Revell HMS Victory

I have an interesting idea . . . I would love to see a kit of the Victory as she was originally built, with an ornate and elaborate open stern gallery, more elaborate quarter galleries, no entry ports, shoulder high forecastle and stern bulwarks, and a more traditional paint arrangement. Gold wreaths circled the upper gun ports against a royal field, black above the water line to the first wale, the rest, yellow ochre. It would be an interesting contrast with more traditional models of the ship.

I have to agree with John . . . if I had the money to purchase the Calder Craft Victory, I believe I would opt instead for their HMS Agamemnon as something different and more unusual. After all, how many kits exist of 64-gun ships-of-the-line? www.agesofsail.com lists the Victory at $1,199.00 and the Agamemnon at $1,099.00.

Bill

Roberto,

Have you considered building the Airfix 1/180 HMS VIctory?  It is larger than the Revell kit, give more options because all of the three gundeck cannon are mounted as dummy cannon with seperate port lids, and is equally well-detailed. It is just a thought.

Bill

The shape of the knee of the head in that kit bugs me. It ends prematurely, before reaching the tip of the head rails, and as a result the figurehead sits too low and the entire bow looks... weird. Also, I think it has raised planking joints?

Anyways, that would be a fourth Victory kit... on a collection of seven kits. I need to find a different subject! 

Best I could do with the stern... so small! From a distance it looks great, but close ups are depressing.

Any suggestions on how to paint such ultrafine detail? Fortunately the 1/100 is way bigger and 5/0 brushes and toothpicks should do...

Roberto,

I have used several methods in my life. One is to paint the details first, then airbrush the darker background over the details, then, using very fine sandpaper, lightly sand over the details. This brings them out into sharp contrast against the background.  A similar method uses dull knife edges to scrape away the darker paint until the details pop out. You can also use micro brushes to hand-paint the fine detail.

I'm curious.  What do you find depressing in  the finish?

Bill

The sanding/scrapping idea looks like it could work, though I'm not sure the Vallejo paints I use would be up to the task - they form a rubbery layer, rather than a tough, hard one like Tamiya acrylics. I was thinking of switching completely to Tamiya anyways, at least for basecoats (Vallejo peels under masking tape, Tamiya doesn't).

I find depressing the unevenness of the contrasting areas, like the ballustrades - but overall, from a distance it looks fine. I just touched up the borders of the name plate a bit, looks better now. BTW, they should have moulded the name, or at least include a decal for the purpose... I had to resort to printed paper again.

Have you considered using fine tip markers? You can get them at any art or craft store. They are easier to control than paint brushes, and they make detail painting far easier.  I am using one on a Le Soleil Royal I am building and they work beautifully.

Bill

I used permanent black marker on some fine raised details of the kit - however, I haven't found fine tipped markers in more colors at local stores so far. Just some nasty ones with a huge tip.. the search goes on.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Roberto,

I get mine at two local chain stores, Michaels and A.C. Moore.  Both are large arts and craft stores.  They sell a wide range of fine and extremely fine tips that are very useful for painting fine details on plastic ships.  Let me know what colors you need.

Bill

The German drafting supply firm Staedtler makes a set of colored, very-fine-tipped markers that work well - if you're trying to cover a dark color with another dark color. A fine Staedtler pen probably would work well for the black spaces between the yellow pilasters. But covering the black plastic with a yellow marker would, I suspect, be hopeless.

For what it's worth, I think that transom looks mighty good. Getting all those pilasters to look identical is close to impossible. I can state with certainty that yours looks far better than any of the ones I built did.

If you feel like touching it up some more that's certainly commendable. But if you can't make it any better than it is now, these 64-year-old but pretty critical eyes won't mind.

One thing I would take the liberty to suggest: consider doing something about those oversized round bosses that the stern lanterns fit into. They're conspicuously out of scale. Once the lanterns are in place, the bosses will be less noticeable, though. Again, if you can figure out how to get along without them the model will be improved - but it's going to look mighty nice in any case.

Roberto,

I have to second John's comments about your transom.  It looks great to me.

Bill

Thanks a lot, gentlemen. I guess I ask too much of myself, this being my second ship model and the subject being so small. It certainly looks decent from a distance and that's the way it's going to be seen most of the time, so...

I'm not sure what to do with the lantern bosses. I was looking at reference pictures for the transom as  I was painting it and noticed they are huge indeed! I was going to leave them like that, but now that you mention it, maybe I should just cut them off...

The problem with Heller's blocks is that they don't have grooves around them. A two-piece rigid mold can't produce a block with both a hole through it and a groove around it. The same problem applies to deadeyes. (The geniuses at Imai figured out how to do the trick with slide molding, but to my knowledge nobody else has ever produced truly realistic blocks and deadeyes in styrene.)

If, gawd forbid, I were tackling a Heller Victory (or a Revell Constitution, for that matter) my first choice would be to buy the blocks and deadeyes from Syren Ship Model Company. Here's a link: http://www.syrenshipmodelcompany.com/boxwood-rigging-blocks.php .

Bluejacket cast metal blocks would be an excellent second choice; they look great, but cleaning them up and painting them in the necessary numbers would be a big project.

Syren Ship Model's prices aren't really bad as such things go - and the products are great. But please, please don't feel like you have to order a whole complement of blocks and deadeyes for the whole ship at once. Buy them as you need them.

I see. The blocks do have plastic "pins" to fix the rigging thread, but I guess it's not practical.

Syren's blocks look really, really nice. Quite expensive but might be worth it, if they ship outside the US. Bluejacket is interesting because they carry really small hearts, which I will need for the 1/147 Constitution. I haven't been able to find hearts smaller than 7 mm in the European market - those would be HUGE for a 1/147 frigate... unfortunately, BJ doesn't seem to produce open hearts or stay collars to match the small sizes.

Thanks a lot for the info!

Blue Jackets sailing ship models are all in the range of ~1/8" to 1/4" in scale, meaning they wont have fittings for smaller scales. You might be able to adapt some of their smaller fittings to represent larger fittings on your scale.

I can't recommend Syren's blocks enough. They are a indeed bit spendy, but, IMHO, well worth it. I have yet to toss a bad block or have to re-drill any holes other than the ones I accidently got glue in. I am pretty sure that Chuck ships outside the US, but have no idea what the shipping costs would be. Stateside delivery is usually just a matter of a few days (not weeks), so I imagine that you would still get pretty quick delivery even so. If you drop him a PM through his site, he is really good about getting back to you. His cordage is also far better than any I have found to date.

As has been recommended many times on this site, just buy what you need for the time being and it will spread out the overall cost.

I will sure follow your advice - and it will be a while until I need blocks anyways!

Syren will most likely be my choice...

For now, and posting off topic in my own thread, I did a preliminary test fitting on the Heller kit. Quite good I must say, once I figured things out. Unfortunately some parts are warped (almost all of the bow structure parts, for example), but thank God hull halves and decks seem to go together pretty well. Heller did really screw up with the instructions   - the deck supporting beams, for example, are drawn in a completely wrong order. Some people have trouble with them being too long, but I think the real problem is that they're not being fit in the right place. The camber is built into the beams - they shouldn't bend. After rearranging them everything went together nicely, or so it seems. Transom and quarter galleries also fit with the decks in place. I hope it stays that way when I actually start building!

BTW , anyone have a copy of the Imai instructions for that kit? That would be really, really helpful! 

Been working on the Constitution lately (I think I will start a thread about it soon, as the 05600 kit is quite uncommon and it might be interesting). Rigged a few more sails on the Revell Victory but not as much progress on that one... in the meantime, here's a cell phone pic of the cannons I'm making for the 1/100 Heller kit during lunch time, left is weathered, right is unweathered. Any suggestions are most welcome!

pete-coleman.com/.../viewforum.php

If you haven't found it already, you'll really like this site.

Mine is down at the bottom "Bills Victory" last post April 2011

For your guns, the real ones are painted with black paint.

There's a cap over each trunnion, the ends of it are molded as part of the top of the carriage. The caps are black as well.

The ends of the axles of the trucks are black. The trucks themselves look wood colored today, I think I painted mine brown.

All of the hardware on the carriage like eyebolts and straps is blackened or black.

Thanks a lot. I painted the barrels black with gunmetal dry brushing (not sure if I should really leave it like that), trucks are wood colored and the end of the axles is black (I had not painted them yet on the unweathered one). What I did not realize at all is that the cap of the trunnions was there, thanks for pointing that out!

Good looking. The actual barrels are painted black, that is paint not metallic. Just be aware that they look like, well, big model barrels painted black!

What a pity, I really liked the metal effect! But I want them to look authentic, so I'll dry brush some black until the metallic sheen is gone...

Thanks!

Will register at the Pete Coleman forum, I haven't done it yet and can't read anything... well worth it, or so it seems!

I could go either way on those barrels. The weathering is nicely done but they both look pretty good to me.

Amazing build rdiaz! I stumbled upon this thread while looking up references for my own build of this very kit. I'm coming very close to the end and, having spent much time on details, would very much like to avoid sullying the look with the molded ratlines if I can help it.

I'm keen on using technique, but need some clarification. Did you use the molded shrouds, but just cut the ratlines out of it and replace them with thread, or did you actually rig the shrouds with real thread? If so, how did you attach the shrouds? Do you have any detailed pictures focusing on the shrouds?

Thanks for any help!

I think it's a little too late for a reply, but things have been a little too busy for the past months - had a house fire that "luckily" destroyed my kitchen only, and ran out of time and money for anything model related until now... hope to retake it soon. Anyways, just in case it's still useful: I didn't use the pre moulded shrouds at all, it's all thread. The shrouds are attached to the plastic parts representing dead eyes and chainplates, and looped around the masts just like real shrouds are, in the same order.

Cheers!

Glad to see you back Roberto. I am sorry to hear about the fire but glad that you are safe. Hopefully we will see some more modeling pictures coming our way.

Steve

Roberto,

I hope that nobody was hurt! Is there anything that you need?

Bill Morrison

Thankfully no one was hurt, the doors were closed and the fire didn't spread that much. Kitchen was ruined, but we're all OK. One of my cats was trapped in the kitchen but it survived too. Thanks for worrying! 

I've been preparing the models for working on them again, they caught a bit of dust!

Sorry to here this Roberto.  I had the same thing happen to a model of the British Frigate Undine that I was very proud of.  It took the full broadside from a 12lb Norwegian Longhair and was a total loss.  Cases don't always protect the model either, for I had my Cutty Sark dismasted when my Labrador snuck a baseball into the house and then threw it right into the case destroying it.

My hobby is "Building" models, and my wife's is collecting cats and dogs.  So I will never run out of excuses to stop building.  Hee Hee.