Hella HMS Victory - Shrouds

I've been on a bit of a hiatus, but still managed to get some work done.  More pictures soon to come...

Looks good. I really need to buy that kit.

I've got the Soliel Royal kit, but I am still alittle afraid of it do to the scratch building stern part.

Keep the pics comin' :)

I have realized, through forums such as this and my own examination, that Heller provides no way to attatch the yards to the masts.  Would anyone have any idea on how to do this, and in such a way that it looks realistic even to the semi-trained eye?  I understand that I am a LONG way from getting to this point, reference my update photos, but I would like to have an idea of what to do when I tackle the second half of this monstrosity.  As a side note, I purchased both Longridge's and McKay's books  prior to the inital construction of the model.

The failure to provide any means of attaching the yards to the masts is, indeed, one of the most ludicrous weaknesses of that kit - and, for that matter, of the Heller Soleil Royal.

To describe how it works on the real ship is, without the help of pictures, a little tricky, but the system is simple enough.  If you want to replicate the real thing accurately, it will take you a couple of hours and cost two or three dollars - assuming you need to buy everything for the purpose.

In the late eighteenth century the lower yards typically had no mechanical apparatus to hold them to the masts.  Each lower yard was secured by a fairly simple rope arrangement called a truss.  When the ship was working to windward (i.e., when the wind was blowing from one side, rather than from astern) the truss could be slacked off.  That gave the yard a little more room to swing without being restricted by the lower shrouds.

The topsail and topgallant yards were secured with simple mechanical gadgets called parrels (also spelled parrals).  Again, it's a little tough to describe verbally, but the components of the assembly were quite simple.  The parrel consisted of a series of egg-shaped wood rollers, or trucks, with holes bored through them, separated by a series of wood boards called parrel ribs and held together by lines called parrel ropes.  The parrel provided for two forms of motion:  it let the yard swing around the mast and slide up and down it.  (Remember that the topsail and topgallant yards were raised and lowered when the sails were set and furled.) 

In model-building terms, you can make a parrel quite easily and quickly, using either plastic sheet or wood for the ribs and glass beads (preferably painted) for the trucks.

A simple trick to keep the whole assemblyl steady is to drill a hole in the front of the mast and the back of the yard for a metal pin.  It won't show on the finished model, and it will make the whole mess rigid while you set up the rigging.

I'll say it again:  this sort of thing takes almost as long to describe as to do.  And it's much, much easier if you have some pictures to help you.  If you want to fix the numerous mistakes and omissions in the kit, try, if at all possible, to get hold of at least one of the books we've mentioned earlier in this thread.  The Longridge book, for instance, has several drawings that will make the workings of parrels and trusses absolutely clear.

This is  more complicated than it should be.  Bear with me here...

Hmmm.  I'm still not seeing it.  When I click your link, it says the gallery is unavailable....

And yes, posting pics to this forum is archaic and way too

CrazedCossack wrote:

I was looking around on bluejacketinc.com and notcied that they have a Constitution kit that is quite nice.  Would this one even compare with the Revell kit? (Price differential notwithstanding)

Also, how does the BlueJacket kit stack up against the Model Shipways kit?

The Bluejacket kit has a solid hull; the Model Shipways version is plank-on-bulkhead.  Those are two fundamentally different ways to build a ship model hull.

Both kits are based on extensive research; both are extremely expensive, and both are intended for experienced modelers.  The plans and instruction books assume a considerable amount of experience on the part of the modeler, and a pretty thorough familiarity with the necessary vocabulary. 

Either of these kits represents a big investment in time, skill, and money - frankly an investment that I personally am not about to make.

The Revell 1/96 Constitution is one of the best plastic sailing ship kits ever.  As mentioned earlier in this thread, some features of it are simplified a bit as a means of catering to the less-than-experienced purchaser.  And some of the inevitable drawbacks to plastic kits are definitely there.  (The plastic eyebolts and hammock netting stanchions cry out for replacement, the plastic-coated thread "shrouds and ratlines" are awful, the plastic "deadeye and lanyard" assemblies let the experienced viewer know that he's looking at a plastic kit, and various other aspects just aren't as sophisticated as either of the two wood kits.)  But the kit is generally accurate in most respects.  It was based on the plans drawn up by George Campbell for the Smithsonian back in the late fifties; though a good deal of research about the Constitution has been done since, I'm unaware that anybody has found any really major errrors in Mr. Campbell's research.  The biggest problem with the Revell kit, in terms of historical accuracy, probably is one that's endemic to the plastic kit:  the bulwarks are too thin.  Fix that and you're well on your way to a serious scale model of a great ship.

As we've noted before in this thread, one big difference between the big Revell sailing ship kits and the big Heller ones is that the Revell designers really knew what they were doing.  A reasonably skilled and patient modeler can turn a Revell Constitution or Cutty Sark into a nice-looking, reasonably accurate scale model, without investing an arm and a leg in aftermarket parts and references.   (That can't be said about the big Heller kits.)  And the modeler who wants to go further, in terms of additional rigging and detail, will find the Revell kits nice, congenial starting points.

