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Many thanks indeed to all the above for their commiserations and kind support!  Thankfully, every damaged bit (apart from the gouged edge of the poop deck sides which should be hidden behind the barricades anyway) was a scratch built item - if we can make 'em once, we can make 'em again!  Seriously though, when you see the size of the damned thing that landed on her, it could have been a whole lot worse!!  Landing on the bow and those Catsheads doesn't bare thinking about!!  In the next few posts we'll get her back in shape. Happy modelling to you all 'til then! Robin Plymouth57 attached the following image(s): First wooden ship: The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second: Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third: HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault Index for the Victory diary is on page 1
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 Rank: Master      Groups: Registered
Joined: 30/03/2011 Posts: 1,344 Points: 4,079 Location: Bryanston, Johannesburg. RSA
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Sorry to read and see your battle damage, Robin, but as has been previously said, with your skill set, no problem, might come up with a few adjustments in the process. Will be watching the repair process with interest. Rgds, Hans
"It's okay to make mistakes. mistakes are our teachers - they help us to to learn, even if it is painfully"
Current Build:
Endeavour Cross section,D51
Completed: HMS Victory
Under the bench: Endeavour x 2,Sovereign of the Seas, Akagi and The Black Pearl!HMS Victory Cross Section
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Many thanks again to Hans and all those above for their kind words of sympathy and encouragement, the battle damage repairs are now under way and this little instalment deals with the first two sections – the side raised barricade and the two side steps (these were the easier parts to put right so I started off with the simples!) Photo 1 illustrates the port side steps up the hull. It’s the third and fourth ones from the bottom which caught the last parting blows from the fan, probably because they are on the lower wale and stick out the most of them all! As you may remember, the steps are made not from wood but from plasticard profiles, a quadrant for the base and a flat strip for the step itself. Thanks to that, the broken pair were not splintered off like the wooden damaged parts, they had simply sprung apart on the super glue joint, coming away nice and clean.  I could even tell easily which one came from where as the missing paint at the point they came away from, had created two completely different patterns which could be matched back to the bases! To replace them was just a case of re-super gluing them back as seen in Photo 2. The next part of the repair work was to get the extra poop deck side barricade which had not only parted company with the rest of the ship during the impact but had also suffered a breakage on the front upper end as seen in Photo 3. Also visible in this shot are some black marks on the yellow ochre inner walls. These marks are the handy reference points for the hammock frames to which the barricade was fixed. The rear half of these brass frames were still firmly attached to the barricade and had only snapped off from the poop bulwarks which was really handy as it turned out, they made the perfect depth gauge to fit the repaired barricade back in place once it had been stuck back together. Of the four hammock frames which had come off from the forward end; two were found hiding among the cannon on the quarter deck (along with the port steps handrail, more on that one in a further instalment!),  one was found alongside the hull on top of the pile of boxes she was balanced on, and one was completely AWOL. The two pieces of the barricade wall were PVA’d back together with the barricade resting on a flat surface, black side facing down. I tried various spring clips to hold it together but all were either too strong and risked further damage to the wood or were too awkward to get to stay in place. In the end I just had to sit there holding the bits together with finger pressure (the greatest clamping system ever made!) until the glue had set. Once dry, the barricade then looked like that in Photo 4. After lightly sanding the top of the poop deck side walls to remove the dried super glue from the original fitting, re-painting the sanded portion and using the remaining hammock frames as a guide, the rear half of the barricade was then super glued back into place followed by the front half, this time using the missing black paint along the hull to ensure the barricade was in the exact same position. Once dry, (the following day actually!) the three original hammock frames were glued back and a brand new replacement one made up out of the same 0.5mm brass rod with lead brackets. This one was glued in place at the forward end of the barricade. The final appearance was as in Photo 5. The line of the repair is just visible (if you know it is there in the first place) but otherwise it is pretty well concealed. Since taking Photo 5 I have now given the top of the poop deck walls a coat of Humbrol acrylic matt varnish to cover up the extra glossy parts where the super glue went in. The black sides of the barricade have also become glossier than ever with successive coats of Admiralty Dull Black and I think I may well give them a coat of matt varnish too. Anyway, the first part of the repairs has gone pretty well and in the next instalment I’ll get to grips with the transverse barricade shelf section, the section with all the bucket hooks on laying forlornly in bits on the far right of Photo 5! Until then .... Happy Modelling and watch your storage solutions! Robin Plymouth57 attached the following image(s): First wooden ship: The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second: Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third: HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault Index for the Victory diary is on page 1
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 Rank: Pro  Groups: Registered
Joined: 01/04/2013 Posts: 342 Points: 1,029 Location: Essex
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Coming along nicely Robin  I'm still plodding along with the gun port lids refurb. Strange how a few coats of Admiralty Dull Black becomes glossy, I noticed that on my port lids  Regards Alan England expects that every man will do his duty.
