So, I finally decided to start working on this subject as my main one. I don’t plan to add a lot of detail to what comes out of the box; I know myself and if I try to do too much it will never be finished. The idea is to build her as if she was docked, with sails taken off (but running rigging still on board - maybe furled sails). Gun configuration, well I don’t know. Maybe someone around here knows what standard practice was when the ship was docked but not for too long, with the running rigging still in place. Guns run out? No guns? Port lids open or closed?
I don’t intend to use any wood decking, even though the plank pattern is wrong on the kit. Too much €€€. I can live with it…
So far about 60 guns are done, and I started painting the hull. I applied Tamiya grey primer (wonderful stuff, just be sure to use it outdoors) on the hull halves only, as those parts will be manipulated often and the Vallejo paint I’m using would come off otherwise. Other parts are not primed because it makes them harder to paint - Vallejo is thick and doesn’t run that well over the primer. Makes it kinda hard to paint fine detail. I tried to thin it but then it needs so many layers of paint to cover well… more chances to mess up the paint job!
So far I don’t have much to share, just a pic of the WIP bow. I wish I didn’t attach the rails so early in the build - they’re being a bit of a nightmare to paint now! Fortunately I didn’t do the same with the figurehead, which was painted separately, then attached. Will upload some pics of the guns later today.
I’m still not sure how I’m going to weather this model. Oil washes will probably be too much, so maybe just some wood toned dry brushing to make wood grain pop a bit, and slight washes on corners.
One thing to watch. The yellow-ochre (or “light cream,” according to the latest theory based on the latest research) stripes on the hull do not follow the gunports. The stripes get narrower at each end, and they arch up slightly at the bow and stern. Painting them like that would be a real pain on the smaller Revell or Airfix kit. But Heller figured it out, and provided some extremely fine raised lines to guide you. They aren’t mentioned in the (scandalously awful) English “instructions”; I don’t know whether the Imai ones mention the curved lines or not. But if the stripes are painted right the model will look a whole lot better.
If the stripes follow the lines of the gunports, an optical illusion will take place: when the model is viewed from the side, the bow and stern will appear to be drooping. I should say that I don’t know whether the curved stripes were there in 1805, but they’re certainly there now. If you locate the raised lines, the job isn’t difficult.
There would be plenty of times when the guns were run in, the ports were closed, and the ship was fully rigged. She probably would look like that most of the time when she was at sea, and in port if the weather was cold. The big advantage to running the guns out when the ship was not in action was that more deck space would be created, but that doesn’t seem to have been a big consideration. Nobody can say that any configuration of closed and open ports is wrong.
GM, that would be immensely appreciated indeed! I had to figure some things out, like the order of the deck support beams, which was completely wrong in the provided instructions. I wonder how much more stuff is wrong in that awful booklet…
JT, thank God I noticed the stripes didn’t follow the gunport wales in the Revell Victory, which helped me realize there are indeed raised lines indicating where the stripes should be in the Heller kit. I noticed this is a bit of a problem with unpainted Victory wood models; the wales are usually a darker wood, and if they are made to follow the stripes on the real ship, they won’t be laid out in the same way the real wales were.
Rdiaz, I should have figured that you found those raised lines on your own! Sorry about that.
The optical illusion caused by straight lines along the sides of a ship is present, in one way or another, in just about every ship model. It’s worth noting that Longridge, in his Anatomy of Nelson’s Ships, says he deliberately made the top of the copper sheathing sweep up just a little bit at the bow and stern, to cancel out that effect.
I’d heard about that trick for building models a long time ago; I always assumed it was a model builder’s convention. Then, a few years ago, I bought a book (whose title I don’t remember) of reproductions of colored drawings from the yard of Harland and Wolf. It contained tinted, hand-drawn deck plans and hull profiles of a bunch of nineteenth-century British merchant ships. (The text explained that such a drawing was part of the package that the shipbuilder turned over to the shipowner on completion of the ship.) They all show the coppering lines sweeping up a little at the ends. So the same thing, it seems, was done in painting - and coppering - real ships.
Sailing warship designers were sensitive to such things. It’s interesting, for instance, that the lines forming the bottoms of the transom windows in the Victory are shallow arches, and the windows get shorter and narrower as they approach the top of the transom. And their sides are sloped; all of them are radii of a circle whose center is located far above the transom. From the carpenter’s standpoint, that means no two windows are identical. It would have been a lot easier to build a bunch of identical, rectangular windows. But eighteenth-century aesthetic taste in ship design wouldn’t allow that.
No need to say sorry at all, John! That’s very valuable information. I could have easily missed those raised lines.
I didn’t notice the transom windows got smaller as they approached the top of the transom, either. Very interesting. Just like the columns in the Parthenon were not evenly spaced to make up for perspective…
Edit: GM’s link is what I meant, but I got it wrong. It’s not that they are not evenly spaced, but rather they’re not in a straight line.
