already done. I was made aware that the Skid Beams were not quite like the ones on McKay's drawings and I failed to insert a King Plank while planking the Quarter Deck.

 

First the Skid Beams: instead of one solid beam, the Skid Beams consist of two overlapping beams:

 

 

Than the King Plank: McKay clearly draws a King Plank on the Quarter Deck, but not on the Poop:

 

 

This is the result: I removed the deck planks already glued and the old skid beams frame. Next I made a jig for the new (half) skid beams, and waited for Caldercraft to send me a 6mm Tanganyika plank, which they did (free of charge).

I made a new frame because the distances between the beams were different now.

I put back the Skid Beams and planked the deck, now including a 6mm King Plank.

 

 

Edited September 24, 2017 by paulb

[Elijah]

Nice king plank!

[robert22564]

Great work, your build log is very informative indeed, I'm just behind you with my build and need as much help as I can get, so i'll be keeping a close eye on this log.

Edited September 28, 2016 by robert22564

[paulb]

Thanks Elijah and Robert.

Considering the fact that you have already painted the hull, you are not much, if at all, behind me, Robert.

In the meantime I continued working on the planking of the hull and the bulwarks. Finally the planking of the hull is complete, including the forecastle and quarterdeck capping rails and the waist capping. Only the Poop is left to plank.
I fitted the forecastle snatch block as well. A brass sheave will be fitted later.

The white lining between the deck and the bulwark is the waterway and will be painted yellow ochre.

Then the quarterdeck screen assembly: Is was somewhat difficult to choose the right colour: in some (older) pictures the screen is dark brown, on more recent pictures (such as mine) the screen is Victory-yellow. I decided to paint the screen dark brown. You may notice the hinges on top of the alongship screen panel. These panels were lifted to make place for cannons during sea battle.

Some pictures:

 

 

 

Now the big painting job can start. The outside yellow-on-black bands (my second planking is not good enough to allow for natural wooden planking). First I will paint the hull yellow, than I will indicate where the black bands should come. Finally I will paint the bulwarks yellow. Hopefully you will see pictures of a completely different HMS Victory .

Edited September 24, 2017 by paulb

[Shipyard sid]

Greetings Paul

Only just found your build. It's going like a dream. Just keep enjoying it. Yep when you are in doubt refer to Gil, you cannot go wrong. Well done DAVID

[paulb]

Thanks David; Gil is a great source of inspiration, and so are others.

 

I finalized painting the hull, bulwarks and Captain's Cabin. I repainted the gun ports and the gun barrels.

 

 

Edited October 1, 2017 by paulb

[robert22564]

Wow, what great clean work.......looks fantastic.

[Heinz6672]

Paul, 

 

I have to agree with robert. These pictures look like promotional photos taken from a catalogue.  WOW!

 

I am very impressed and could not wait to see your Victory growing... :-)

 

Best wishes

 

-Heinz-

[Shipyard sid]

Hello Paul

Well there you go Paul. I have to agree with Heinz and Robert. Take your time, we are all enjoying it. DAVID

[Kevin]

looking very good Paul, missing mine, which is on hold - again

 

 

[paulb]

hanks, guys, for your kind remarks!

 

Some more work on the Forecastle.

I added some details to the Belfry and the Forecastle Breast Beam Assembly.

As most parts are cut from a plate, only two sides are tapered. Where needed I tapered all four sides.

This is the original:

 

 

And my version:

 

 

I also adjusted the Galley Stove Chimney to look more realistic. The original:

 

 

 

And my version (please ignore the dust):

 

 

Some work on the gratings, again the original with the dovetail joint:

 

 

 

And my effort (don't mind the wood structure, this is makro ++):

 

 

Edited September 24, 2017 by paulb

[paulb]

Back after a long time of inactivity. Apparently Photobucket has changed their terms and conditions in the meantime, causing all my pictures to be invisible.

I will try and find an easy solution to this problem (rather than paying Photobucket $400 annually).

