Heller 1/100 Victory build

Sorry about the lack of updates lately. I haven't had time to work on the model lately, nor anything else. But two weeks of vacation starting tomorrow should provide enough time to make some progress. 

I still haven't received replacement cherubs from Heller and last time I had to order spare parts they arrived within two weeks, so I'm starting to get worried. If anyone has them spare, I'd pay shipping!

After soaking for two weeks.

House move completed. Damage report: one of the forecastle timberheads on the port side snapped and got lost. Not hard to replace with a new one made from styrene.

The finished Santa Maria suffered a bit more, with two forecastle shields lost, and a snapped boom (the one that protrudes from the stern and takes a backwards stay, don't know how it's called). Thankfully the boom snapped just astern of the stay and thus the rigging was undamaged. It even tightened up from the heat of the van, as it had become loose lately, due to winter chill.

The half-finished Revell "quick build" Constitution suffered no damage at all.

IMO the best choice would be to sand it a little, and be careful to mask the copper detail, etc. I don't think replanking is possible.

I think your ship looks grand so far! Love the clean lines on the paint job, and without the weathering, the ship looks fresh and new. I'm struggling with the wood grain on my Constitution build too - I'm debating whether to sand it off completely and rescribe the planking or just sand it down a bit to tone down the wood grain effect. A third option would be to plank over the exterior. All of these are scary propositions to me, as I have never rescribed a model before, and as Professor Tilley has pointed out, the planking patterns on both the Heller Victory and Revell Constitution are more accurate than any wooden models out there.

I have been following your post with interest. I wish more pictures could be provided.

Happy modeling  Crackers  

I'm hoping 0.6mm won't be that noticeable on the guns, but if it is, I'd sand down the plastic decks themselves. I will just plank the spar deck and the weather decks so guns will be visible and sanding down the trucks wouldn't be a good idea. Another option is to just sand the planks once applied, until they are almost paper thin.

Also, speaking of guns, I just read at the Pete Coleman forum that the Victory had quite a short distance between the lower gun ports and the waterline (much less than what was designed originally), and thus the lower gun ports were tightly shut in all but the calmest weather. So I might leave those ports shut even though I spent quite some time building them up...

Right now I'm struggling with hull weathering. I want to get the outer hull 100% finished and sealed before proceeding with the decks. I darkened the bee lines a bit too much with sepia wash, consequences of using acrylic washes over a matt finish...  so I had to add a new diluted layer of ochre, and I'm thinking of ways to weather it in a more subtle way. Maybe just pinwash the planking joints then add some drybrush highlights and vertical streaks (stains) as seen on pics of the Surprise in San Diego. But no overall wash. I'm even starting to hate the molded wood grain and wondering if I should have just sanded it away. 

This is where I came to a stop.

Ditto on Longridge being a good source. The reason for the plank pattern is so well explained that I've used it on a couple of other models since, and a 1:1 redwood deck as well.

The first problem is that the added thickness raises the guns perceptably in the ports. Different modeler a have tried different approaches. One way is to lower the plastic deck 0.6 mm. I did that on my America where guns weren't a concern, it worked pretty well but took a lot of planning. Another is to cut off the bottoms of the trucks. Acceptable on the upper gun deck perhaps but not the forecastle or quarter deck.

Eager to see what you do.

When I started this thread I mentioned I wouldn't be using any wood decking, but I changed my mind. I will be using basswood for the weather deck, the poop deck and the visible parts of the spar deck. Reasong being the looks, not the incorrect planking scheme on the kit's decks. Longridge's book provides enough information for accurate planking.

Will 6mm (around 1/32) thick basswood strips do the job, or should I look for even thinner strips? Not easy to find...

I think that is the first real look , I have had of one of your model's prof. just so beautiful.it's only half the size of my S R ,sort of make's you feel inadequate , with the amount of detail you put into it .

Your Bounty has always impressed me. Such a fine model at such a small scale, puts much larger models to shame.