I couldn’t tell you, as they are in Japanese! However, the diagrams are a complete redraw and are very crisp and clear, on gloss white stock like Dragons’ are more recently. And the part numbers are Western Arabic. The shaded painting diagrams show the geometry correctly. I followed the faint lines- I follow Pete Colemans site.
I saw that video and I have to say that I HATE the newly found colour scheme!
Perhaps it’s not accurate, but personally, I’m going to go with yellow ochre. At some point in history it must have looked like the Heller kit in that colour! (well, maybe not…)
I just looked at the video- I think it’s really nice looking. I’ll have to watch it with sound. What about the gun carriages? No way I can get down to the lower and middle decks now.
As far as I know there was no standard practice as such, it was up to the wishes of captain and officers. The Royal George was lost in harbour in 1782 because she was inclined too much while undergoing maintenance and water flowed in trough the open lower-deck gunports on the “low” side of the ship, so we can infer that it was not unheard of to have the gunports open while in port. It would help with light and air, certainly; the gun-decks were stuffy places. I fulle expect that the ports would generally be open on a ship in a hot port like the Mediterranean or Caribbean in summmer and closed if she happened to be visiting, say, Archangel towards winter, for obvious reasons in both cases.
As for the guns, they would weigh several tons apiece so they were not something you moved around on a whim. Running them out would certainly give more room on deck, especially important if the ship in addition to the crew had large numbers of visitors aboard such as the families of the crew or hundreds of ladies of, shall we say, “negotiable virtue” as was not uncommon after a cruise.
The guns on the “low” side of the Royal George were run out, the ones on the “high” side were not (indeed they were hauled as close to the ship’s center-line as was possible), this was how they inclined her in the first place and made closing the gunports quickly impossible when they tipped under water. But it does indicate that guns could and would be run in or out in port and that doing so could even be a maintenance tool.
Watever you do nobody can really come and say that it is wrong
I hope the restorers will correct another problem with colors. The topmastes and topgallant masts ought to be greased bare wood. Earlier restorers, for the sake of durability, replaced them with steel pipes, and painted them yellow. I suspect (though I’m not sure) that those spars aren’t tapered. (Tapering a steel tube isn’t easy,)
I don’t think it would be hard to make them wood with a steel core… but of course that means £££. On the other hand, if they painted it in that hideous shade for the sake of accuracy, they should be consequent and remake those topmasts…
GM, thanks a million for those instructions. It’s funny that something written in Japanese is actually more clear and helpful than something written in English/French…
I’m thinking ahead, because the rigging phase is still miles away, but I just remembered I played drums for some years and I still have some rods lying around. Those are drumsticks made from birch dowels that I could maybe use for topgallant masts and the flying jib boom. How’s birch suited for spars? Topgallants from the kit might work, but the flying jib boom… it’s extremely flimsy.
Birch is a pretty good wood for spars. Caveat: in ship model books and magazines stories about warped birch dowels have been floating around for a long time. In more than fifty years, and probably hundreds of dowel’s I’ve bought, I’ve never seen one warp - and I’ve never met anybody who has.
I think the problem originated with birch dowels that were cut across the grain of the wood. Apparently the dealers have stopped doing that. If those drumsticks are straight now, they aren’t going to warp.
I do wonder, though, whether they’re really the best option. Getting those sticks down to the right diameter will create a lot of sawdust. Birch dowels down to a diameter of 1/8" are available nowadays. You could probably make all the spars you need from two 18"-long dowels - which would cost your 70 cents at Bluejacket: http://www.bluejacketinc.com/fittings/wood3.htm .
For what it’s worth, I made the spars for my last model out of cherry dowels. They’re available for very reasonable prices from Woodcraft: http://www.woodcraft.com/search2/search.aspx?query=cherry%20dowel . They only go down to 1/4", but that’s probably smaller than the drumsticks. Cherry is nice stuff to work. It’s harder and darker than birch, turns well, and takes a beautiful finish. Woodcraft sells it in 3’ lengths; one of them probably would be enough.
I’m not a fan of birch because it is pretty hard and takes a lot of work to make small. I also find that it splits along the grain. Drumsticks do that.
Cherry sounds really nice.
I usually use basswood. It’s a basic choice, but its soft enough to work pretty quickly.
They’re not exactly drumsticks, but rods, made of smaller birch dowels:
I realized they’re still a bit too wide and lots of sanding will be required. Perhaps I will find something else. I was even thinking of brass/steel rod, but then I don’t think I’ll be able to drill the sheave hole…
Basswood dowels are readily available from my local hobby shop, so if they work well that’s great. The flying jib boom is a very, very thin spar, and I’m afraid it might snap if I don’t use the correct material…