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Great work on those repairs Robin, you wouldn't know any damage had been done there.. Will be following your work as usual.... Regards Alan
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Many thanks to the Alans again! That 'glossing' effect is annoying I know! It appears to get worse the further down towards the bottom of the pot you get, even with a good stir and shake! As you will see in this instalment, the acrylic matt varnish is coming into its own at last! I painted the poop deck side panels with the matt and the improvement is far more in line with a 'scale' dull black, I'm considering giving all the black stripes and the top of the hull sides a coat of it, perhaps after the channels have been fixed on later. On we go then... The sounds of hammering and sawing continue in the dry-dock as this instalment sees the final parts of the Poop deck repairs completed! In Photo 1, you can see the extent of the damage to the bucket rail after I had removed what was left of the four broken ‘hooks’. It looks horrendous here, but with a light sanding down with the flat diamond dust file I was left with a nice flat area of bare wood without any great dents or gashes in it. By a great stroke of luck, the entire hammock frame assembly, which was glued on top of this piece, had simply sprung away as the fan hit the ship! (As opposed to the other version!!)  How it took the full weight of the fan and came away unscathed I will never know, but I’m really thankful it did! The slightly marred appearance on the top of a couple of the other hooks is not actually contact damage (there’s a couple more down the other end as well), but are just the remains of the superglue used to stick the hammock frame down in place. Photo 2 shows the new hooks in place. I hadn’t realised how rough they looked this close up but they were much better after a coat of Admiralty Dull Black. I started off by just painting the four new hooks and the ‘damage’ glue marks on the other parts but once the paint had dried it looked all wrong, the original paint was ‘fairly’ dull but the new coats were virtually gloss. In the end there was no option but to paint the whole rail in the black again and once dry it was given a top coat of Humbrol Acrylic Matt varnish to dull it down again. This was then followed by the lightly dry-brushed white to pick out the highlights once more. This can be seen in Photo 3. After that was all nice and dry I just had to re-glue the undamaged Hammock frame and net back into position, as seen in Photo 4. I’d just like to recommend the glue I used for this task. I normally use a little 20gm bottle of ‘Ever Build Industrial Grade Superglue’ for most of my modelling, Just taking it a drop at a time onto scrap glossy card or clear plastic wrapping (the sort moulded around carded items), at £1.99 from the local “Tool Shed” it’s darn good value. The only real drawback is the speed at which it sticks, especially on wood. I can remember the ‘Good old days’ when super glue first came out in the shops, it was much more expensive compared to today’s prices but it was advertised as an Instant Glue, and that was exactly how it worked. As the years have gone on I’ve noticed that the cheaper super glues seem to take longer and longer before they cure, which, at times can be a real pain (and is probably due to some riduculously over the top EU Regulation as usual!). A few weeks ago I noticed a new tube of super glue turn up in town, it’s probably been around for years but I decided to give it a go, after all, at a pound for a typical 3gm tube it was worth a try! This is UHU Ultra Fast Superglue and to paraphrase another company: it does just what it says on the tube! It really is quick compared to the other types and the hammock frames were secured in about ten seconds flat, much quicker and far easier to use, no clamps other than fingers required. So if you are in need of a ‘quickie’ pop in to your local Poundland and see if they’ve got these in! Advertising aside, the final repairs can be seen in Photo 5. Note also that the port side curved steps hand rail is also back in place now, this was an easy fix, the rail was such a tight fit anyway it would have gone back without any glue. The Binnacle also came loose, possibly due to my prodding it to see if it was loose rather than to the impact! That is also now permanently back in place. All that remains now is to repair the broken off hammock frame on the Quarter deck bulwark netting assembly and to re-glue that back in position, (now completed but not photographed yet). I seem to be missing about four or five of the Milliput hammocks (somewhere on the attic floor no doubt) but I’ll be making up dozens more when the waist netting assemblies are constructed so I can do the replacements then. Essentially, I’m now back to where I was before the vicious fan attack so the next task will be to finally set about making up the casting moulds for the scratch built ship’s crew so I can ‘man up’ the middle gun deck’s cannons. So until next time. Happy Modelling to All. Robin Plymouth57 attached the following image(s): First wooden ship: The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second: Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third: HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault Index for the Victory diary is on page 1