I like how you actually added some verdigris to the hull, but in a quite subtle way, instead of having the whole thing look greenish as it hadn't been active for decades. That's a nice route to go, and quite consistent with the way I think the bottom of a ship on blockade duty should look.

For what little it's worth, here's a link to some pictures of the next-to-the-last last model I built with copper sheathing: http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/7/t/155394.aspx?page=1 .

What you're looking at is individual pieces of copper, attached to the plastic hull with old-fashioned contact cement. (The model is almost forty years old now, and the plates show no sign of coming loose.) The weathering was applied with good ol' PolyS paint (no longer available), dry brushed with vertical strokes and a relatively stiff brush. I don't offer this as the best way to do it, but maybe it will give you some food for thought.

About twenty years later I built the Model Shipways pilot schooner Phantom, which at that time was being sold with a cast resin hull. The kit included a roll of copper tape (the same stuff stained glass window makers use). I had to cut it down to size, but it stuck fine. I didn't apply any weathering to it other than a thin coat of conservator's wax. In the ten years or so since I built the model the copper has darkened a bit - but not much.

The great thing about bottom treatments is that you don't have to get it right the first time. If you change your mind years from now, it's relatively easy to start over - even if the model's rigging is done.

Good luck. It's obvious that this is going to be a fine model.

Thanks a lot for the insight John, much appreciated. So I guess I definately won't use any verdigris colors for the hull, just like I did with my half-finished 1/147 Constitution. I must say I'm really happy with the hull copper finish I achieved on that one, will try post pics tonight. I should really have done a build log of that one - I don't really remember how I achieved it, and I hope I will be able to duplicate it on the Victory. I could swear I used the copper enamel base, followed by brown and copper diluted acrylic layers (semi-transparent) and then diluted burnt umber oil streaks and stains.

Also, I must say I'm a bit worried right now - I'm in the middle of a house move and it looks like I lost the two cherubs that hold the figurehead, which were already painted and ready for assembly. I hope they will show up before I finish packing stuff, but it's possible that they ended up in the trash bin. Already contacted Heller for replacements which I hope they will provide, be it free of charge or not.

We've been through this before. I've seen salt corrode copper, and, yes, I've seen green pennies.

Some years back I did a small, not-very-systematic experiment (completely by accident). I had the grubby habit of eating lunch in my car at fast fooderies. I dopped a small handful of pennies in one of the coin holders. I accidentally spilled a little paper packet of salt into the cupholder as well. Then I set a large paper cup full of coke or something on top of the pennies. The pennies got wet from the dampness that wicked off the outside of the cup. I then forgot about them for a couple of weeks.

When I got around to taking the pennies out of the cupholder, the water was about 1/4" deep and the salt had completely dissoved. One penny was just a bit darker than when it was minted. One was dark-colored, with a verdigris green ring around it. (The green was partly made of a powder, which be brushed off. If you did brush it off, the copper underneath was greenish.) The third penny was pure black.

All sorts of things are scientifically wrong with this exercise in terms of providing evidence of what a ship's copper bottom would look like. The Constitution's bottom is green, and has been for a long time. (The red stripe along the waterline is the Navy's idea of making her look nice for visitors. Incidentally, am I the only one who cringes when that ship is referred to as "Connie"?) The Victory's bottom, as another contributer noted, has little copper left on it. (I've visited the ship twice, in 1978 and 1991. In all honesty, the complex framework of the drydock made it almost impossible to see anything below the waterline.)

There's an excellent chance that the metal on the Constitution is of a quite different chemical composition than what was on her in 1812. I've been to see her lots of times - and on at least two of those occasions the copper (or whatever it is) was removed. But I'll just about guarantee the Navy didn't deliberately spray her with something to make the copper turn green.

Here's an interesting shot of the Charles W. Morgan, sitting at her pier before the most recent restoration: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiT1daeueDMAhWEWSYKHdDYCJkQjRwIBw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FCharles_W._Morgan_(ship)&psig=AFQjCNEVLFA77f729atYZeci1ZFvQdscpw&ust=1463550868686205 .

