HMS Victory

Andy you'll definatley want to vist this site for starters, http://www.hms-victory-build.co.uk/ for any info/tips etc, that you would ever want to know.

Michael

That is indeed an excellent site - and a big help.  The instructions in the Heller kit are a scandal of the hobby industry.  (The original French version is bad enough; the English "translation" is worse.  It apparently was written by somebody who neither understood French nor had attempted to build the model.)  The rigging instructions are especially bad.  The kit apparently was the work of some enormously talented artisans who just didn't know enough about how ships work.  The biggest howler of them all:  the fact that the kit doesn't provide, or the instructions mention, any means of attaching the yards to the masts.

The Victory has also been the subject of quite a few books.  Three that I particularly recommend are:

C. Nepean Longridge, The Anatomy of Nelson's Ships.  This is an old classic.  The title is a little misleading; the book is, in fact, a detailed (and beautifully illustrated) account of how the author built his 1/48-scale model of the ship.

John McKay, Anatomy of the Ship:  The 100-Gun Ship Victory.  This is a volume in the Conway Maritime Press's excellent Anatomy of the Ship series.  If possible, get the second, revised edition; the original edition had some mistakes in it (though, if I remember correctly, none of those mistakes directly relates to the rigging.)

Alan McGowan, H.M.S. Victory:  Construction, Career, and Restoration.  (I may have garbled the title slightly.)  This is a recent, well-illustrated account of the ship's history, illustrated with contemporary paintings and drawings, photos, and a set of superb drawings by John McKay.  Some of the drawings in this book duplicate those in Mr. McKay's "Anatomy" volume, but many are new.  The coverage of the rigging is actually more thorough in this volume.

For purposes of rigging the Heller kit, I think the book I'd recommend above all others is the Longridge one.  Almost everything he says about rigging is just as applicable to the Heller kit as it was to his model.  And he gives verbal descriptions of how each line leads.  If you were to follow Longridge's instructions step-by-step, with frequent references to the excellent drawings he provides, you'd wind up with a beautiful model. 

Best to warn the wife, though:  if you're just starting the rigging now, there's still quite a long way to go!

Hope that helps a little.  Good luck.

Thankyou jtilley, I have ordered the Longridge and Mckay books. What in your opinion is the most accurate wooden Victory kit, I know of the Caldercraft but it is just to big for my house.

Thankyou for your help 

I'm the wrong person to ask that question.  But since you asked - here goes.

I've never actually examined any of the wood Victory kits.  I do know that Calder/Jotika is a company that genuinely understands scale modeling and that its kits are designed to produce genuine scale models.  I've read a number of reviews of the Calder Victory, and it certainly seems to be an outstanding piece of research and engineering.  I wish I could afford it.

The others are produced by what I've come to call the HECEPOB companies ("HECEPOB":  Hideously Expensive Continental European Plank On Bulkhead) - Mamoli, Sergal, Mantua, Artesania Latina, and their ilk.  My rants about those firms have taken up more cyberspace in this Forum than I probably have any right to take up.  (In the unlikely event that anybody's interested, a Forum search on the word "HECEPOB" will yield quite a volume.)  I detest them, regard them as a negative force in the hobby, and wouldn't allow any of their products in my house.  (I'm particularly irritated by the one that, in its ad on the Model Expo website, claims to have "the same number of hull timbers as the original."  That's an outright, baldfaced lie.)

With that mini-rant out of the way, I feel obliged to offer a few caveats.  I repeat that I haven't actually examined any of the HECEPOB Victory kits.  I'm sure there's some variation in quality among them.  At least two of the HECEPOB companies, Amati and Mamoli, have given hints recently that they're making some effort to mend their ways (Mamoli with its recent H.M.S. Surprise, which, at least in the photos, looks pretty much like a scale model; Amati with its "Victory Models" range of kits that are designed by a gentleman who used to work for Calder/Jotika).  The only evidence I've seen regarding their Victory kits, though, is in the form of the photos and descriptions on the Model Expo website and the comments from purchasers that I've read in other web forums.  (One guy who was trying to build one of the HECEPOB Victory kits got really upset when, having spent almost a thousand dollars on the thing, he discovered it didn't have a steering wheel.  And where in the name of heaven did the HECEPOBers get the notion that the glass in the stern lanterns ought to be tinted red?)  Maybe some member of this Forum has actually bought one or more of these things and can comment more intelligently than I can, but on the basis of what I've seen I can't recommend any of them for anything other than firewood.

I do want to make one more observation about all this.  If your objective is to build a scale model of H.M.S. Victory (i.e., a miniature reproduction of the actual ship), you're not going to beat the Heller kit.  It has its problems.  The lack of any connection between the yards and the masts is so stupid as to be mind-boggling, and the limitations of the injection-moldeing process certainly have an impact on it - as the limitations of manufacturing processes have on any kit.  (The blocks and deadeyes, for instance, really cry out to be replaced by aftermarket parts.  A two-piece rigid mold can't produce a styrene part with a groove around it and a hole through it.)  And I understand, from people who've bought it recently, that the newer incarnations of it are plagued by low-quality styrene, warpage, flash, and other evidence that the kit is now thirty years old (and the company has been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy).  But it comes a great deal closer to the real ship than anything the wood kit manufacturers have been able to produce.  I think it's worth noting that even the Calder kit represents the guns on the lower and middle decks as "dummies" - stubs of barrels that plug into holes in pieces of plywood behind the gunports - whereas the Heller kit provides a detailed, multi-part gun for every port.   

There's no doubt in my mind that the Heller kit provides a more sound basis than any of the others (with the possible exception of the Calder one) for a scale model of the ship.  It has the potential to be turned into a real masterpiece.