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Great work once again Robin, so pleased now you are back to where you were before the disaster struck.... . Now looking forward to seeing what you can come up with when putting the gun crews together,, will be watching ever so closely..... .. Regards Alan
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Many thanks again Alan and compliments indeed to your fantastic 'Blinging away' on the gorgeous SOTS, it looks beautiful!! So here's the first part of the crew figures casting project. As I mention in the text below, there will be many more to come yet but this first batch is another experimental 'try it and see'! The Crew (Part 1).In Photos 1 and 2, we have a quick reminder of the two figures made previously, namely Lt. Furstman in Photo 1 and the Royal Marine in Photo 2. These were consequently added to with another three converted 1/100 scale plastic railway figures as shown in the early stages in Photo 3. On the left is a ‘mid ranking’ Boatswain or Bosun’s Mate and on the right is an Ordinary Seaman which was made up in two versions; one with a full shirt on and the other, after a little more scraping down of the plastic from just above the elbows to the wrists was made with his shirt sleeves rolled up. This effect was accentuated with a tiny smear of epoxy putty to bulk out the shirt. I tried to do this with Milliput at first, but it just wouldn’t stick in place being so small a piece. The following Photos 4 to 9 show the same three new figures after undercoating with Citadel Celestra Grey, (this was before I discovered the excellent grey car primer sprays in Poundland). There will of course be a great many more scratch build figures to come yet. I want to try a third version of the seaman by removing even more plastic to create a bare chested variant as shown in many contemporary paintings as well as a ‘Command Group’ consisting of Nelson himself with Hardy etc. In fact, I may well try to make two Command Sets, one with Nelson standing on the Quarterdeck and another with him lying mortally wounded with the other Officers gathered around him. Time will tell on that one! Now back to the Marine. As you might have noticed in the earlier photo, he is missing a very important item of equipment – his musket! All my other polythene type plastic musket armed figures are 1/72 scale unfortunately which meant I couldn’t simply cut a suitable weapon off one of them, the only alternative was to pinch one off another Marine from the white metal British Seamen sets I bought much earlier. The poor fellow chosen to be disarmed (literally) is shown in Photo 10. The first task was to slice and file away the left hand grasping the musket stock and the right hand and forearm back down to the level of the musket’s own stock, (the areas arrowed) as shown in Photo 11. With that done, it was then necessary to saw through the rest of his left hand as in Photo 12 to remove the entire left arm from the gun. After this it was then possible to carefully saw off the right shoulder using the Exacto razor saw to finally separate the musket from the figure. The resulting musket then looks like Photo 13, at this stage, still with a very rough looking stock of course. After more careful filing with the rounded diamond dust rat tails, the finished musket can be seen in Photo 14, as you can see, the weapon is about 18mm in length overall. The standing Marine now with his musket is shown in Photo 15. I may have to cheat a little and reduce the length of the musket by a mm or two because there’s no way this chap could push his ramrod down that barrel! If I do reduce it slightly, the bayonet will make it look longer again anyway! Finally in Photo 16, the first batch of figures have been glued onto a length of kit sprue. The next stage will be a completely new technique for me. I have made all of my silicon moulds to date with the figures glued to the part where the molten metal is poured into. With this one I’m going to try something a little different, using more sprue to connect the figures to the pouring spout via their heads instead of their feet. As I’ll try to explain in the next instalment, these figures are very spindly compared to a 1/72 scale one, and as all their arms are pointing downwards, pouring the metal through their legs means those arms are then pointing upwards and a sure spot for troublesome air bubbles to form. Reversing the direction will mean more cleaning up of course, removing the metal ‘sprue’ from their heads etc, but I’m hoping it will make the actual casting easier to perform. Hopefully by next week I’ll have built up the sprue around the figures and then I can begin to make up the actual mould using the same Perspex box as for the Messines figures. Until then, Happy Modelling to you All! Robin Plymouth57 attached the following image(s): First wooden ship: The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second: Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third: HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault Index for the Victory diary is on page 1
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Rank: Pro Groups: Registered
Joined: 01/04/2013 Posts: 342 Points: 1,029 Location: Essex
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Watching this with interest Robin, well done so far Regards Alan England expects that every man will do his duty.