And here's what she looked like three or four years ago, when she was hauled out: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwia_uW1ueDMAhUIeSYKHdzFDnQQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fforum.woodenboat.com%2Fshowthread.php%3F109593-Charles-W-Morgan-Restoration-A-Volunteer-s-Perspective-1&psig=AFQjCNEVLFA77f729atYZeci1ZFvQdscpw&ust=1463550868686205 .

It looks to me like the green portion is what was exposed to the air. Here's what she looked like when the Mystic shipwrights got through with her: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjqvYvNueDMAhXHMyYKHcFkDT4QjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Ferikalinsgreatloopadventure.blogspot.com%2F2013%2F07%2Fhistoric-re-launch-of-charles-w-morgan.html&psig=AFQjCNEVLFA77f729atYZeci1ZFvQdscpw&ust=1463550868686205 .

To my eye that looks like red paint. But I'm not sure.

Several of the old, classic books on ship modeling (E. Armitage McCann, C. Nepean Longridge) tell how to turn a coppered bottom green. The favored method was to wrap it overnight in a cloth soaked in salt water, with a bit of ammonia mixed in.

The old master marine artists sometimes showed ships' bottoms as an orangish brown (they didn't have copper paint in their palettes), and sometimes verdigris green. Ditto Donald McNarry, who, for my money, was one of the finest ship modelers ever.

There is no single right or wrong answer to this problem. And plenty of room for the individual modeler's  judgment and personal taste.

On another subject, I'm afraid Ernietheviking got ripped off by a HECEPOB (Hideously Expensive Continental European Plank-On-Bulkhead) kit manufacturer. Several of those firms have released Victory kits, and all of them are awful. (The one really nice wood version of the ship, from what I can tell, is the one from the British firm Caldercraft, aka Jotika. It's on 1/72 scale, and it costs well over $1,000. And even it doesn't get some significant details right. No manufacturer, for instance, has reproduced the five-sided "anchor stock" planking of the wales. None, that is, except Heller and Revell. (The planking on the ship now isn't authentic. The wales are made up of straight boards, which are fastened on top of a layer of "common plank." Financial considerations, I assume. The wales originally were enormous chunks of timber fastened directly to the ship's frames.) In terms of resemblance to the actual ship, there's just no way any HECEPOB product can even approach the Heller Victory or, for that matter, the Revell Constitution.

I certainly wouldn't recommend following a HECEPOB rigging plan. There are several more reliable ones in print. My favorite, as a guide to rigging a model, is Longridge's Anatomy of Nelson's Ships. It contains both a fine rigging plan by George Campbell and Longridge's verbal description of how each individual line leads.

I think the word Ernietheviking was looking for in his comment on deck structure is "caulk." It starts out a very dark grey, and lightens a bit as it ages. My personal favorite trick for representing it is to run a fairly hard pencil around each plank before I lay it. That makes a super-thin, dark grey line that will never disappear, no matter how much the deck is scraped or sanded.

Thanks :)

Katz: I used a #8 flat brush to paint the plates. Since paint was thinned, it didn't take long. The golden details were painted over the background with a very fine (10/0) brush. They still need some touching up though.

Interesting stuff about the coppering. I think I will just add some very fine dark streaks with oil, but no verdigris...

Post removed by writer.

Nice work so far - have this kit in the stash but ended up building a 1/84 wood kit instead as this one is notorious for awful instructions and poor fit. The instructions for the wood kit had a very thorough rigging plan including all the lifts, shrouds and stays and will use it to build the plastic one.

Port lids were usually kept shut at sea unless the guns were going to be exercised.

In port they may have been left open to allow some air in though the guns would not have been run out.

Just remember that Royal Navy ships (and most definitely the Flag) were kept utterly pristine even under very harsh conditions - that deck was religiously holly stoned and flogged dry every day.

The deck will have been corked usually with tared hemp, so some black lines in the joints are permissable.