I ought to emphasize that I haven't built either of these kits, or seen them first-hand.  So the following is all based on the literature from the manufacturers, the photos in the ads, and a general familiarity with kits of this type.

To begin with, the appearance of any ship model built from a wood kit depends, to an enormous degree, on the builder.  Two models built by two people from the same kit are going to look a lot different.  Most of the wood ship model kits on the market (like most of the plastic ship model kits on the market) are, in terms of their resemblance to real ships, trash.  But Model Shipways and Bluejacket are two of the finest wood kit manufacturers in the world, and their respective Constitution kits are among their more recent and sophisticated kits.  The Model Shipways one is a little more recent; it's pretty clear that the company intended it as competition for the Bluejacket kit.  But I'm sure both are excellent.

There are a couple of conspicuous differences.  The Model Shipways kit is on a slightly larger scale, and the two kits represent the ship at different points in her career.  The MS kit, from what I can tell, tries (quite successfully) to replicate what she looks like right now, as preserved at Boston.  The Bluejacket kit represents a major research effort to determine what she looked like during the War of 1812.  (There's quite a bit of room for disagreement about that; if you do a search you'll find several threads in this Forum that discuss the issue.)

I'm confident that either of these kits, in the hands of an experienced modeler willing to devote several years of his/her spare time to it, has the potential to produce a beautiful, accurate model.  (The old Revell kit also has that potential.)

One other point struck me when I looked up the MS kit on the Model Expo website (www.modelexpoonline.com) a few minutes ago.  (Model Expo owns Model Shipways, and functions as the Model Shipways distributor as well as a retail outlet.)  Model Expo currently has 17 Constitution kits in stock - more than most of the other kits in the Model Shipways line.  These kits are produced, and sold, in numbers that, by the standards of the plastic kit industry, are incredibly small.  (Plastic kit production runs number in the thousands - at least.)  And, as anybody who's ever worked in a hobby shop knows, only a very small percentage of the sophisticated wood ship model kits ever gets finished.  (Actually that's a common phenomenon among model kits in general, but the wood sailing ship kits are the worst.  The second-worst are the balsa-and-tissue airplane kits.)  Far too many people buy these big ship kits without having any idea what they're getting into. 

In my long-ago days as a hobby shop employee I always advised newcomers to start with a small ship in a large scale - something that can be done in a few weeks or a couple of months.  Most customers, of course, ignored me; everybody wants a Constitution, Victory, or Cutty Sark.  I sold plenty of those big kits to newcomers, virtually none of whom I ever saw again.  (The reputable manufacturers understand this problem.  Both MS and Bluejacket emphasize in their literature that their Constitution kits are for experienced modelers.) 

When those enthusiastic newcomers get home and started their kits, at least one of several things usually happens.  In some cases, the contents of the box, and the vagueness of the instructions (which are written for modelers who have lots of experience under their belts), are so intimidating that the kit gets stuck in a closet and forgotten.  If the newcomer does work up the gumption to start the model, he/she often gets discouraged at the amount of time it takes to make even a little progress on it.  Just as frequently, he/she works on the model for several months and then discovers his/her skills have improved during that time, with the result that the work completed a couple of months earlier no longer looks satisfactory.  That can indeed be pretty discouraging.

As anybody who's read my rants in this Forum probably has figured out, I'm a big believer in plastic kits.  I have to acknowledge, though, that the wood kit market - though most of the kits in it are overpriced garbage - has one big feature to recommend it over the plastic kit market:  a considerable number of good, well-designed, accurate kits that can be completed successfully in a reasonable amount of time by newcomers.  I'd suggest that anybody interested in getting into wood sailing ships take a good look at the "Group Build" forum thread that's currently discussing the Model Shipways Sultana.  That's a fine kit that doesn't take years to build, isn't extravagantly expensive, and turns into a mighty handsome model.  A few weeks spent on a model like that will be an extremely sound investment when the modeler tackles something more sophisticated. 

You may want to check out the following web sites:

http://www.threadneedlestreet.com/linthrd.htm

http://www.woodedhamlet.com/threads_pins_needles/sewing_thread.htm

http://www.kiyoinc.com/sail.html

CrazedCossack wrote:  do any of you out there in cyberspace think that replacing the "wound" hawser with a 2mm chain would look totally out of character for the Victory?

My answer would have to be:  yes.  Chain anchor hawsers didn't come into use on board warships till considerably later than 1805.  I don't have an exact date, but it was sometime near the middle of the nineteenth century.  I recall reading somewhere or other (I don't recall where) that anchor chains - and other chain components of rigging - actually appeared a little later in warships than in merchantmen, because naval officers were concerned about the prospect of pieces of iron flying around when the chain got hit by enemy shot.  I'm not sure I buy that explanation, given the amount of stuff that was flying around anyway in a naval action, but it does seem that anchor chains didn't become common in warships till well after the Napoleonic wars.  I imagine the Victory got equipped with them sometime during her career, but by then her appearance would have changed in various other ways.

Chain anchor hawsers also require some mechanical gear for handling them that the Victory, at least in her 1805 configuration (which of course is what the Heller kit tries to represent) didn't have.