HMS Victory by Eugenio Treviño - Corel - 1:98

[Eugenio Treviño]

Hi everybody !

 

As I mentioned on my new members introduction, I restarted my modeling hobby during this lockdown after many years of inactivity. Searching for a new plastic kit online, I found a really good opportunity to get a HMS Victory Corel model at a fraction of retail value. The price was so tempting and the model so challenging that I decided to buy it. It arrived home on August 28th, so it has been almost a month of great enjoyment. This is only my second wood model ship after the Artesania Latina's Swift. I was satisfied with the result, but planking it was really a nightmare. I hope this time I will do it much better with your advice.

 

These are some pics of the first stage, setting the frames, keel, lower deck and longways beams; planking of the lower deck, construction of the stairs and setting of the lower deck gratings.  Contrary to what I had read, all pieces fit together perfectly, and very little sanding and correcting was needed. I set the planks with the three-butt pattern, used a soft pencil to highlight the edges and used semi-gloss polyurethane varnish.

 

Second stage picks will come soon.

 

Any comment and advice are welcome!!!

 

Eugenio.

 

 

 

 

[Eugenio Treviño]

On the second stage I set up the deck beams and the upper and poop decks; planked both decks and placed the lower deck's shot garlands.

Both decks were set in place fairly easy, but the upper deck did require the re-shape of two frame grooves. Same technick for planking these decks was used.

 

Here are the picks:

 

 

[Eugenio Treviño]

Bow and stern fillers.

 

In my opinion this is a major flow of the kit. What is the point of forcing the modeler to reduce by sanding almost 2/3 of a block of wood to produce a piece? No value adding work in my opinion. Also, in the plans and instructions it is not clear how this final piece must fit, especially on the stern side, considering the addition of pieces number 50 and 51 the upper and lower counters.

Please note how the stern fillers need further sanding in order to allow the upper counter (piece number 50) to fit in (last 4 picks).

 

 

 

A question for those of you who have passed this stage: Do you think that attaching the upper counter before may help to have a better planking? The instructions suggest fixing it after planking; over it. But it looks difficult as it is now.

Or I made a mistake sanding the filler and frame 14 too much and the piece to be adjusted was the counter?

 

[Eugenio Treviño]

Setting the half-gun holders.

 

This part also required more work than expected. Every piece must be cut, sand and glue in its correct position. After setting all the holders and painting them black, I decided it was a good idea to mark the cannon's position and check its alignment. For that I used some standard pins. Pic attached.

 

After checking I had a good alignment, I decided to drill the cannon holes before planking. This may allow to have them ready for later work with them, and to recheck their position and alignment with the real ones. I think this will save time and efforts after planking and may be useful when opening the gun ports through the planking.

 

Before my next action, I will spend some time studying the planking tutorials and tips and preparing my plan to start planking.

 

Wish me luck !!!

 

 

[Eugenio Treviño]

Hi fellow modelers!

 

After studying a lot of post here in the forum related to the HMS Victory, the Corel Kit and planking, I started the planking process.

I set the first plank at the lower deck level as indicated in the instructions and continued with two pairs on each side downwards. Then I moved upwards, considering that the upper side did not require a lot of work on the the planks and that will allow me to keep studying how to proceed on the lower level towards the keel. Pictures attached.

Please let me know if you have any question.

 

Best regards,

Eugenio.

 

 

[Eugenio Treviño]

The first confusion, mistake, error, blame the instructions, blame your wife, blame anybody but you !!!

 

Dear friends:

 

Visiting other Corel-Victory build logs I found a discussion about the instructions not been clear on when to cut the tips of planks 9 and 10.

 

Of course, as Murphy's law indicates, by that time, I already committed the error. It is not a significant one and it has been corrected (in some way), but it is interesting to really question why instructions are so poor?

As I mentioned in my new member introduction, I have always built plastic models (mainly Tamiya and Italeri) and they have neat, clear, engineer's proof instructions. Why not Corel?

 

As you can see in the first picture, on this step you are instructed to set the upper deck and poop decks. If you do so, you need to plank the upper deck in order to plank the area between both of them.

But it is till the next step (second pic) when they timidly tell you to cut the plank tips (by means of a dotted line).

 

I hope I will be able to limit the ammount of errors !!!

 

[Jonesey]

Yep. Corel instructions leave a LOT to be desired.

It's sometime quite unfathomable exactly what you're supposed to do and crucially, in which order

[Eugenio Treviño]

Hi everybody:

Having a lot of free time now work is going pretty fast. Doing 4 planks a day (a pair on each side). I shape the planks and fix them early in the afternoon, let them dry and sand them at night.

Soaking the planks for half an hour and applying heat with a hair dryer has been enough to shape the planks. I am tapering them based on what I see is needed to have an even plank line. The wood for this first planking is very malleable. I use white glue in between the planks and CA glue for the plank-frames bond. This is just my second planking after the Artesania Latina Swift, so many mistakes have been made. But my ultimate goals for this first planking is to learn about the process, learn how to work the wood, learn about shaping and tapering the planks and having a smooth, even, correct shape surface; so I am starting to loose the fear on committing errors that can be corrected.

