HMS Royal William by KeithW - Euromodel - 1/72

[BANYAN]

Nice work Keith, the ornamentations looks great.  Glad to see you have come to grips with the positioning and size of the ports.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Keith_W]

If this does not make sense, send me a PM to save room on Keith's post .

 

Thank you for your contribution, Pete. I don't mind people commenting in this thread - one reason I post this log is to show others what problems I have had and what I had to do to overcome them.

 

Since I started this build, I have perhaps had to move the position of 10 gunports. It is not the vertical position that is the issue - that is easily determined by the gun blocks, or by trial fitting an assembled gun carriage. I determined the height of the gunport by poking pins through the hull until it went directly into the barrel of the gun carriage, or onto a mark that I placed on the gun blocks (for the lower deck guns). 

 

The issue is the horizontal position. The position of most of these ports do not matter, except for the ones I have pointed out. 

[Keith_W]

Here are a few vanity shots ... just for fun. 

 

 

Taken in the backyard on an Australian winter morning. Yes, the sun is out. Grass is green, and the sky is blue. But it is really cold!! 

 

 

The other side. Decorations have been placed all the way to the front with the exception of the last piece. Once the beakhead railings go on, the last piece will be placed. The position of all the gunport holes have been finalized and cut out. 

 

Note also the gaps in the decorations that I left for the fenders. I have not shown a picture of the fenders yet, but they have been cut, sanded, and ready to be installed. Because the top of the fenders need to reach the cap railings, the top of the fenders have not been trimmed. I do not want to leave the tops sticking out while I work on the rest of the ship, so I will leave off installing the fenders until I am ready to install the cap railings - which will come after the transom is completed. 

 

You can also see that the pear planking in the front is a lighter shade than the rest of the ship. This is because it has been freshly sanded in preparation for the beakhead railings to go on. The darker shade of pear is what pear looks like when it has not been sealed and has been absorbing oil from my fingers for more than a year. 

 

 

From the back. You will note that the top of the decorations look a little irregular. Can't be helped, that is the nature of what was supplied in the kit. Once the wooden caps go on, everything will be sanded until it is flat. 

 

 

The completed repair of the re-positioned gunport I showed in my previous post. I saved all the offcuts from the decorations in case I might need them. In this case, I lengthened the decoration by gluing in parts that I had to remove from other pieces to accomodate gunports and so on. 

 

 

Close up of the three windows which I replaced. In hindsight I could have left on Euromodel's supplied smaller windows instead of removing them - they are barely noticeable when the model is viewed in full. And my replacement doesn't look that great. 

 

You can also see that I have filled in the gaps between the decorations with some epoxy putty and painted it over. Keith Julier says that the joints are almost invisible once you do this. Well, i'm no Keith Julier so my joints are still visible! I will probably go and sand them back a bit more to see if I can improve on this. 

Edited May 3, 2016 by KeithW

[Keith_W]

Thanks Brian. Don't know if you missed the post somewhere above, but I did remove a section of the masking tape to see if there were any problems. It came off easily and with no residue, so I reapplied it. Seems as if good old Tamiya is quite safe to use! Of course, the real test will be at next month's model expo, where I will be removing ALL the masking tape for the display. The good thing is, there will be no fragile features installed by then, so if I need to I can sand the hull back down and repaint if necessary ... but I think I probably won't have to do anything like that. Fingers crossed.

[Kevin]

Keith, she looked great in the sunshine, I love taking mine outside, it does give me the opportunity to blow all the dust of and show her true colours.

even after all this time I ponder if I should have taken the Royal William on or not

looking forward to your next update

[Greg the peg leg sailor]

G'day Keith

Re your post about the 2D plan in the real 3D world. I agree with you completely as I'm had the same problem with my drawing of the Royal Caroline. The height of the transom is viewed from behind the ship. Taking the angle of the transom into account, I had to expand the vertical height without changing the width. In photoshop this is a easy matter.

What I trying to say maybe the length of the side of the RW have to be stretch horizontal only in the area of the bow. This way the gun ports will be in a closer position in the 3D world.

Havagooday and I hope understand what I'm trying to convey.

Greg

[Keith_W]

Thanks Kevin. I was going to take on the Caldercraft Victory, but I was persuaded by Brian the Extraordinaire not to. "Everyone is doing the Victory", he said. And a quick scan of MSW will confirm this. Not only that, but most of the Victory's here are built to a higher standard than I could ever imagine myself doing. Like yours, for example. Or Dafi's. Or Gil Middleton's. Or those countless scratch Victory's.

