HMS Victory by Tillsbury - Heller - 1:100 - PLASTIC

[Tillsbury]

Hello all, I might as well take the plunge since receiving this model unexpectedly for my birthday.  Still at a very very early stage and experimenting with many new-to-me techniques and tools.  Here's where the hull is so far...

 

The plan for this build is to be relatively out-of-box with a few improvements here and there as they become obvious, and a particular emphasis on the rigging.  I'm trying to keep away from absolutely bonkers modifications principally to avoid it taking too many years to complete.  But given my tendency to want to go over-the-top it'll be a constant battle to moderate the plans somewhat.

 

For the overall look, I'm going for the no-Admiral-entrance look (i.e. as per model).  Given that the vast majority of the contemporary pictures of Victory don't show it, I'm tempted to avoid it (and this wins for simplicity too).  I'll not be going pink, but neither do I like the extremely bright yellows, so something in between is probably where it'll end up.  Yet to be determined I guess.

 

I have softened much of the fake wood grain, and removed the lumpy rigols and replaced them with home-made 3d printed ones, which I'm happy with at the moment.  I did order some from Dafi but he appears to be on holiday at the moment so thought it would be easier to just get on with printing some.

 

Haven't yet decided what to do about the "closed/fake" ports, nor the doorway at the stern.  I have gone ahead thickening the hull around the ports on the middle gun deck but am still waiting on supplies of 4mm styrene to do the lower deck and more 1mm sheet to line the upper.

 

First coat of primer on just to see where the imperfections are and decide whether there's still too much wood grain.  It's not as bad as the photo in real life, as this is fairly ruthlessly lit from the keel.

 

[Tillsbury]

And realising that there are times when things need to sit and dry, and times when you need a change, I am also starting work in parallel on the masts such that I can get them all completed and partially rigged by the time they're needed.

 

The lower main mast has a void in the middle, which is just over 4mm wide and 11.5" long.  Gentlemen of a certain age will immediately recognise this as Meccano part 13 (11.5" axle rod).  And sure enough, it fits perfectly.  With the aid of a few layers of masking tape at various points down its length to force the plastic to be spaced evenly from the axle, I used CA to add the axle to one side and flooded the inside with further CA, then glued the two halves together.  The result is a decently hefty mast with excellent stiffness and nice and straight (as long as you start with a straight Meccano axle).  

 

The foremast takes a slightly shortened one, the mizzen needs it somewhat ground down to 3mm at one end, and the fore and main topmasts find an ideal centre in the axle from part 198 (the hinged flat plate), which again many sheds must have a surplus of.  And even the bowsprit perfectly takes a 5.5" rod.  Everything nice and solid to start with.  The colour was picked out as a fairly muted pale yellow ochre, which I like at the moment but it will remain to be seen whether it works with whatever yellow I end up with on the hull.

 

[Tillsbury]

I'm undecided on the way to do the rigging, and although I won't be rigging every invisible cannon I will certainly attempt some of the more visible ones.  To this end I've been working on parameterised blocks with the 3d printer, and seeing how easy very small blocks are to thread.  The ones in this picture are 2mm and 3.5mm overall, each with 0.8mm holes (I could go smaller but this makes life much easier to thread).  Also on this picture examples of the two types of rigols, which are about 13mm overall.  Shout if you want me to upload the .stl files.

[Tillsbury]

Which leads me to my first plea for help (of presumably many to come).  I seem to be missing the mizzen topmast, part 422.  I cannot for the life of me see where it's gone (and it's not on the sprue where it should be).  It's not a crisis, as it seems to me that given it's a single-part mast it won't be suitably strong and it would be better to fettle a better one from wooden dowel anyway.  But I don't have the template now.  Could anyone with a not-yet-assembled Heller model please be kind enough to give me the dimensions of this part?

[GrandpaPhil]

John McKay’s 100-Gun Ship Victory, of the Anatomy of the Ship series is the reference that I have been using for my own Victory build, which was a 1:98 scale Mantua kit.

It has complete plans for the Victory.

 

John McKay’s book is excellent and I strongly recommend it!

Edited Tuesday at 08:39 AM by GrandpaPhil

[Tillsbury]

Thanks.  I can probably guesstimate most of it because it will naturally be a scaled down version of the main and fore topmasts, but it would be nice if someone had the actual part there just to confirm.  Also it's not like the odd millimetre is going to be critical here.

[dafi]

Hello Tillsbury,

 

here are the dimensions of the mizzen mast as per Heller.

 

XXXDAn

 

[Tillsbury]

Magnificent, thank you Daniel.  I have a few bits of wood here I'll try knocking it out with, and report back with progress.  I need to do the topgallant masts too anyway.