Hi, I am not looking forward to cleaning a million seam lines for the cannon barrels in the Victory, are there any turned brass, or aluminium replacement barrels on the market?
Thanks.
Amati do a brass Victory barrel (4165/30) which is quite good for say the lower deck 32 pounders, but the difficulty is finding a matching set for the show piece 12 pounders on the Quarterdeck, and a replacement for the 68 pound carronade.
I looked when I made my Heller Victory, and made the decision to stick with the provided kit guns, which are quite good as representatives of the Blomefield pattern gun, particularly with a little enhancement.
Doing the Victory guns is a sort of rite of passage with the Heller kit.
I agree with George if you have not spent the hours building the cannons you really have not built Victory.
Besides that is nothing compared to sorting out the rigging.
Cheers and Good Luck
[oX)]
I know this is an old post but I thought I would help out.
http://www.loyalhannadockyard.com/ Has the full cannons and just the brass barrels. Measured in length and size, not scale, so you’ll have to do the calculations.
Just my 2 cents.
I would build them myself. I am working on my Heller Victory and came across this site in my research.
I have not built the Victory, but have the Le Soleil Royale well underway (Into rigging, guns are all done and mounted). I found the castings very good, minimal cleanup needed. One quick scrape of seam with Xacto blade took care of most barrels. Compared to the time I am spending on rigging, assembling and mounting guns wasn’t that much.
The LSR is sort of a sister kit to Victory- I think they only made two in that scale. From what I have seen from others who built the Victory, I think these two kits are the epitome of plastic sailing ship kits.
We’ve discussed the Heller Victory and Soleil Royal at great length in this forum. I think it’s safe to say that the Victory is generally recognized as one of the finest products of the plastic kit industry (though not without significant flaws - such as the lack of any means to attach the yards to the masts), whereas the Soleil Royal is…well, let’s say controversial.
I don’t propose to start another argument about it here. I do, however, suggest that anybody who’s working on it - or thinking about buying it (it just reappeared on the Squadron Mail Order web page) take a careful look at this thread: /forums/t/68138.aspx?PageIndex=1 .
For heaven’s sake don’t refrain from the project just because I don’t like the kit (which I don’t). But take all the opinions in that thread into consideration, and make your decision with eyes wide open.