 

The major downside of the Victory from my point of view is that she is fully painted. I like a combination of wood and paint, and that's what this model gives. 

 

There are but a small handful of Royal William builders here, and only one of them is ahead of me in the build, and VinceP is taking a very different path to what I am doing. It is a little scary going out on your own, with no instructions, and with only one build log to follow and PiratePete's I-I to go on (and even he did things very differently to me!). 

 

The big question is what I am going to do once I finish this model. I have fallen in love with the ship. Maybe i'll make a scratch built model of the Royal George. 

[WackoWolf]

Keith, I am watching this build. Brian is 100% right, everyone is doing a Victory, now don't get me wrong I love the Victory but so does everyone else. Keep the post and lots of pictures, I will be waiting. Thanks for sharing this with us.

[Wombat]

Hi KeitH,

And all RW builders it's been a while since I checked out this site, all my model making has been on hold whilst I supported my daughter with her cancer, she died in December and it takes a while to get back into anything. I hope to restart the San Felpe build soon , so I wil be checking in on the RW builds in preparation of an anticipated start when the current build is finished.

 

Wombat

[Keith_W]

Wombat, I am so sorry to hear that! As a doctor myself, I often find myself consoling family members who have lost loved ones. As my patient's mum told me, "children are not supposed to die before their parents, I wish that god had taken me instead".

 

That is awful. I know that nothing I can say or do will make you feel better, so all I can advise you to do is to distract yourself. Ship modelling is a good release.

[Greg the peg leg sailor]

G'day wombat

My condolence to you and your whole family on the death of your daughter. The only condolence that you may have is that she is in peace now and no pain.

God bless

Greg

Edited June 27, 2016 by Greg the peg leg sailor

[Greg the peg leg sailor]

G'day Keith 

You have been very quiet lately! Just wondering when we'll see more logs on your RW? 

Havagooday 

Greg 

[yancovitch]

waiting..waiting.....

[Keith_W]

Sorry guys, I am still here. I decided that I needed a new direction in life given that I have put on so much weight over the past few years. Ship modelling is a relatively sedentary hobby. It's not that I am not interested in it, I am. And I do want to get back to work with it. But for now, I have taken up cycling and golf again and I spend my weekends riding 50-100km with my friends. I have lost 5kg so far, but I have another 15kg to go. 

[Greg the peg leg sailor]

G'day Keith 

I know what you mean about weight gain. I was 114kg until I went on my diet. NO SUGAR AT ALL, but I replaced it with honey in my coffee. Half my meat intake, was also my secret. 

In 8 months I lost 37 kg and was down to a good weight of 77kg. That was 2 years ago and I'm still around 77 kg. I was in 4XL t's now small. 

I feel heaps better. 

Havagooday 

Greg 

 

[ken3335]

Hi  Keith,  Keep going, yours was one of the first build logs that inspired me to eventually start my Royal William build. Cycling and the Royal William can go together, here's a couple of pics to inspire you. The first is me crossing the Alps on an extended continental tour a couple of years ago which took in Spain, France and Italy, the second is me still racing at 70. Enjoy.

[yancovitch]

hahaha.....what a shock.....like someone building the taj mahal, then suddenly, changed their mind and did something else haha..........you're doing so so much better job on your model, than i did on my original rw kit....but all's good....change can be a very positive thing, since what we do, is less important than finding out who we are

[piratepete007]

Hi Keith,

I have taken time to re-re-read your work and have come to the conclusion that what you have done is so meticulous in its detail. The ornamentation around the supporting columns underneath the transom decks, the colouring of the gallery windows, your detailed analysis of what could be improved in the kit, the doors in the row of the gallery windows (yes, they are there in the plans) ... and the list just goes on.

 

Your work deserves to be re-examined by others as well !

 

Pete

[yancovitch]

yea pete....ya got it right

[Greg the peg leg sailor]

G'day Keith 

I also agree with Pete. I spent the last 2 weeks rereading Mark's, Vince's and your logs on the RW. They are all incredible and the way Mark, Vince and you approached their own builds is so amazing and completely different.  The results for all three are inspiring to all future RW builders.

The way you approached the transom is so unique, I'm sure future RW builders will borrow this and turn it around and make it their own version.

The only thing that I can ask of you is to PLEASE CONTINUE WITH THIS MARVELOUS BUILD AND YOUR INFORMATIVE LOG.

Hope and pray to see you back soon.