Maybe Flickr is an option.

Work on the quarterdeck is progressing.

[Charter33]

Hi Paul - welcome back! I look forward to seeing the progress you are making. 

 

I too have given up on PB. I did find that I could download photographs from my PB 'library' onto a memory stick and then upload them from there into my build log. I did it this way originally as I was under the miss-conception that the photo files would be too big to add directly and that by putting them through the hosting site reduced the size. IT is not a strength of mine! These days I simply save the pictures straight from my camera onto my laptop and upload from there using this site's software. All very straight forward, although my aging DSLR has about half the megapixels of today's modern wonders ....

 

Good luck!

 

Graham. 

Edited September 22, 2017 by Charter33
missing word

[Robert29]

Eager to see you progress Paul.

 

Robert

[paulb]

Almost all pics have been updated. I will check on the the remaining ones, but first a little update.

All cannons have been glued to the Quarter Deck, including troot brails (if this is the correct term) and all tackles.

Before doing that, I first had to make the decoration on the inside of the bulwarks (the thin black lines). Unfortunately, the kit has no foto-etches of these parts, so I made them from styrene strips (0.25x0.50mm), which I painted black. These lines determine the position of the eye-bolts for the troot brails and tackles.

 

 

 

 

 

Please don't mind the "stains" on the deck. It's just been sanded, and a full coat of transparent varnish will follow.

 

Next the cannons in the Captain's Cabin. Four completely geared, two in reserve.

 

 

I will continue now with the mast sleeve for the mizzen-mast and the binnacle.

 

Edited October 1, 2017 by paulb

[paulb]

Some progress on the Quarter Deck: mast sleeve, steering wheel assembly and binnacle.

 

And some work on the beakhead and roundhouses:

 

 

[paulb]

Forecastle

 

Some more work on the Beakhead Capping Assembly.
I made a few adaptations, based on the drawings of McKay:
The "plank sheer" (the plank with the timberhead locating holes) runs more lateral according to McKay. Additionally, there are 3 eyelets (iron rings) on both sides.
Furthermore six out of eight timberheads have sheaves, I have included them. Also the forecastle snatch block should have a sheave. All the sheaves are brass, with a single coat of glossy black paint.

 

 

 

 

Now, it seems the starboard roundhouse is skew. Fortunately in reality this is not the case. Must be the camera.

The somewhat long timberhead (on the port side) is real, unfortunately. I will leave it like this, as improving it may actually worsen the situation.

Edited December 21, 2017 by paulb

[paulb]

The carronades took more time than expected, especially to make them look more or less authentic. 
First I had to improve the die-cast which was in the kit. Some imperfections had to be filed, and the elevation thread was not complete and in the wrong place. The barrel was closed, so I drilled it for a more realistic look.
For elevation thread I used 1mm micro-bolt, with a M1 brass ring. I included handles for manually elevating the barrel. 
Finally I elevated the deck block on four corners as per the present arrangement on the HMS Victory.
It now looks like this:

 

 

 

 

Tackle was not unequivocal. McKay mentions one breech rope en 2  side tackles (one on each side). Zu Mondfeld however decribes 1 breech rope and 4 side tackles (2 on each side). The carronade has no train tackle.
I followed the suggestions of Zu Mondfeld. The breech rope is cable-laid.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 30, 2017 by paulb

[Kevin]

lovely work Paul, god it seam like years ago that i was at this stage in the build (lol perhaps it was)

[Bill Morrison]

Paul,

 

Your build log is a wonderful "find" for me!  I am building an old model of the ship by Aeropiccola (approximately 1/180 scale, or the size of the Airfix plastic kit).  My wife bought the kit for me when we were stationed in La Maddelena, Sardinia, Italy at the end of the 1970s.  Anyway, I have been slowly converting her to the raised forecastle bulwarks as in the Caldercraft model.  You log has shown me some details I should consider for my model.  Thanks!