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A lot of work Robin ending with great results.....  .. Think they will look fab when you get them all painted up... .. Keep the pics coming.... Regards Alan
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Rank: Master Groups: Registered
Joined: 30/03/2011 Posts: 1,344 Points: 4,079 Location: Bryanston, Johannesburg. RSA
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Brilliant work there Robin, can't wait to see the final result. Watching with interest. Rgds, Hans
"It's okay to make mistakes. mistakes are our teachers - they help us to to learn, even if it is painfully"
Current Build:
Endeavour Cross section,D51
Completed: HMS Victory
Under the bench: Endeavour x 2,Sovereign of the Seas, Akagi and The Black Pearl!HMS Victory Cross Section
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Many thanks to the Alans and Hans again! Before I carry on with the figures I wanted to share these 'unusual views' of the old girl. My younger brother is one of these Landrover mad 'tinkerers', forever buying, reconstructing (and scrapping) old vehicles so for Christmas I've bought him a USB powered Endoscope camera to stick inside his engines and chassis welds(from ebay of course)! I also bought it with the intention of 'trying it out' first just to see if it was any good for modelling purposes (sneaky huh!) These are the very first photos I took with it, I still need to go into the software and experiment with camera settings, focus, contrast etc but for 'out of the box' these were interesting to say the least! At top left is a view back under the Quarterdeck by sticking the camera in through the waist. The extra grating I stuck down there is right in front of the main staircase leading up to the Quarterdeck. Below that photo is a view I never thought I'd see again! The camera was pushed further down the deck, past the main staircase and what you can see here is the stern bulkhead right at the back with two of the deck beam supporting ribs. The silver grey thing in the right foreground is the back of one of the cast metal gun ports! Top right is the view you would have if you ran up the staircase with the compass binacle on the right and looking back under the Poop deck to the cabins beyond. On the far left is the back of one of the 12pdrs. Finally bottom right, the poor lone Marine is still beating to quarters all on his own down in the waist area! Now, where else can I stick this thing! See you all soon! Robin Plymouth57 attached the following image(s): First wooden ship: The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second: Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third: HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault Index for the Victory diary is on page 1
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 Rank: Super-Elite    Groups: Registered
Joined: 30/01/2013 Posts: 4,604 Points: 13,607 Location: Monmouthshire UK
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Interesting Nice to see no spiders have moved in  Steve
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Rank: Pro Groups: Registered
Joined: 01/04/2013 Posts: 342 Points: 1,029 Location: Essex
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Plymouth57 wrote:Now, where else can I stick this thing! See you all soon! Robin Don't tempt me Robin Interesting stuff though. Do you think your brother will actually get his present Regards Alan England expects that every man will do his duty.
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Certainly a view from a different perspective, top work Robin..... Regards Alan
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 Rank: Vice-Master  Groups: Registered
Joined: 26/05/2014 Posts: 912 Points: 2,773 Location: East Sussex UK
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Thats a nice bit of kit Robin. Building: DelPrado HMS Victory. Building: DeAgostini Sovereign Of The Seas.
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Rank: Super-Elite   Groups: Registered
Joined: 16/08/2010 Posts: 2,771 Points: 8,344 Location: Brighton
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Hi Robin. Watch out for the rats in the hold. Like the picture of the marine drummer. Ian Current builds.Hachettes build the bismark,HMS Victory, HMS Hood.
Finished Builds Corel HMS Victory cross section.
