That is another issue about Heller, that the molded in planks are out of scale in some places. On my Heller Santa Maria, the gaps in the deck and sidewall planks are wide enough to swallow a small dog so I ended up putting a layer of thinned Spot Glaze filler over the deck and rescribing the seams.
Scott
It’s certainly a note worthy point, but given the painfully slow progress I need to either srap this or just go with what there is. The amount of research I’ve allready done is mind numbing, for what was supposed to be "something to do of an evening!)
Don’t get me wrong, having all this info is of great value, because I don’t think this will be my last Victory, but I need to start making some headway into this kit and the hobby in general. This is the first model since childhood(yes,yes I know). It’s my first time out with an airbrush, first time with rigging, and on and on and on!
The knowledge you guys are giving is fantastic, and it will serve to make this a far better model that it would have been had I not joined these forums.
I must admit, I’d not even thought about gap plank scale, never crossed my mind.
One more point about all this. In a well-constructed wooden vessel of the eighteenth or nineteenth century (I have no idea about the Santa Maria) there actually would be gaps between the deck and hull planks - sort of.
Shipwrights and naval architects discovered fairly early that it was almost impossible to fit the planks of a big ship together in such a way that they didn’t leak - especially when the ship was working in a seaway. The bending and twisting forces in such circumstances are tremendous, and even the most careful shaping of the boards can’t compensate for them entirely.
Hence the development of caulking. In typical, high-quality work the shipwright would plane off the outside (or, in the case of deck planking top) corners of each plank, either at a slight angle or with a rabbet plane. The result was that a gap, probably somewhere between half and inch and an inch wide, was left on the surface when the planks were spiked into place.
The caulker (a member of a separate, specialist trade) then did his thing. He pounded strands of caulking (usually old rope soaked in hot tar or pitch) tightly into the gap using his caulking irons. (While he was at it, he also stuffed caulk into the counterbored holes over the spikes or treenails that held the planks in place. The counterbores were then filled with wood plugs, which were cut out of the face grain of a board of the same species of wood as the plank.)
The caulking expanded and contracted with changes in the weather; on a hot day it would project a little above the plank, and in cool, dry weather it would be, in plastic modeling terms, countersunk.
I haven’t been on board the Victory in quite a few years, but I know she’s been replanked several times since 1805. (As I recall, only a few of her original components are left.) I suspect that, in view of the price of labor and the fact that she’s never going to go to sea, the modern restorers took some short cuts regarding the planking. (They made plenty of compromises elsewhere. Most of her current spars are made of steel, and her masts are no longer stepped on her keel. They’re steel tubes, and steel rods welded alongside them poke through the bottom of the hull to be embedded in the concrete of the drydock.)
On many models the gaps between the planks are out of scale. One trick that I like, when building a deck from individual wood planks on small scales, is to run a soft pencil around each plank before I install it. The pencil line (which runs all the way through the deck, and will survive any sanding or other brutalization) looks pretty convincingly like a caulked seam.
Again, I’d have to take a good look at that Heller kit before forming an opinion on how best to deal with that particular problem. I’m inclined to think, though, that filling the gaps almost - but not quite- flush with some substance might give just about the right effect.
JT-was that called ‘chinking’ as well?
Also, guys, remember the line has to be drawn somewhere-there’s modeling and then there’s self-abuse.
Trowlfazz - You may be right. I can’t recall having encountered that term “chinking” in a nautical context, but the American Heritage Dictionary (which happens to be beside my computer) defines the verb “chink” as “to fill small openings in.” I wonder if it may be a carpenter’s term.
I agree completely with your other point: somewhere one has to draw the line. I certainly don’t suggest that every technique ever conceived by every ship modeler be applied on anybody’s first effort.
Incidentally, this discussion illustrates one of the big reasons why, when newcomers ask me for recommendations on how to get into ship modeling, I always suggest starting with a small ship on a large scale. Such a kit can produce a beautiful finished product in a few weeks, leaving the modeler with an arsenal of skills and knowledge ready to be applied to something more advanced. Unfortunately that advice doesn’t work well at the moment - at least in the realm of plastic sailing ships. So few kits are in production that it’s almost impossible to find a small ship in a large scale. That’s one reason why the announcement of the Zvezda medieval cog kit interests me. The price is high, but if the kit is any good it will be a fine one for introducing people to the hobby.
I got the boat before I got the forum,lol. So I’m kinda stuck with her for the next, oh, 2 years!
