Models and Electronics
Building The Jotika HMS Victory
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At near enough £700 this kit is a large investment but there is several years work in it so across time it is a very cheap way of spending your time. A friend of mine name of Brian, asked if I could get him the HMS Victory kit when it came out. Brian had just finished his first rigged ship model and as luck would have it annual bonus payments made it a possibility. As always there was a slight snag - due to ever increasing research and information this kit has been a couple of years in the making and, on Bonus day, it still had not been issued, so we waited. Then waited some more. Finally the announcement came and went - and in due course the kit arrived.
We had arranged to meet and swap the kit over in Bristol - but when I tried to move it - it quickly became apparent that that was not a real option. So Brian arranged to come and collect it. Why? well the box is near 4 feet long by 1 foot square, and it is full to the brim with wood and metal parts. Any way Brian took the kit home and started to build. Hopefully we will follow the build on the site with a few pictures as we go along - and get the tru story behind building the kit.
The frst comment is that with the copious plans, build instructions and parts, and even at £700 this kit looks and feels like good value for money!! First is the keel and frames and then the first layer of planking. The planks are long and some require a fairly severe bend in them so they were soaked in hot water to make them plyable before shaping and fixing. Very straight forward except the only container large enogh was the bath! I think Brian has now invested in a plastic pipe. Any way he said that the build to and including the first layer of planking was straight forward but could only proceed relatively slowly - 4 planks an evening. He has also been looking at the remaining build trying to figure how he can interleave some of the more repetetive work (building canons) with the more interesting stuff!
Picture 1 - up to first planking!
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64 hours - Starting the rear galleries
The rear gallery has been started - as with all things at this stage it looks very messy, filling sanding and painting to do, so any errors will be covered up. The main hull of course has another layer of planks, and a layer of copper plates on most of it (paint on the rest) which will cover a multitude of sins - but you still need to take care as you will always know that they are there!! The nine forward facing windows in the quarter gallery are glazed, but it doesn't really show in this photo. The gallery is made of 3 ply, so the grain direction is quite critical. Bending parallel to the grain is easy, bending across the grain is almost impossible. The six layers in the quater gallery are alternating grain directions, so it is quite a job getting them aligned.... |
73 hours
This is the middle deck planking. The lower gun deck is not visible at all and this deck is actually only visible at the bottom of a few stairwells. As most of this decking will not be seen, its a good opportunity to practice and perfect the techniques - felt pen around the edges of each plank is too thick and smudgy so I will not attempt this method again (I'll try the black paper method). |
117 hours
The second planking to the lower half of the hull is finished. The rear half of the keel and the stern post is finally glued on. With all the shaping and sanding I was worried they would not fit, but it was not too bad in the end. All of this nice planking will be painted or buried under copper plates, but after filling and sanding it will not look so nice anyway! |
126 hours
The camber beams to support the upper gun deck are now in place. One last chance to look at the middle gun deck planking as virtually none of this is visible after the upper gun deck is in place |
128 hours
The upper gun deck and the inner bulwark patters are in place. Although you can still see the middle gun deck, the grating will cover most of these holes. Quite a bit of shaping is required to ensure the inner and outer gun ports line up. |
140 hours
The upper gun deck and inner bulwarks are planked (still using the felt pen method as a) I’m getting better at it and b) most of this deck is also hidden. The inner bulwarks will be painted yellow ochre but I’m still deciding on the best shade to do. The recommended colour is very pale and washed out. Do I go for authenticity or something that looks more dramatic/pretty? (the latter I suspect). |
165 hours
165 hours into the project and 16 of the gun ports are lined - very fiddly indeed, and these are the easy ones with inner and outer plates to glue onto - just wait until I get to the lower ones, where the lining is glued to just one 1mm edge. |
173hours
173 hours and the wales are in place. They are a bit difficult to see in this photo, but look for the planks that go at a different angle to the main area (bending up towards the stern). Lots of filling and sanding done, so things looking a little tatty. I’ve just started the main lot of gun port linings - 72 to do, that’s nearly 300 fiddly bits of wood to glue on (the next photo may be some time away….) |
191 hoursHappy Christmas / Happy New Year - and another picture!!  Gun port linings finished much sooner than I was expecting (18 hours work). 72 gun ports lined in all (4 per hour). After a while it becomes easy. Initial fears of balancing a thin sliver of wood on a 1mm vertical edge soon faded when I discovered the three tricks - cut the wood a tiny fraction too big and then you can wedge it into position. Don’t use superglue, as you need to adjust each piece to ensure they are sunk in to the right depth and run parallel around all sides. Do the two vertical edges, let the glue dry, then do the top and bottom. If you try to do all sides at once while the glue is still wet, you end up knocking bits out of position (I still ended up with quite a few parts that dropped inside the hull never to see the light of day again…) |
222-269 hours
222 hours, (31 hours of painting later), the Victory looks quite colourful. Me and masking tape don’t get on well and in the end all the painting was done freehand. A wee bit wobbly in places but they didn’t have masking tape in Nelson’s day after all. The yellow I chose was a little deeper than that recommended, but I took a bit of artistic licence…  Another 36 hours on (258 hours into the build) and the two and a half thousand copper plates are in place. Just like laying bricks. A few tips (the second side when on much easier than the first noting these) – When gluing the first row take extra care to line then up perfectly – subsequent layers will line up much easier. If you make a mistake and stick one on slightly out of place – rip it off, it’s very difficult to work around a wonky one (don't do this too many times though, I'm not sure how many spare plates there are - I still have to do the rudder) 
269 (and a half) hours in, and some detailed work at last. Gratings and stairways, plus loads and loads of little canon balls. Most of this upper gun deck will be covered by the quarterdeck, but this deck will be far more visible than the poor middle gun deck (you can just see a bit at the bottom of the stairway, lower left of the photo. The loose threads are the companionway guard rails and will be fixed to stanchions and pillars at a much later date. Next job is the 30 canons on the upper gun deck... 
316 hours (47 hours since the last photo) and all 30 of the upper gun deck canons are complete. Each one is built in 18 stages over eight days, so quite a lengthy conveyer belt going most of the time. Lots of tiny pieces (especially those little rings) so heavy use was made of the old magnifying glass. Next set of work is rigging the canons – more work under a magnifying glass, and my fingers are just that little bit too big. I’ve decided that the rigging is so fiddly, I will not be doing the canons that are completely hidden under the quarter deck (about half of them) If you have a build story or review that you would like to share then please contact us - we would be very interested in publishing it |
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