gene1's 1/100 HMS Victory Build

Jim the rigging plan is from the inside of the Dust cover of the Victory book.  The 1/485 Yorktown is coming along great.This model lends itself to doing the PE before I paint. I am doing as much as I can before painting.

Excellent work on those upper shrouds.

And that rigging plan on the wall is a very useful resource.  Where did you find it?

      Glad you are taking a break from the Victory from time to time.  I figured that old Revell Yorktown is just the thing. I will check and see if I have good pictures of the arrestor cables on the Yorktown deck per your request. I bet some other folks do and maybe they can PM you some shots. I believe you have a few 1/700 Carriers awaiting turns on your Bench also.

     Jim.

est1961 from est.1930,  Thanks a lot

     Steve, not near as nice as yours, but lots of fun. I am off it for a break, the shrouds, even using the rigging tool were hard. I cheated as much as I could.

Jim, nino gave me a Revell 1.485 Yorktown & I bought some 1/700 Midway ships. I need a break from rigging. I have the bigger Yorktown about ready to paint. It builds into a nice ship, with some size.

really enjoying your build mate , this is going to be beautiful when finished .

Hi Gene a fine job great pictures a real treat. 

Here are some more shots of my upper shrouds. They look pretty good, but I do still have to do some ratline cleanup. I am dropping off to do some WW2 carriers. Nino gave me a Revell 1/485 Yorktown. I do like the Yorktown because a kid I was in school with right after Pearl harbor joined the navy & was on the Yorktown at Midway. He made it thru the war & was a friend of my brother, who was on the BB 58 Indiana.

Don, Thanks, I just got thru figuring a better way to glue these Shrouds up on the rigging tool. I don't know if that interests you or not. I also brightened my last picturesup, so I will run them .

             On the glueing, I have tried every kind of CA & only some works pretty well. I just thinned down my 560 white canopy glue & it seems to work best of all. You do have to let it dry over night,  tho it sets in a half hour or so & I put 2 thin coats on.  There are 60 glue spots on each side of each shroud. Thinned the 560 dries so you can't see it. 

         Here are the new pics.

    I said before that I made & installed these shrouds completely different than the plans call for , but it worked fine, real well. I still have to straighten some ratlines. There is no way I could have put on regular tied ratlines. The shrouds I can still do & these are done pretty much like them. 

Still looking great!

 I just did pictures  of my first of the kit rig shrouds. They worked out good, but could have been better just with a better glue. I used mostly fast dry thin CA. It didn't hold good. There were 60 glue joints in each one of the shrouds. After I broke the bowsprit, I put on a full front thin aluminum one on with a red tape to protect my eyes.

   I had to stop to watch 4 baby foxes & their mother playing in my front yard. They are so cute & thiss years crop.

love your work gene , don't know of any other modeler , who can use that damn rigging jig , as well as you mate .

Bill & Dave, you silver tounged devils make me feel awful good. Bill , I am reading P T Deutermann's  Ghosts of Bungo Suido, about a  WW2 sub in the Japanese inland sea by Kure & Hiroshima. His navy books are #1 in Naval fiction. 

Gene,

Your HMS Victory is exquisite!  Extremely well-done!  Nelson would have been proud!

Bill

Gene, your Victory looks terrific!

I'm super-impressed!  :)

Dave

jadowning17, Thanks for the kind words. I am 88 & still build models. Been doing it too long to quit. I had a bad day today on the shrouds, but have a different way figured now to do them. I have to do things different, mostly on rigging, to get a decent model. This is a hard one for me to rig. I did big wood sailing ships years ago, but I could tie knots then. Painting & building models is still fine with me, the close finger work is what's hard. Thanks again,,,,,, Gene

Since my last post several things worked out better than I hoped. The mast bands worked great. I used the sticky red tape painted black & cut onto thin bands on a piece of glass I have used for years. It is a 9"x12" double strength window glass & I have cut on it with a scalpel or any sharp blade ,thousands of times.

  I stuck each band carefully on the mast & trimmed the ends. It looks good. Cleans up the mast castings too. I also learned more about the shroud rigging tool for the Victory. It does work different than the smaller version. You place a seperate mast top for each mast in the top of the rig & rig from the bottom up. You start with the first & then to the last shroud & then from the second to the second from last to rig the shrouds. When they are all in you will run the rat lines across. This time I used a thin fast setting CA with a long fine added spout. I glued each joint & it worked fine without building up a big glue joint. I did learn ONE knot that I use to tie the lines together at the bottom. It is a sliding Taut line knot & works great. Iused to tie all knots but that is 35 or 40 years ago. My type of building is for old people . Real old.

  My last thing is my son in law came & routed 6 new bases for me & I sanded & stained with Minwax Gunstock & spray lacquer. My biggest base is now on the Victory.

Hope I helped someone who is building the Victory, I know with those lousy instructions on a beautiful kit, I was going crazy trying to figure out how the rigging tool worked.      Gene 

I forgot to add, that you use a single line for every 2 sets of shrouds. You do both sides of 2 each by wrapping the shroud around the added top piece. when you are done with all the shrouds you will remove the top mast piece & glue the long shaft on it to the mast itself.It gives you a realistic shroud/ mast wrap when done. 

 Thank you all so much for all the nice comments. I am back to working hard on the Victory & like it more than ever because I have the finished hull to look at as I work on the masts. A couple of things I tried and they worked. 