Here in the upper Midwest, the term ‘chinking’ is used when building
a log house. It is a cement-like material ‘stuffed’ in the gaps between
the logs, to keep the wind out, etc…
I have also seen it used in ‘prairie’ sod homes, built by the early settlers.
[quote]
Originally posted by jtilley
Trowlfazz - You may be right. I can’t recall having encountered that term “chinking” in a nautical context, but the American Heritage Dictionary (which happens to be beside my computer) defines the verb “chink” as “to fill small openings in.” I wonder if it may be a carpenter’s term.
Has anyone tried to convert the Heller Victory to represent her apparent during Battle of Cape St. Vincent or earlier?
My understanding is the basic hull didn’t change. Only some relatively superficial changes are needed:
The forward bridle ports need to be blanked off
The twin Cherub figurehead is to be replaced by a larger, more elborate statue
The angular top of poop and quarter deck bulwurks are to be shaved down to the level of the scroll work on the outside
The center portion of the stern window needs to be removed and a convex set of open galleries added.
Add scroll work the stern around the rear windows
Replace the kit lower masts with slightly fatter masts to represent the original pole mast. (Move the fore mast slightly backwards and main masts slightly forwards).
Replace the mizzen gaff booms with a lanteen yard.
Did I miss anything major.?
I don’t know if anybody has done a really thorough study of the *Victory’*s precise configuration at dates before 1805. As I understand it, the people in charge of the ship currently are in the midst of an intensive effort to establish her Trafalgar configuration - and are discovering some interesting things. Whether they’ve investigated earlier documents with such determination I don’t know.
On the basis of the materials I’ve seen, the differences Chuck Fan has noted are the big ones. The changes he’s described would produce a model quite similar to the “as launched” version in the National Maritime Museum. Whether she looked exactly like that in 1797 I don’t know, but I suspect the differences were minimal.
Those changes, though, would require a very substantial amount of work and skill. The NMM also has a model - apparently made as an advance study by the carver - of the *Victory’*s original figurehead. “Statue” is a good word for it. It must have been enormous, and carving a replica of it on 1/100 to Heller’s standards would be quite an undertaking. The open stern galleries also would be challenging. The individual balustrades of such a gallery are subtle pieces of turning and carving. They taper, they lean inward (a trick the shipwrights apparently learned from the Greeks and Romans), and they have quite a bit of detail on them. And even small mistakes or inconsistencies in that sort of work stick out like sore thumbs - especially if the rest of the model is detailed with the subtlety of that Heller kit.
I’m not sure shaving down the quarterdeck and poop bulwarks would solve the problems there - though it might. That’s another area where, I suspect, further research may turn up something interesting.
I’m about 90% certain that the “as launched” model at Greenwich does have the much-discussed ornamented entry ports on the middle deck - which Heller (with some justification, in my opinion) omitted from its representation of the ship’s 1805 configuration. It sticks in my mind that the entry ports on the old model may, in fact, be more elaborate than the ones currently on the ship. I may be wrong about that one, though.
Frankly, if I wanted to build a model of the Victory in pre-1805 configuration I’d start from scratch. I’m not at all sure I could make all those parts in such a way that the difference between them and the Heller components wouldn’t be obvious. Furthermore, though I am (as I hope has become obvious) a big believer in the “legitimacy” of kit-built ship models, if I were to put that much effort and skill into such a project I think I’d want to go all the way and scratch build it.
A similar, somewhat less ambitious project that’s occurred to me several times would be to convert the Revell 1/96-scale Constitution to represent the ship as she appeared at some other period. If the various contemporary paintings and recent reconstructions are to be believed, she was an extraordinarily beautiful ship when she was launched. (She’s always been a beautiful ship, I hasten to add, but to my eye looked even better when freshly built.) The big jobs in that conversion would be to lower the bulwarks, and to change the figurehead, transom ornamentation, and armament - quite a job, but not as demanding as a Victory conversion. I don’t think I’ll get around to it during this lifetime, but it’s kind of fun to think about.
In regards to the Constitution, I have 1/96 hull on my workbench where I cut it down to the gundeck and had rebuilt the upper bulwarks and beakhead with basewood, brass, and styrene. I was about 98% complete with this phase when my basement flooded and all my work was destoyed. However, it is not an hard undertaking with someone who is familiar with scratchbuilding. The ship in it’s configuration at lauching just looked cleaner and not so “industrial”, plus, I wanted to build the Revell kit so it didn’t look so “common”.