Allthebest mate 

Greg 

[Keith_W]

Hello all, a number of years have passed since I last worked on this ship. A few things have happened in life, took up other hobbies, etc. The RW was still looking magnificent and sitting in an unfinished state in my living room. Guests would come to my house, look at the ship model, and tell me I should go back to work on it. So here we are. 

 

 

My previous progress was stalled because I had cut the beakhead supports (I don't know what you call them, those vertical riser things?) wrongly. Euromodel only supplies 6 - which is just enough if you don't make any mistakes. I had to source a set of spares from a friend who had abandoned his RW build and this time I carefully cut them out and installed them. I am not entirely pleased with the result but it looks OK. 

 

 

Hand painting the beakhead was very difficult since my eyesight is not as good as it was a few years ago. I went back and fixed some of the jaggies so it looks better. 

 

I am now working on the transom. It is difficult to support the fascia piece and I was concerned about the lack of gluing points for the heavy decorations that would hang off it, so I installed some columns on either edge of the lower deck. These are pinned to the decks above and below and are absolutely solid. These will be hidden by the metal castings and the fascia piece, and when the fascia is installed I will drill a hole through it and pin it. 

 

With the support columns in place, it allows me to clamp the fascia piece onto the transom and allows me to work on the position with much greater precision and repeatability than before. I had already pre-curved the fascia a few years ago and marked the center line alignment. Once installed, all the horizontal bars will be cut out and replacements will be fabricated. 

 

I indicated with arrows some gaps where the rear fascia is not quuuuite long enough to meet the decks. I will need to add some material to this. There is not much gluing area, fortunately I was planning to add some reinforcement behind it to help support the weight of the transom anyway. 

 

This is the most exciting part of the kit - the major reason I bought the Royal William was because of the open stern galleries which lends a lot of visual excitement. I am taking reference off other RW kit builders (most of whom have finished their models) and photos I have found online. My stern will have a different colour scheme because I do not think that painting it all black is correct. I will post again when I have completed more work. 

Edited August 29, 2023 by Keith_W

[Kevin]

lovely to see her back on the table, wish i had friends who abandon their RW,

lol wish i had a friend

[Keith_W]

I was not happy with the way I installed the beakhead supports / vertical risers. 

 

So I pulled them out and reinstalled them: 

 

I will need to sand off all the glue marks and repaint it. I am not happy with how lumpy the final appearance looks. The problem is that the metal is so soft, and when I shape them on my disc sander the only way to get a proper grip on the piece is to hold it with pliers. This then leaves a mark on the piece. I should have used good old hand sanding instead to shape the piece but that takes forever! 

 

 

[Keith_W]

I have spent the past week working on the transom. 

 

In a previous post, I showed that the pre-cut plywood fascia does not fit my model. So I had to graft an extension on to it. You can see a faint line from the front, but it won't matter because it will be covered by decorations. 

 

With that complete, I made a start with the windows. Euromodel supplies cast metal windows. Other modellers on MSW have drilled out the window panes and filled it with clear glue to imitate glass. Given that the rest of the windows and panels are scratch built in my model, I had to continue the same approach. 

 

After I completed all the windows, a quick test to show if the lights are still working after leaving the ship untouched for a few years. All good! 

 

They have a wonderful "scratch built" look to them. By that I mean, they are inconsistent from one window to another. If it's too perfect then it looks like it came from the kit 😄 Having said that, I think these look better than the kit supplied windows. There is more glass area, the windows are bigger, and the details are ever so slightly finer. 

Edited September 4, 2023 by Keith_W

[piratepete007]

Ah Keith, great to see you have returned to you RW build. Looking forward very much to your future posts 

[Keith_W]

Thank you Pete! I was starting to wonder if I am talking to myself here.

 

I have re-downloaded your Interpretive Info. I see that you have modified them since I started the build. Currently I am doing some research as to what colours I should paint the transom. I am not sure whether I want to keep the black background or go with all gold. I think I will make my decision after I attach the metal pieces. If there is insufficient coverage, I will go with all gold to hide the bare bits. I have seen some funny looking RW transoms on Google image search and I am hoping that mine does not look like that ... given that the transom is what most people gaze at when they look at a model (or maybe that's just me!). 

[Jack-in-the-Blue]

1 hour ago, Keith_W said:

transom

It’s definitely one of the highlights of a ship like this. Yours looks magnificent. It’s as impressive as the original builders intended it to be. 