The copper plating only looks that shiny when in the sea as the sea water scrubs off all the verdigri. Out of the water, the copper goes a nasty dark green/grey colour. The Real Victory in dry dock has no copper left on her hull, some is left on the rudder and this is heavily covered in verdigri.

It would be interesting to know how Connie looked as soon as she was lifted out of the water. That would definitely represent the look of copper sheathing in sailing condition... 

I will build the model in full rig... Esposa had to accept! 

Good Job!

Beginner questions:

1. What brush did you use to paint the copper plates?

2. Did you paint the golden details after painting everything with the background color or did you mask the area for painting it later?

Thanks 

Thanks for the pictures, Capn. I'm not sure if copper sheathing looks like that while the ship is active, or the verdigris has been caused by the hull being exposed to the atmosphere at dry dock...

I gave up on trying to copper the hull, and opted to clean up the copper leaf as best as I could then use paint. I used Humbrol Enamel copper as a base then applied diluted Vallejo browns and copper metallic in vertical streaks. This will receive either a verdigris weathering layer like those Connie pictures, or some diluted burnt umber oil streaks. 

rdiaz

I'd really like to get it to look like Constitution drydock photos. Hope I will be able to weather the copper tape like that with paints.

Pide, y su recibirá

Stern

Starboard fore quarter

Bow

Port bow

stern counter

Note that the waterline "boot topping" is red.  Note too, howfine and long the copper strakes are.

Nice Spanish, Cap! :)

I'd really like to get it to look like Constitution drydock photos. Hope I will be able to weather the copper tape like that with paints. 

So far the tape looks good but looks like I bought it a size too wide. I'm trying to deal with the overlap. Will post pics once it's in a decent state.

Besides that, here's how she stands right now. Masts, yards and beakhead bulkhead are dry fitted. I wanted to get an idea on the size of the model with yards and man it is huge... I think the missus wants to kick us both out of the house. Perhaps she will once I dry fit the bowsprit and add a few more inches...

Also, I've thought of representing the ship on blockade duty, rather than as if she was in port. Ships from the Napoleonic wars spent months and months on blockade and I think it kinda makes sense. I guess that means furled (or half furled) sails, and less subtle weathering - an idea I like!

rdiaz

asphalt... bitumen of Judea, or however it's called in English!

Yo creo que decimos rn inglés, "Jeruselem Tar" de diferenciar de "Stockholm Tar."

Por favor, perdona mi horrible español, aprendí mexicana, no castellano

While a deep unber wash will bring out the plating, you might want to use goggle images to look at USS Constitution drydock photos.  The Constitution is kept afloat (if not sailed so very far), so her plates seem to show how such copper plates weather.

And it looks rather like a "hairspray" effect using green and yellow over the raw copper is rather close to the mark.  I will leave that to your artistic expression and talent, I only offer it as observation.

The first attempt with copper leaf was a total disaster. Too large an area to cover and too much inexperience in gilding led to a less than stellar result which I won't share to save you some unpretty sights. I used water based size so it was relatively easy to remove most of the leaf. While I was at it, I ordered 7/32" copper tape (I should have listened to Bill before, sheesh) that arrived today and looks like it will work much better. This will perfectly cover the mess.

Good day,

I had idea to paint this area , to use some good metallic spray paint, those, which   pakaged in cans...and than make some agening...or there are two components mettalic spray, how to say,with programmed agening effect...I saw such of copper,bronze and gold colors ,supplied together with agening staff...or this idea useless? 

Pleased to hear Your opinion :)

All the Best!

Oh,

sorry, read again,...Your previous posts...You want to use mettal in purpose...not paint ....ok...

Now that you mention it, it would be quite hard to work on the model without touching the copper parts... ouch!

Might just seal it immediately then weather it with asphalt...  bitumen of Judea, or however it's called in English!

Fingerprints...

I do want it to look tarnished, Bill. Shiny looks unrealistic IMHO and I wanted to use real metal to avoid having to weather with painting, which I'm not really good at. What I'm not sure is if it will tarnish in a nice way...