I am using the Chappell drawings, although I’m not sure if they are the most accurate? Also, the hardest effort is to make a stern with the carvings from the pre-1812 period. I’m thinking of making a resin cast if I live that long.
Scott
The Chapelle drawings of the Constitution class “as built” aren’t bad, but they’re mighty old. They first appeared, I believe, in his History of the American Sailing Navy, which was published in 1949. Essentially, they’re tracings of the original Humphrey’s draft. Quite a bit of research on the ship’s changing configuration has been done since then.
Here’s an interesting site related to the Constitution: www.polkcounty.org/timonier . I’m not quite clear on why a North Carolina county’s website happens to have such material on it, but this is the site presided over by Capt. Tyrone Martin (ret.). He was the CO of the Constitution during the mid-seventies, when she was undergoing a major restoration; his book, A Most Fortunate Ship, is one of the best histories of her in print.
One (actually two - see below) of my favorite Constitution models is the “as-built” version on 1/192 scale by Donald McNarry. I don’t like to talk in such terms normally, but if I had to cast a vote for the title “world’s best ship modeler” McNarry probably would get it. He has in fact built several Constitutions, two of which I’ve seen - one at Annapolis and one at the Smithsonian. The detail, accuracy, and overall character of his models are simply breathtaking. Anybody interested in the subject ought to acquire a copy of McNarry’s book, Ship Models in Miniature. On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t. I make it a point never to look at a photo of a McNarry model when I’ve been in the workshop. To be reminded of how good it’s possible for a small-scale ship model to be can be a depressing experience.
The book I’m using is History of the American Sailing Navy, references from Mr. Martin’s book, and also information from the Polk County website which concure, has a lot of details.
McNarry has been a long time favorite of mine. I got my copy of Ship Models in Miniture when I was a teenager and do like to “attempt” to replicate some of his techniques.
So far, these seem good references without spending a 1/2 lifetime just doing research.
Scott
Well I just puled the masking tape from the other side after spraying, and…it’s a lot better, thanks for all the suggestions, I think I implimented most of them,lol
A few touch up areas but all in all, not a bad job.
I’ll some pics up over the weekend.
I think if I were to do it again, I’d use rattle cans for the hull, it’s just too big of an area for the little AB.
David-I always use rattle cans for large areas-unless you have a commercial grade air gun. You also get more consistent colour, and it’s faster. It’s also good for metallics and white which gum up the AB.
yeh, it’s taken me best part of two hours spraying to do the hull side! great finish, but I had to unclog the AB twice.
Well here’s a pic of the rear stern port side.
Some touch up to do but no where near as bad as the Stb side. looks like I may have a finished hull before the daughter is born[:D]
[8)] Hmmm, I hope this works,
I had found pictures of the 1765 stern and stem.
Michel
Could make a nice cradle. [:)]
Michel - Thanks for posting the pictures. They confirm my impression: converting a Victory kit from 1805 to 1765 configuration would involve virtually rebuilding the bow and stern. Even the number of windows in the transom is different. The stern galleries appear to have carved fretwork rather than ballustrades for railings, but the design in the pictures would be just about as challenging to reproduce.
I remember spending some time looking at those contemporary two models (1765 and 1802) in the National Maritime Museum. At first glance it was hard to believe they represented the same ship. It’s a little jarring at first to think of her without those black-and-yellow stripes, but in my personal opinion she was a better-looking vessel in her original configuration. (I can count on the fingers of one hand the ships that, to my eye, have come out of major refits and modifications looking better than they did originally.)
Chuck Fan’s original query dealt with the ship’s configuration as of 1797. Off the top of my head I don’t know how much she’d been modified between 1765 and that date; I suspect some noticeable changes had taken place, but I don’t know what they were. The McGowen/McKay book probably has something to say about that point; I’ll try and remember to check.
A few years ago Donald McNarry built a “Board Room”-style model, on 1/192 scale, of the Victory in her “as-built” configuration. He wrote an article for Model Shipwright magazine about it. Like everything else Mr. McNarry has ever done, the model is a masterpiece. Very much worthy of careful study by anybody thinking about a pre-1802 Victory.
Hi guys I am building the Victory also, Finding the instructions difficult to follow which seems to be a common problem . Have requested and received a clearer copy from Airfix, but that only fixed the graphics. Interesting to read your comments all of which I agree with. Thanks for the hint about painting the stern.