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Loving the camra “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
-Mark Twain
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Thanks to Stevie, the Alans, Gibbo, Ian and Jase! I've been playing around a little more with the endoscope (sorry! conducting serious research! ) and I've put together a little 'more in depth' appraisal for those who might be interested. Well, having ‘test driven’ my brother’s Christmas present (yes Alan, he WILL be getting it, but not quite yet! ) my conclusion is – in the words of Will Smith in Independence Day - I got to get me one of these!! So here’s a fuller description of the USB Endoscope Camera system for those of you who, like me, love these little gizmos. These cameras are surprisingly cheap to buy, this one cost around £8.45 because I went for one from UK stock to be sure of getting it before the Big Day. If like me however, you don’t mind waiting a little longer, you can order the exact same model direct from Hong Kong for as little as £4.99. They come in various lengths from 2m up to over 10m (anybody building a 1:1 scale U-Boat?) My kit is composed of just the camera on a 5m USB lead with a mini sized CD containing the capture and manipulation software , more on that later. Some models on ebay have the exact same camera with an extra add-on 90 degree periscope to make taking photos around tight corners a lot easier, not to mention taking really effective ‘deck level’ shots too. The first photo below shows the endoscope in action, connected to my Toshiba Netbook mini PC. In this situation the camera is gripped in the smallest of the Rolson plastic clamps (as shown in the following photo) and one leg of the clamp is then held in the ‘Helping Hands’. This makes setting up the photo a little easier, if the camera body is rotated, so does the picture! Along the top of the live picture on the Netbook screen you can just make out a series of icons; these are mouse operated snapshot or video controls and a couple of image processing sub menus. By clicking on one of these you can alter various settings in real time such as brightness, hue, contrast and saturation etc. It’s really just a case of ‘messing about’ with the slider bar settings and seeing what improves the picture (or not). As far as the snapshot and video however, the camera comes with a far easier method than mouse clicking buttons on the screen! In the second photo you can see a close up of the actual camera which measures just 5cm long by 1cm diameter. You can just make out the four super-bright micro LEDs around the edge of the central lens. These provide the camera’s own light source (handy down in the hold!) and are fully adjustable. The actual lens in the centre is really miniscule, it’s about the size of a planking brass pin head! On the right is the in-line control box which is situated about a foot down the lead from the USB plug. You can just see the tiny ridged wheel on the left side which controls those four LEDs from Off completely to full on and variable brightness in between. The square silver click button is basically the shutter release, press once to take a still photo, press once to start video recording and again to stop. I haven’t tried the video mode yet, but I did notice that the focus menu isn’t active when snap-shooting so that might be only available in video. The third photo shows the actual photo taken by the camera as set up in the main picture (the view shown on the little Netbook screen) as you can see, the definition isn’t bad at all and this was with minimal changes to the default settings. Photo 4 is a close up view down into the waist area centred on the little Marine Drummer figure again. This is where I really began to try out the camera settings to achieve the best photo using both the camera’s own LED output and the brightness, contrast, hue and saturation settings. If you compare the Marine’s uniform in this photo with the original ‘First attempt’ shown in the little picture in the corner, the definition and contrast are greatly improved! I’m also very pleased with those cannon ball racks too, considering they are one-piece metal castings they’ve come up really well! The final photo is the same view with the camera pulled back about three inches to show more of the waist area and the skid beams over the top. Again, considering the microscopic size of that lens, the picture quality is very good indeed! All in all, this is an incredible piece of kit and really very useful for any modeller. To be honest, the waist photos could have been taken with my faithful Konica digital camera (at the moment) but where this set up comes into its own is after the masts and rigging have been installed. After all those obstacles have gone on, a photo like this would be almost impossible with a standard camera but the Endoscope will simply thread between the rigging and still photograph beautifully. As I said, you can get these things for less than a fiver and all you need extra is a PC to plug it into. Oh, and by the way, the camera is also fully waterproof so Alan can go ‘Stingraying’ into his lovely fishtanks too! Technical bits: Lens: f2.4 (whatever that means!) Pixels: 300,000 Image Format VGA/QVGA Image Resolution: 640/480 or 320/240 Frame Rate: 30fps USB: USB2.0 Waterproof to IP66 Sizes available: 2m, 3m, 5m, 7m, 10m, 15m, 20m (I would not fancy having to run back 20m to check each shot! ) Highly recommended!! Now back to those crew figures! Robin. Plymouth57 attached the following image(s): First wooden ship: The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second: Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third: HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault Index for the Victory diary is on page 1
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Love the pic quality, surprisingly very good for such an inexpensive device..... May have to have a look around and study one of these in more detail.... .. Lovely work as usual Robin, enjoying following your build.... Regards Alan
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