For me, this first planking is low value-added work (in terms of spending more working hours to make it look better). For the second planking my approach will change, I will be more patient, looking for a beautiful finish. Picks attached.

Thanks for looking, best regards.

[Eugenio Treviño]

First milestone achieved!!!

I have just finished the first planking of my HMS Victory!

Despite there are a lot of errors and mistakes I am really satisfied with the outcome, considering this is just my second planking. I learned a lot and, contrary to what happened with my first experience, I enjoyed it a lot.

Thanks to all who posted a Victory build log. A learn a lot from you!

Pics attached.

Best regards,

Eugenio.

[Richard44]

You're doing really well and you have a good base for your second planking.

[Eugenio Treviño]

On 10/24/2020 at 1:15 AM, Richard44 said:

You're doing really well and you have a good base for your second planking.

Many thanks for your support Richard!!! I am enjoying the build a lot. I decided to cut the gun ports before doing the second planking. Although the instructions don’t say that, I consider the second planking will cover all errors and miss cuts that may happen in the process. I will load some picks soon.

Best regards,

[Eugenio Treviño]

Starboard gun ports opened.

 

Corel’s instructions indicate to set the second planking before opening the gun ports. I decided to open them first because any mistake or miss cut can be covered by the second planking.

The first pick shows the process. First open a hole where the original pen markings were set. Then inserting the drill to find the hole on the gun port’s supports. Then marking the area to be cut using one of the gun port frames. Then cutting by hand with a new blade.

Best regards,

[Richard44]

Very neatly done.

[Eugenio Treviño]

On 10/28/2020 at 1:09 AM, Richard44 said:

Very neatly done.

Thank you very much for your kind words Richard! It is a motivation to keep working diligently.

 

This weekend I decided to take a rest from planking and worked on the cannons and carronades.

 

I coated the carriages with PU varnish, painted the muzzle tips red and the trunnions gun metal.

 

Putting the cannons in placed showed me that I cut the deck gun ports slightly low, so I will need to correct that.

 

A few pics attached.

 

Best regards,

 

[Kranck]

Very impressive !

Beautiful work and done so fast !!

I'll be following attently.

What is your technique to bend the planks so nicely at the stern? Despite a filler that is (in my very very humble opinion) more accurate than yours (with double curvature and all like jpett's if I remember well), my planking is sorely lacking in precision and broken planks remain frequent...

 

Best regards 

 

Nicolas

[Eugenio Treviño]

6 hours ago, Kranck said:

Very impressive !

Beautiful work and done so fast !!

I'll be following attently.

What is your technique to bend the planks so nicely at the stern? Despite a filler that is (in my very very humble opinion) more accurate than yours (with double curvature and all like jpett's if I remember well), my planking is sorely lacking in precision and broken planks remain frequent...

 

Best regards 

 

Nicolas

Nicolas thank you very much for your kind comments!

 

You are right, my stern fillers are terrible!!! I am not very patient with work that I consider is not adding value. I cannot understand why Corel gives you huge pieces of wood in order to produce pieces that are less than 50% the original size, just by cutting and sanding and based on a terrible plan showing only one or two angles. In fact, a couple of forum members mentioned in a post that the curvature at the stern doesn´t look ok. They said it is too sharp. They may be right, but I didn’t notice it on time. Maybe the fillers needed further size reduction.

 

I tried different ways of doing the stern curvature. If you see the first pics I posted on October 27th, you can see that I started by cutting the planks near the stern in order to work with a smaller piece of wood to produce the curvature by heating it with a hair dryer after a 30 minutes soak (first 2 planks going into the stern curve). But that resulted in a lot of work, the piece was very small, I was burning my fingers with the hot air and the piece partially broke at the curvature.

 

My second approach was to mark the area of the curvature with a pencil, soak the plank 30 minutes, heat it to produce the curvature and then glue it into position and cut the excess length. I made a few that way, but the result was the same, the plank partially broke.

 

Then I noticed that the wood provided in the kit for the first planking was very malleable when wet. I could bend it a lot with my hands without heating, so I took my chances and bent it and glued it still wet. The plank broke the same way than the previous efforts, but a lot of work was saved.

I repaired all the breaking points by adding a drop of CA glue and pressing with the tip of a screwdriver.

 

In my opinion the secret of the planking process was the way I glued the planks. CA glue is very effective if the wood is moistened. I put a drop of CA glue (Loctite high viscosity) on the bow filler/keel intersection and on each frame, and white glue along the previous plank lower edge. So, when placing the new plank (from bow to stern), I make sure it was tightly positioned against the previous one at each frame where the CA glue was. If the wood is moistened, it will have a strong instant bond, that may allow you to keep placing the plank in a nice tight pattern. At the stern curvature I let the plank partially break and glued it at the stern filler and cut the excess. Then I repaired all the breaking points and sanded the area.