[Keith_W]

I have completed making my own decorations for the stern. From the very beginning, I had decided to make my own decorations because I did not like what was supplied in the kit. So I bought a book on jewellery making and watched a lot of Youtube videos. It still involved a lot of trial and error, and my skill improved as I refined my technique after making at least a dozen which I discarded. This was wasteful of K&N Brass Rods which fortunately aren't too expensive! 

These are the tools you need: a ceramic soldering base, a pencil torch, and two types of silver solder - "hard" and "soft". The idea of two types of solder is that one melts at a much higher temperature, which allows you to make joints next to each other without the first one melting. You have to be strategic about which type of solder you are going to use. Ideally, the pieces should be clamped down because they have a tendency to suddenly shift when the solder melts, which will result in a discarded piece because once it is soldered on, there is no getting it off. Silver solder is STRONG!

 

I will describe what worked for me in case it helps other modellers who wish to do the same. 

 

The rings were made by winding brass rod around a suitably shaped cylinder to create a spiral (I used wooden dowel that came with the kit). Then cut the spiral to make rings. Shape each ring with pliers, making sure that the two cut ends meet and will hold together by the springiness of the metal alone. 

Lay your workpiece on the ceramic base. Here, the large ring has already been soldered, and I am soldering on the small rings. The silver solder comes as a paste, and it is very stiff when ejected from the syringe. It has a tendency to move the small rings when you try to apply it. I have found that it dissolves in Acetone and flows with heat. So after I lay out the workpiece with all the pieces I want to solder, I gently apply some heat and extrude some paste and gently touch the metal. This causes the flux to melt and flow into the gap without moving the piece. After all the paste has been extruded, apply aggressive heat with the pencil torch - you will see the flux start to bubble, the metal will glow red, then suddenly you get a flash of silver as the solder melts and cements the piece together. Immediately stop applying heat and move on to the next joint. 

 

Once all the decorations have been made, you will note that the heating process discolours the metal. I lightly sand it and then give it an Acetone bath to remove any finger oil or excess flux. Then spray it with primer (I used Tamiya metal primer), then paint it to your liking. 

This is a comparison of the decoration supplied by Euromodel, and my scratchbuilt effort. These decorations are like my windows - they are inconsistent! 

 

Once those were done, I moved on to carving the decorations for the topmost rail. This was done with a Dremel with and engraving tool, and a sharp hobby knife. To ensure that the pieces wouldn't break apart, I glued two planks at right angles to each other to make my own "plywood". 

Edited September 4, 2023 by Keith_W

[Keith_W]

Once those decorations have been made, I mounted it on the ship. 

As you can see, I decided to use the stanchions provided by the kit. This was after I bought some stanchions from RK Hobby (too wide), considered using toothpicks (also too wide), tried turning my own stanchions on a Dremel (takes too long, and too many breakages). Then I decided that Euromodel's stanchions don't look so bad after all. 

 

Another comparison of scratch-built vs. what was supplied in the kit. Other builders of this kit have drilled out the decorations so they don't look so coin-like, but then you lose the flexibility of sizing the decoration to the exact dimensions of your galleries. For my model, these were much too wide. They fit the railings provided by Euromodel, but those railings don't fit my galleries. 

 

And this is a comparison of the upper galleries - carved vs. kit. You can see that the casting was quite poor with my kit and if I wanted to use it, I would have to re-scribe all the lines. You can also see that they are much too short for my galleries. The size of my galleries follows the plans, but as we have seen time and time again in this build log, the supplied metal pieces do not follow the plans. Of course I had checked whether these would fit before cutting my galleries, and I knew that I would have to scratchbuild my own if I decided not to use the kit part. 

 

You can also see that I added a little hatch to access the top gallery. This is not indicated in the plans, but it seemed strange to have a beautifully built open air verandah with no way to access it. Placing a little hatch there makes it seem a little less abandoned. 

 

With all the galleries done, time to attach the transom fascia. I forgot to take a picture of all the reinforcements and gluing points I had added to make sure it stays on and doesn't fall off from the weight of all the metal parts. As I write this, I am waiting for the glue to dry. I used three types of glue - Titebond, epoxy, and CA. The purpose of the CA was to instantly secure the fascia once I had correctly positioned it (you can see my guide marks in the middle of the fascia). Masking tape protects some windows from the glue. You can also see that I have drawn the outlines of the decorations in pencil when I was debating whether to paint the transom fascia before or after mounting - I decided to paint after mounting. I will go back and secure the transom with pins for additional insurance. 

[allanyed]

Hi Keith

Kudos to you for taking the time to replace those awful looking pieces with your own which are much better.

Allan