Being an armour man through and through, I don’t want my fellow Armour brethren to be worried by this…
While I was sorting through a few of my kits in my very limited stash… The SWMBO walked in and her eye sprang to a 20+ year old 1/180 Airfix HMS Victory…
" Why haven’t you made that… It looks nice on the box, If you made that I wouldn’t mind having it on show instead of all those old tanks you keep doing " my immediate reaction to "those old tanks "was …
But then I thought, why not… That will get me some brownie points if she likes it … So here we are …
The start has been made… So along with the M1A1, my Striker, the 1/72 group build, the build a photo 2… We now have HMS Victory…the things we do for those we love lol…
Now, I am no salty sea dog when it comes to ship or boat modelling… So apologies in advance for my blundering efforts with this one, but it’s going to be straight out the box with no thrills or spills…
I will do updates as and when I can to give you all a giggle seeing an armour man struggle lol…
But here we are… I think the nautical term is… The keel has been laid ?
You may need a lot lol… And @Danie , it’s the antenna array that worries me
So my first hurdle that tripped me up was once I had glued the hull together ( And I have to say well done for all you lot who do ships on a regular basis, it took me ages to align the 2 decks onto the hull sides you must have the patience of saints… I was stressed after 25minutes of trying to do it), anyway, unknown to me at the time, as I was masking tape the hull together the lower deck popped out of place and had dropped about 5mm below the location bar, … Oh how I laughed when I realised that had happened … Not !!!
So, a lot of superglue, and 2 part epoxy glue was then applied in hidden areas as I levered the deck back into its correct position… Then masking taped it all up again…so that’s out the way now and I’m leaving that at least 36 hours till I take the tape off.
On looking at ref pics of the V in Pompey, certain painted areas are different to what’s shown on the kit instructions, so I will follow ref pics for the more detailed areas.
I will be painting alot of the parts for this as I go along to make the detail painting easier like on the rear sections above. I should have a bit more control then.
I will also paint alot on the sprue, definitely the masts and spars and gun carriages. They will be easier I think if done that way and touched up once fitted.
One thing which has proved to be a real nightmare, and I suppose it’s a bit understandable with the kit being 20 + years old, is that probably about 90% of the parts have flash or sink marks or both…and probably 99% have seam lines … To be honest the vast majority of sink marks will be staying, as I don’t think there is enough filler in the world to hide them all…and as for the seams lines, I just spent an hour or more cleaning most of the seam lines from the masts and those parts… Fun times lol… Onwards and upwards…
@Johnnych01 - Welcome to the world of HMS Victory! WRT to the sink marks, on some parts, maybe you can install the in such a way that they won’t be seen.
I can’t wait to finish my Victory, so I can go back to something easy - like my Tamiya Famo tank hauler! BTW, in your first photo, I like the Mk VI that’s sitting on the shelf just below your work table.
Thanks Russell, it will be an interesting build for me. I’ve been round her a few times in Pompey so will be nice to have a crack at doing my take on it. And I think your right, I won’t get to caught up in the detail but just enjoy the learning curve.
I look in on Tims build and the detail he is putting in on that one is phenomenal…
RE: the photo of your bench. In looking a little closer at the Panzer on your shelf, I can see that slope on the front glacis plate - didn’t notice that before. I was primarily looking at the road wheels and the side of the hull.
Your color scheme on Victory - will it be the yellow/black combination, or something else? I had a hard enough time painting the hull before it assembling it.
I have only ever seen the yellow and black scheme on her ? Was there another or a variant of it ?
There will be a slight compromise on the yellow tone as I could not get hold of any Humbrol Matt linen, but read on another forum that Vallejo ice yellow is pretty close do have been using that…
I know it’s a compromise but I wanted to get it done and didn’t want to hang about waiting for the exact paint ( which is probably only an approximation of the real colour…) I will be content with the ice yellow, and I think the overall finish when the black and copper are on will blend it all in.
I will be only using the ref images from how she looks in Pompey where she’s displayed. How she looks there compared with the Airfix colour instructions does vary on a fair few bits, but you can’t argue with how the real thing is presented down there… Parts like the various mast sections being yellow as opposed to black or brown, and the black lines spaced around the masts in the kit instructions are not on her masts now etc…
I think there will be some challenging painting coming up on this one…
Well, in the video that was posted, it is mentioned that at one time (and apparently, for a short time) she had a red color scheme.
I used Model Masters insignia yellow…it’s very bright! I think a better color would be a variant of yellow ocher, or just yellow ocher by itself.
Heller shows all the mast parts, as well as the bowsprit parts, as all being primarily painted yellow. Where the sections of mast - overlay? - each other, are painted black, as well as the mast cap, the tops, and the trestletrees. Are the black bands on the lower sections of each mast pre-molded onto the mast parts? Heller has these molded into the mast sections.
Yes, there will be some challenging painting on this - I spent a lot of time just getting the hull painted, not to mention the details on the stern pieces. Some of those details on the stern, I didn’t bother with, as I was never going to get it right.
Tim, that was interesting about the different colour scheme. I did a quick bit of reading and after being called back up to be reconditioned (in 1799), several changes were made to gun and type numbers, masts and … The original red colour changed to black… So do you think it was red and yellow type stripes ? That would of been bright !!
This is what I meant about Victory as it is now and the bands on the masts. You can see them there but they appear to be painted over.
Picture from online and used for ref only.
in hand and following with interest 