 

I am sorry if my explanation is not good enough. Please let me know.

Best regards,

Eugenio.

Edited November 6, 2020 by Eugenio Treviño

[Eugenio Treviño]

This pic shows how I glued the planks. You can see the CA glue drops (marked in red) in the frames and the white glue along the previous plank.

[Kranck]

Thank your for the answer ! Very interesting.

Funnily enough I just started today to use CA glue instaead of wood glue... 

I'll try your tricks ! Including mending the broken planks with CA

 

Maybe it is time to start a build log indeed...

[Eugenio Treviño]

Second planking started!!! 

I started the second planking with the lower wales as the instructions indicate. No problem bending the 2 mm. walnut stripes soaking them and heating with the hair dryer.

Best regards.

[Eugenio Treviño]

More planks added today. I am liking how it looks. Not perfect, but I think that after a good varnish coat it will look nice !

[Eugenio Treviño]

On 11/6/2020 at 1:24 PM, Kranck said:

Thank your for the answer ! Very interesting.

Funnily enough I just started today to use CA glue instaead of wood glue... 

I'll try your tricks ! Including mending the broken planks with CA

 

Maybe it is time to start a build log indeed...

Nicolas, this is how I bend the planks.

First I soak them for about 30 minutes. Then, while heating with the hair dryer, I slowly bend the planks using this simple arrange of nails in a wood pice with the bow and stern curvatures.
 

This are 5 mm x 2 mm Walnut planks.

 

Best regards,

 

 

[Karleop]

Hello Eugenio,

I am happy to see another Mexican modeler in the Forum. Another countryman of yours and a very good modeler, Ulises Victoria, I haven't heard from him for a long time.
I have dedicated myself to wooden models for about ten years and I alternate it with my other hobby, painting. My last boat was a sardine that I made to order. Now I am with the bow of Panart's Victory (1:78 scale) and which I will upload to the forum soon.
I have seen your participation in the Forum with interest and I congratulate you for your work.
Greetings from Guaymas

[Eugenio Treviño]

On 11/11/2020 at 10:51 AM, Karleop said:

Hello Eugenio,

I am happy to see another Mexican modeler in the Forum. Another countryman of yours and a very good modeler, Ulises Victoria, I haven't heard from him for a long time.
I have dedicated myself to wooden models for about ten years and I alternate it with my other hobby, painting. My last boat was a sardine that I made to order. Now I am with the bow of Panart's Victory (1:78 scale) and which I will upload to the forum soon.
I have seen your participation in the Forum with interest and I congratulate you for your work.
Greetings from Guaymas

Karleop:

 

Thank you very much for your kind words. I am just a beginner, but I am learning a lot and enjoying the build.

 

It is amazing to see the craftsmanship that you and many other member have. I loved your last build’s pics!

 

Planking on the port side continues. I think it is looking good.

 

Best regards,

 

Eugenio.

[Karleop]

Que tal Eugenio:
Well, to be a beginner you are excellent and I suppose you are an engineer, an architect or something related to the manual arts because you have good skills for modeling.
Well, I have continued with the HMS Victory (bow section) from Panart and the instructions really leave a lot to be desired and if it weren't for some photos and drawings you could easily remove them.
Now I'm working on the bowsprits and I don't know how to do it, the only illustration that comes does not clarify anything. I wonder how the bowsprits and the rigging that accompany it in your model are described and if possible could you send me a photo of them.

Muchos saludos, Karl

 

 

[Eugenio Treviño]

Planking on the port side from the lower wale to the keel is finished!!!
 

I am tired of planking. I think I will do something different before continuing with the starboard side.

I think that a nice sanding and a good varnish coat will enhance the look. Not decided if I will paint it or not. That decision will come later. 

Best regards,

 

[WalrusGuy]

Very nice and neat planking! Looks superb!!! 

[Eugenio Treviño]

15 minutes ago, WalrusGuy said:

Very nice and neat planking! Looks superb!!! 

Thank you very much WalrusGuy !!! 
Your support encourages me to keep the effort!

Because of my job, I used to travel a lot. Now I have 8 months doing home office. Modeling has been one of the things preventing me from throwing my wife and 3 daughters through the window!!! Or throwing myself !!!

 

I also like philately. I collect Mexican stamps. But at this time modeling has been a better option. And who knows how long this will take. So I need to keep working on the Victory. 

 

Thanks again and best regards!
 

 

 

[Richard44]

Nice job on the planking.

[Eugenio Treviño]

I have decided to keep the natural wood, so no painting will be done. 
 

In order to produce the 3 color stripes of the hull sides, I will use a different wood, alternating it with the walnut provided.
 

The lines will not be horizontal as in the real thing, but that will allow me to keep the natural wood finish and will give an idea of the design.

 

Here are the pics.
 

Best regards!!!

[Rob S]

Enjoying your build Eugenio! Here is the device I use for holding bent planks while they dry. It’s served me well. Very similar to your nice method!