         I am working on the deadeye's & rigging them to the shroud table. I have rigged the pair on the tree & knoted & glued the bottom deadeye. I will leave the top loose & glue the bottom to the base & then adjust the top to the right height & then glue it 

    On the mast bands I tried a lot of things like masking each band & painting or using a marking pen, but that didn't work good so I have that super sticky red tape I use for my rope coils & I painted a strip of that black & then cut the thin bands for the mast bands. I did use a black marker to go over every where needed on the bands & then stuck each one to the mast. Worked real good then hit them with dullcote. The castings on the mast bands were not great & the tape really cleaned them up. That red tape is super & I think it might have come from a car painting shop.

   Also I have been working ( & going crazy) trying to figure how to use the shroud rigging tool. The plan instructions are terrible & I did architecture for 40 years & built the homes from my own plans so I do know how to read plans. The Victory shroud tool works completely differently than the smaller ship rigging tools.  I finally figured it out & it is a good system but terrible instructions.

   On this Victory tool or jig, you make one pair of lines for each side & they are attached at the top to a kit part that fits into the top of each mast with a completed shroud & ratlines already attached. You do put a complete set of shroud lines on this way & they attache just like the real ships. Then you run the ratlines & that is why I use the tool as my hands won't work to tie the rats on a regular rigging way. I have had real good jobs on all the other ships I used the rigging tool. Hope this helps someone & I will post more pictures when I am done. 

                                     Gene

Gene,

Those ships boats are masterful.  I really admire your work.

Scott

gene1

 It took me 3 months to get back from my submarines, but I did build 8 of them. They were a little faster than the Victory. I just finished & installed my  3 lifeboats & here are the pictures .

I did one thing that worked well on them. I was trying to use .020 plastic strip & do a floor, but that didn't work so I used a sheet of Evergreen box car siding & used the seat casting as a pattern. I cut it down to drop in as a floor. I sanded a bevel on the bottom so it fit tight & I was done. Now with everything on top you can barely see it.

 

  Oh, I can see it.  That Evergreen Boxcar siding looks GREAT! Another of your excellent ideas. 

   I Think you managed to finish 3 Ships boats in the time it took me to cut grass & replace washers on 2 sinks and a Tub. One of us (me!) needs to work faster. And your little masts look way better than anything I've done...(including that Korean "Turtle" warship.)

     And Nice coils!  (Thank you for the advice on making them.)

   Jim.

A small Evergreen observation:

    The smallest size of the Evergreen Passenger Car Siding (HO Evg 3025) makes for a very finely scribed deck surface, and a better-look to simulate 1/700 (and smaller) wood decks than Plastic Kits molded parts. In my opinion it's slightly better than the V-Groove .025 spacing  sheet to depict planking as the deck surface appears less wide.  Only problem is the groves run width-wise instead of length so the longest section can only be 6 inches.

As usual, Gene, you do beautiful work!

Bill

It continues to look great!

 It took me 3 months to get back from my submarines, but I did build 8 of them. They were a little faster than the Victory. I just finished & installed my  3 lifeboats & here are the pictures .

I did one thing that worked well on them. I was trying to use .020 plastic strip & do a floor, but that didn't work so I used a sheet of Evergreen box car siding & used the seat casting as a pattern. I cut it down to drop in as a floor. I sanded a bevel on the bottom so it fit tight & I was done. Now with everything on top you can barely see it.

Now it is on to the masts & rigging & forget how easy subs are.

I took a couple weeks of the Victory to build the Renwall Ethan Allen Nuclear sub that warshipguy served on.  It was a fun build & then subs bit me again & now have 5 more to build after the Victory. Here is a quick picture on my Ethan Allen & I will put a new thread on that.

Hi Steve, Bill has  been working on his Alabama & I know he has the Ethan Allen, because nino sent us both one. Bill sent me the color info for the Ethan Allen when I asked him about it. He said he has been feeling a lot better.

   I am well along with my Ethan sub & am working on the inside. I am back on a sub kick as I built a bunch of them about 6 years ago. I will go back on the Victory soon.

gene is warshipguy doing a build log of his sub , I haven't heard from him in ages .

Flint, go on ebay , Toys & Hobbies & look up Renwal 1/200 Polaris submarine. There is usually one or more for sale. They are a nice size model & fun to build. Warshipguy is building the Ethan Allen as he was on it for 3 years & was on 6 more Nuclear subs in his career with the US Navy. 

    I also got Revell's U 47, which has a complete interior, real nice kit. It is 1/125  scale. I will be back on my Victory pretty quick. Masts & rigging. 

Ha! Would love to have the time to do that Gene.

I'd certainly be interested to see the sub interior model. I visited the inside of HMS Ocelot a few years back; a Cold War era diesel-electric. Very cramped. Felt like I was trapped in an engine bay trying not to accidentally touch anything and set something off! 

Flint, I know what you have been doing, chasing all those little Black Sails pirate girls, while I have been hard at work.

  I took a Victory break & have been building one of the interior detailed Renwal nuclear subs. that have a great full interior. In his career, Bill served 3 years on the Ethan Allen that I am building along with 6 other Nuke subs.  It is an old model from 1961 & is not correct, but gives you a good idea what they are like inside. In years past I built a bunch of sub kits. The nicest thing about them, they have NO rigging.