 

Bill Morrison

[paulb]

Bow

 

Building the bow was more of a callenge than anticipated. It took me way more time than expected, especially because of a number of part which I had to make from scratch over and over again.

I started with the timberhead. This one is not square like most timberheads, more more like a pentagon. In order to do this, the timberhead had to be made thicker first. 

 

 

and filed:

 

 

 

The placement of the four head timbers:

 

 

and placing the lining planks:

 

 

Then it was time to place the bow main rail plaatsen, and making sure it fitted snugly against the hull (aft) and the roundhouses (fore).

 

 

 

And finally the finishing of the timberheads:

 

 

Additionally I fixed the hawser holes:

 

 

By far the most challenging part so far of this model, but I guess some more challenges will come.

Edited December 21, 2017 by paulb

[paulb]

Some more work on the bow and catheads.

If I thought the bow was a challenge so far, I have to think again.

Especially painting the figure head took a long time and many corrections. Partly it's because of my clumsiness, but also the detailing by Caldercraft is poor. That mostly applies to the coat of arms and the flowers below it.

Another thing they could improve upon are the Cherubim and Seraphim. The original are (somewhat) chubby small boys, but over the years they have grown to be young man (Caldercraft must have thought). Additionally it took quite some filing to detach the arms from the bodies.

I modified the catheads slightly by making them a bit thicker (horizontally) and by including three brass sheaves.

 

Okay, some pictures:

First the beak head platforms and stools: the knight-heads in position,each with a pin to attach the boomkins. The pillars of the marines'walk are also in place. That turned out to be a little problem, because they are supposed to be positioned flush with the forward face of the third head timber, but there it found the previously glued pieces of walnut, Some filing of both pieces solved the problem and gave a very sturdy connection.

 

Then the figure head. Though on the picture it all seems to be the same yellow paint, in reality the yellow in the figure head is gold paint.

 

The strings of the harp couldn't be painted, they are too thin. I used 0.25x4mm styrene strips from which I cut very thin strips, which I glued in the harp to mimic the strings.

 

The catheads:

 

and view from the main mast, with the marines' walk in position:

 

That leaves me with the connecting strips between the cathead knee and the upper rail, before I can move to the poop deck.

[paulb]

Poop Deck

 

Before starting with the poop deck, I finished some details of the bow and the forecastle. The connection between the cat-head support and the first rail. I had to remove quite a bit of wale to obtain and good fit. The 90 degree curve I made by softening the wood with water, and then left it to dry in a jig. The curve around te hull was done using heat. The blue strip is made from styrene.

 

The main top bow line bits and fore topsail sheet bits were modified to look more like the ones in Portsmouth. The former has to have two sheaves, the latter three sheaves. Both were made thicker below the bits. First the original.

 

Now the work on the Poop Deck can start.

Planking the deck is basically the same as the other decks with a 5 plank system. The main difference between this deck and the others is the tapering of the poop towards the stern, while none of the other decks have significant tapering.

I used the drawing by McKay and Longridge to help with the planking. In case of a curves or tapered deck the planks should not be cut away to a sharp point. Instead the planks should be "joggled" into the margin plank. This is how McKay draws the poop:

 

If you look at the margins of the deck, you may notice that none of the planks end at a width less than half their original size, and margin plank is one piece of timber, somewhat wider than the other planks.

 

This what I made of it:

 

 

Edited December 21, 2017 by paulb

[Charter33]

Outstanding work, Paul. Your build log has become one of my first 'ports of call' when the need for inspiration arises. So much detail to take on board - keep up the great work!

 

Graham

[paulb]

For anyone interested in the HMS Victory: I found a half-hour video on YouTube of a walk-through.

It gives one the opportunity to check on details, without having to go to Portsmouth. The bonuses are images of the Captain's Cabin and the Poop Deck, both of which usually are off-limits to the general public.

Disappointingly the flag locker on the Poop, which interests me at the moment, was removed .

The link: