Heller 1/100 Victory

I generally start out by recommending three.

1.  John McKay, Anatomy of the Ship:  The 100-Gun Ship Victory.  This is typical of the Conway Maritime Press's "Anatomy" series:  a set of incredibly detailed drawings accompanied by a brief text and a decent assortment of photos.  This particular one has drawn some fire from naval historians due to some gaffes in research - most of which aren't particularly relevant to the modeler working from the Heller kit.  But in terms of draftsmanship the drawings - especially the isometrics - are absolutely superb.  I consider myself unworthy to sharpen Mr. McKay's pencils.

2.  Allan McGowen and John McKay, H.M.S. Victory:  Construction, Career, and Restoration.  This is a big, coffee-table-type book, but a real mine of information about the history of the ship herself.  For this project Mr. McKay augmented his "Anatomy" drawings with a considerable number of new ones; the goofs of the earlier book are corrected, and the new drawings actually cover the rigging more thoroughly than the first set.  There are also more photographs, and a great deal of material about the ongoing restoration and preservation of her as a "museum ship."

3.  C. Nepean Longridge, The Anatomy of Nelson's Ships.  This is an old classic, dating from the early sixties.  (It's currently out of print, and used copies, unfortunately, are pretty expensive.  But it's worth tracking down - maybe in a library.)  The title notwithstanding, it's a detailed account of how Dr. Longridge built his famous 1/48-scale model, which is now in the Science Museum in London.  Much of the text on building the model will be only of curiosity value to anybody starting with a kit, but the biggest virtue of the book from the plastic modeler's standpoint is its verbal descriptions of the rigging.  Longridge describes the run of each line in his text.  The book also comes with a fine set of drawings by George Campbell, which undoubtedly would be regarded as the standard plans of the ship if Mr. McKay hadn't come along.  For builders of the Heller kit, this book is my first recommendation.

There are, of course, lots of posts about this kit here in the Forum.  A search on the term "Heller Victory" will provide several nights' worth of cures for insomnia.

in addition to the books jtilley recommended (and a good list, too), I remember seeing a great web site. I did not bookmark the site but I am sure it would come up easily in a Google search.

Don Stauffer

in addition to the books jtilley recommended (and a good list, too), I remember seeing a great web site. I did not bookmark the site but I am sure it would come up easily in a Google search.

Is it this one?

http://pete-coleman.com/forum/

Definitely a useful resource in any case, as this site/forum deals specifically with the Heller 1/100 kit. The only downside is that the photos are missing from some of the older threads.

Thanks for the recco's. I'll start with no.s 1 and 3, looks like I can get both for about $ 75.00 which works for me.

The ship's own website is also very much worthy of attention:  http://www.hms-victory.com/ .

A section of the site is designed specifically for models, and contains some information that's more up-to-date than the books.  (In conjunction with the Trafalgar bicentennial, in 2005, a good deal of high-powered research on the ship's appearance was done; the ship's website probably reflects the results of that research better than any other source.

On the other hand, the modeler should beware that some features of the ship today are most definitely not true to her appearance when she was in active service.  Her masts are now made of steel.  (That probably explains why the portions of the topmasts and topgallant masts where the yards slide are painted yellow, rather than being unpainted, oiled wood.)  And, perhaps most conspicuously, her hull planking today is much simplified from the "anchor-stock" planking of the wales in her earlier days. 

In any case, the site is worth considerable study.

Tilley's books 1 and 3 have been ordered. Total cost $ 71 or so.

Ship on the way at $ 90 plus/minus

Thanks for the weblinks.

In def to the professor, and as I have two MS students in my house living off of our weal, I glean that a proposal is in order:

The goal of this build will be a ship model built in total by the end of the year 2011.

There will be an ordinary effort to be accurate at a specific date (unknown) but that which the kit designers looked to replicate.

Little or no  additional, aftermarket as it were, or hardware will be either employed or copied, save single circumstances where the kit pieces are not up to Navy standards. Probably all of the running rigging.

There will be a separate thread, which will be ignored in a similar fashion as this one will, but a bookish,. and yes we know the men are illiterate, thing called Tails of the Queue, with references and footnotes in Turabian.

Well, I didn't quite follow all that, but I'll offer this in response.

The Heller designers clearly were trying to represent the ship's configuration as of 1805.  In my personal opinion they did a pretty good job of it - with one likely (but not certain) exception:  the configuration of the forecastle bulwarks.  (There's a lot of evidence to suggest that in 1805 they were shoulder-high, rather than knee-high.  Lots of modelers have complained that the kit lacks the ornate entry ports on the middle gundeck that the ship has today; I'm inclined to think Heller got that one right.  But I'm not sure.)

The big problem with building that kit out of the box is that the blocks and deadeyes are just about unusable.  Styrene plastic has to be molded in rigid molds, and a rigid mold can't produce an object with holes through it and a groove around it.  (The geniuses at Imai did figure out how to do the trick using slide-molding, but Heller didn't.)  I guess it would be physically possible to file grooves around all those blocks and deadeyes, but I certainly wouldn't want to try it.  Aftermarket blocks and deadeyes (my favorites are the cast Britannia metal ones from Bluejacket:  www.bluejacketinc.com ) would cost more than the kit did - but there's no reason to order all of them at the same time.

I personally couldn't build that kit in a year and a half, but anybody who wants to try it certainly has my best wishes.

EPinniger

 

Don Stauffer:

 

in addition to the books jtilley recommended (and a good list, too), I remember seeing a great web site. I did not bookmark the site but I am sure it would come up easily in a Google search.

 

 

Is it this one?

http://pete-coleman.com/forum/

Definitely a useful resource in any case, as this site/forum deals specifically with the Heller 1/100 kit. The only downside is that the photos are missing from some of the older threads.

Nope, it was a different page, nothing about modeling, all about the prototype.  Seems to me it was by the organization that runs the museum.

Don Stauffer

EPinniger:

 

Don Stauffer:

 

in addition to the books jtilley recommended (and a good list, too), I remember seeing a great web site. I did not bookmark the site but I am sure it would come up easily in a Google search.

 

 

Is it this one?

http://pete-coleman.com/forum/

Definitely a useful resource in any case, as this site/forum deals specifically with the Heller 1/100 kit. The only downside is that the photos are missing from some of the older threads.

 

Nope, it was a different page, nothing about modeling, all about the prototype.  Seems to me it was by the organization that runs the museum.

 

Sounds like the ship's website:  www.hms-victory.com .

If there's another major site dealing with the actual ship, I'd be interested to know about it. 

The goal of this build will be a ship model built in total by the end of the year 2011.

There will be an ordinary effort to be accurate at a specific date (unknown) but that which the kit designers looked to replicate.

Little or no  additional, aftermarket as it were, or hardware will be either employed or copied, save single circumstances where the kit pieces are not up to Navy standards. Probably all of the running rigging.

You are a brave man sir ! The Heller Victory has been in my stash for 3 years now and I haven't built up the nerve to wade in and start the build. I will be following your build with exceptional interest

Cheers,

Julian

bondoman

I just bought this for a very fair price. What's the one most comprehensive reference ?

Virgin Atlantic to London. Train to Portsmouth, Cab to the dock. Good digital camera & tripod.

Their website is an alternative starting point:

http://www.hms-victory.com/index.php

Geoff

Grem56

 

You are a brave man sir ! The Heller Victory has been in my stash for 3 years now and I haven't built up the nerve to wade in and start the build. I will be following your build with exceptional interest

Cheers,

Julian

I have not built the Victory, but I am building what may be considered a sister kit, the Le Soliel Royale. I consider those two kits to be the best plastic ship kits ever.  I am building to no schedule and only work on it for periods, with other kits between those periods. I have started rigging now, so the periods of building are even shorter than on hull and deck building.  Go ahead and start it, at least, then have a shelf where you can store it when you get burned out and need to do simpler projects for sanity.  Oh, yes, have a place to store the box, 'cause that is one big box, and it doesn't fit on my "interim-WIP" shelving.

Bondo,

Check your PM box, I sent a question.

Jake

Whenever the subject of Heller's Le Soleil Royal comes up I feel...well, a little awkward.  It must be one of the most controversial ship model kits ever produced.  I'm among those who...well, are not in its fan club.  (I would describe it as an outstanding example of artistry and artisanship in terms of the quality of the "carved" ornamentation, and a piece of junk in terms of historical accuracy.  I built it about thirty years ago; by the time I was finished with it I was wishing I hadn't spent the money.)

Here's one of the several Forum threads in which we've discussed it:   /forums/p/68138/1069433.aspx?PageIndex=1 .  (For some reason I have trouble getting the first page of the thread to open.  I have no idea why; maybe other people's computers won't have that problem.)  You'll find lots of opinions on both sides of the fence there.  I've never contended that anybody ought to build, or decline to build, a kit solely on the basis of my personal opinion.  I do suggest taking a careful look at the arguments on both sides.  I'd never presume to tell any modeler what kits to build, but I do think every modeler is entitled to go into a project like this with eyes wide open.  If I'd known in advance about the numerous gross inaccuracies of the Heller Soleil Royal I never would have bought the kit. 

A couple of pieces of information have come up since we started that other thread.  One - Heller has reissued the kit with a new painting on the box; the artist seems to agree with those people (including me) who contend that Heller botched up the quarter galleries.  Two - there's an interesting article about French seventeenth-century warships in the latest issue of the Nautical Research Journal.  The author (whose name I've forgotten, but who obviously knows how to do research) peremptorily dismisses the Musee de la Marine model (on which the Heller kit obviously is based), on the grounds that it disagrees in key respects with the designer's plans that the museum also holds.  He refers to those plans only in passing.  If they do indeed exist, they should throw a whole new light on the subject of the Heller kit's accuracy.

Bottom line (with which, I think, virtually all the participants in that earlier thread would agree):  the 1/100 Victory, which was released several years later, is, from the standpoint of scale modeling, a much, MUCH better kit.  I personally recommend the Victory kit (IF the modeler is willing to (a) do quite a bit of additional reading beyond the awful instructions and (b) spend a considerable amount of money on aftermarket parts).  I can't recommend the Soleil Royal.

Hi Don,

yes, that is probably the best and only way to build a big project like the Soleil or the Victory. Build until you get fed up with it, build something else and go right back in........................................................

cheers,

Julian

Geoff I might just do that. One of my best friends, my Best Man, lives in London, although he's been in Dubai the last two years building the world's tallest (for now) tower.

I joined the Pete Coleman site. Yes, John, many sleepless nights are in the future.

I'm pretty organized and tend to project manage myself pretty well. I'm inclined to put this thing on a schedule and budget and work from that. No doubt there's plenty of AM stuff to spend a fortune on, I'm sure starting with the batteries. Suggestions welcome. Certainly all the blocks, but that will be a while from now.

I am interested in lighting the ship. Whale oil lamps flicker, don't they?

bondoman

I am interested in lighting the ship. Whale oil lamps flicker, don't they?

Google "LED Lighting for Model Ships" to start with.

I did see somewhere online someone building the Revell kit had installed flickering leds to emulate oil lamps. I wish I had saved a link. It is out there somewhere!

Geoff

Thanks Geoff, I took your advice and found some info, including a spat about whether or not a lighted ship model most resembles a saloon, because an unattended lamp in a warship is a no-no! So, moderation, but it's something I'll need to tackle early as wiring the hull after the fact just won't do. I should be getting my books any day. I'm off to the shore for a long weekend- perfect!

John, I took a look at Bluejacket blocks and that all seems reasonable. And you are right- at the rate this will take, there'll be Christmas, Father's Day, My Birthday before this is done.

I am scratchbuilding an aircraft carrier and building a Liberty Ship, so those will be my primary distractions.

I am really excited about this kit. It sounds like a beautiful object.

My paternal grandfather was a man of means who was a modeler of all sorts of subjects. Unfortunately he died at the age of 41, so we never met. I have quite a few of his railroad models, all handmade in 1/48 scale.

When I was a teenager my father gave me a model of the Cutty Sark his dad had built in wood. I don't know if it was a kit but I'm almost certain it was not. It seemed to be at about the scale of the Revell kit- 1/96 would make sense as it's an architectural scale and those seemed to be his preferences. It had had an accident involving a high shelf, so that while fully rigged, the masts were snapped off at deck level. I left it behind when i went to college, and they've since moved, but I'm interested in going through their stuff to see if they still have it.

I've been fiddling around with my own Heller Victory for the past year or so - I figure I've still got a few years to go.  Actually I'm working from two kits... When I dusted off my 20 year old Heller kit I found a few warps and cracks that led me to outbid a Belgian on eBay for an Airfix version.

Modeling to her Trafalgar appearance is an adventure in frustration... Entry ports?... bulwarks? ... stern davits?  My suspicion is that the preserved ship (which I visited in '97 on my honeymoon!!!) is a wonderful compromise between multitudes of experts and realities of time and treasure.  Not necessarily, however, an exact depiction of her Trafalgar configuration.

My own perspective leads me to put more reliance on contemporary sources rather than the preserved ship.  In particular I compare and contrast the great Turner painting, the dockyard model in the NMM, and the epic Clarkson Stanfield painting in the United Service club London.  This last painting provides the foundation for my current build.  Interesting to me is that all three of these sources generally agree on two key elements - the Victory had the bulwarks built up on the foc'sle and there was no entry port.  Most interesting to me is that both Turner and Stanfield show the yellow ochre bands extended forward around the cutwater - certainly not an approach taken by many (if any) modelers and obviously not represented on the Portsmouth Victory.

I highly recommend the Pete Coleman site - those gentlemen have many helpful insights that can save time and enhance any build.

Report from the bilges- the McKay and Longridge books arrived today and stunning are they. I've put them on the desk with Landstrom and will sit down tomorrow with a pot of brew and begin to read.

First order of business will be to find a dedicated model space to work in. I suspect there will in fact be two- in my office and at home.

I have set a goal of finishing the model to the bulwarks by the end of 2010, and then the standing and running rigging all of next year. One interesting insight is that I may use wire as opposed to thread for the gun rigging, the gunport rigging, the cables and most of the other hull related lines. The stuff is available in all kinds of gages down to invisible, and I think a rope making machine may be the way to go.

I think you're on the right track using wire instead of thread at that scale... Only the breeching ropes and anchor cables need the heft of thread.  The efficacy of wire extends to the rigging - great for seizing lines and sometimes ratlines.  I've found plenty of different gauges in the jewelry section of my local craft store.  Sometimes tricky to keep the smaller gauges kink free - try rolling between two flat pieces of metal...

bondoman

I have set a goal of finishing the at homemodel to the bulwarks by the end of 2010, and then the standing and running rigging all of next year. One interesting insight is that I may use wire as opposed to thread for the gun rigging, the gunport rigging, the cables and most of the other hull related lines. The stuff is available in all kinds of gages down to invisible, and I think a rope making machine may be the way to go.

Bondoman,

From what I have read about rope making machines is they are designed to put and extra twist into the strands. It seems this may be a problem if you are using wire. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has tried using wire.

Geoff

A "rope making machine" is a gadget that twists several strands of thread into one larger one.  It has a couple of advantages over using standard manufactured thread.  One - if you make your own rope you have virtually unlimited control over the range of sizes.  Two - the product of such a gadget looks a lot more like like real rope than ordinary thread does.

If you think about it a second you'll realize that just twisting three pieces of thread together will not make a piece of heavier thread.  As the individual strands are twisted together, two things happen: they get twisted around their own axes, and they get twisted around each other.  If they're simple twisted together, the individual strands will get twisted so tightly that, eventually, they probably will break.  If they don't break, they'll be under such tension that, as soon as the ends of the finished piece of rope are released, they'll untwist themselves. 

The rope making machine is a fairly simple gadget that simultaneously twists the three strands together and twists them individually, so the tension is equalized.  The machine has two components:  a single wheel (called the "looper") at one end, and three geared wheels (called the "whorls") at the other.  In most modelers' setups the looper is clamped to something solid (e.g., the edge of a workbench), and the whorls are provided with some sort of mechanism that allows them to move closer to the looper as the rope is spun up.   One final component, called the "top," is a movable, bullet-shaped gadget with three grooves in it.  It moves along between the looper and the whorls as the rope is spun; the three strands run through the grooves in the top, which keeps the pitch (the angle at which the strands intersect) constant.  An old, pre-twentieth-century ropewalk essentially worked the same way.

When I was working on the Heller Soleil Royal (my most-regretted model project ever - but don't let me get started on that one) I discovered that the longest pieces of line in the ship, the main topgallant backstays, would have to start out as pieces of silk thread about twenty feet long.  I mounted the looper and whorls on two sawhorses, which I moved gradually across the floor of our basement as I made the backstays.  As I remember, the job of making that one piece of rope (starting from the deadeyes on one side of the ship, up to the topgallant masthead, and down to the deadeye on the other side), took something over an hour.  Great activity for listening to a ballgame on the radio.

The best explanation of how to make a rope making machine that I've encountered is in Dr. Longridge's Anatomy of Nelson's Ships.  He was building a model on 1/48 scale; his machine incorporated a miniature railroad track that ran the length of his back yard.  Lesser projects obviously don't need to be that big - nor do they need to be motor-powered, as Dr. Longridge's was.  One beauty of the process:  if it works at all, it works perfectly.  I don't think anybody can distinguish between the rope Dr. Longridge made on his super-sophisticated contraption and the stuff I made with my Lego-based one.

Model Expo is currently marketing a pre-assembled rope making machine that's simplified in several ways:  it has no means of moving the two end components, and it has no top.  It struck me initially that it couldn't work.  I read the instructions, which ME kindly offers online.  Apparently the thing will only function in one direction - such that the individual strands are being unwound as the the looper spins them together.  I guess that's mechanically sound if you aren't worried about the direction of the lay.  I still question whether a really good-looking piece of rope can be made without a top, though.  I think I'll hang onto my Lego version.

Geoff it looks to me as tho the only rope I need to concern myself with in the next 6 months is the gun tackle and the main cables and messengers.

John the idea of a rope making machine from Lego sounds interesting- I'll have to look into that when the time comes. Longridge even has sketches of his.

Obviously wire can be twisted without the machine if malleable it should hold it's shape.

Geoff an internet search seems to point to good sources for silk thread. It isn't cheap, but once one knows the weight and color, spools can be purchased economically.

I need a model: it should be here any day.

GeoffWilkinson

bondoman:

I am interested in lighting the ship. Whale oil lamps flicker, don't they?

 

Google "LED Lighting for Model Ships" to start with.

I did see somewhere online someone building the Revell kit had installed flickering leds to emulate oil lamps. I wish I had saved a link. It is out there somewhere!

Geoff

Actually, oil lamps don't flicker. As the flame is in an enclosed lamp, the light is steady.

Good enough then, one less complication.

Bondoman:

Are you planning on using the kit barrels or are you going to replace them? I know I looked into replacing them with brass ones once as Model Expo appears to carry some of the correct length and shape. After building Heller's Soleil Royale the thought of gluing together another 100 or so sets of barrel halves, scraping the seem off and then redrilling the end of the barrel is a little daunting. Just curious as to which method you plan on following.

Michael Lacey

jtilley

A "rope making machine" is a gadget that twists several strands of thread into one larger one.  It has a couple of advantages over using standard manufactured thread.  One - if you make your own rope you have virtually unlimited control over the range of sizes.  Two - the product of such a gadget looks a lot more like like real rope than ordinary thread does.

......  I still question whether a really good-looking piece of rope can be made without a top, though.  I think I'll hang onto my Lego version.

John,

Do you have a photo of your machine you could post? Sounds most interesting.

Geoff

I don't think I could lay hands on my old Lego "rope-making machine" - and in any case it's so primitive that nobody would want to use it as a source of inspiration.  The drawings in the Longridge book are a much better source.  Once could also modify the components of the Model Expo version.  (I personally don't like it in its unmodified form - for the reasons I explained earlier in this thread.  But it looks to me like the looper and whorls could be made to work.  If I have need of a rope-making machine in the future that's probably the route I'll go.)

Geoff - if you're just starting your model, you're a long, long way from needing a rope-making machine.  To build a 1/96 Cutty Sark you probably don't need one at all.  (One big reason for using a rope-making machine is that it lets you produce cable-laid rope - i.e., rope with a left-hand twist.  Cable-laid rope was in quite common use in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but not in the Cutty Sark's era.  Most of her standing rigging is made of wire anyway.)

We've discussed the idea of aftermarket replacements for the Heller Victory's guns before in this Forum.  Unfortunately the aftermarket sources don't seem to offer enough sizes of gun barrels that are the right shape.  And aftermarket guns actually don't, in general, have as good - or as much - detail as the Heller parts, which are in fact pretty accurate.  I sympathize with the problem of gluing together all those parts, and eradicating the seams, but I'm afraid that, if what you're after is good, scale gun barrels, there's no simpler solution.