Hi Robyn,

Great update with some very well explained techniques, love following your builds keep up the great work!

Many thanks indeed to Alan, Martyn, Ian, Stevie, Dave and Paul, greatly appreciated as always!
Carrying on from the channel supports, here comes the rest of the ironmongery composed of the chains (which every model Victory has) and another little item which DelPrado (along with quite a few other kit manufacturers seem to leave off!) (And a cautionary tale about watching where you stick your nails on this thing!)

The Mizzen Channel Chains.

These chains are, like the earlier smaller backstay chains composed of two links and are very similar to the smaller ones except for one change to the technique. The first link is a simple ‘stretched’ chain-link and except for the larger size is identical in construction – a length of 0.5mm brass wire is wound around two brass pins hammered into a block of scrap wood and the excess snipped off to leave the link (see Photo 4 second link on the left). The second link is the more complicated one and this is where the method alters, instead of soldering the very bottom of the link together as I did before, the joint is part way up and requires no soldering (although you could if you wanted to), I choose this method to avoid having to dunk the soldered joint into the blacken-it, despite the claims on the bottle, solder and brass don’t blacken to the same degree.
The new process is described in Diagram 1. To begin with the brass wire is laid along the two brass nails and bent around the left hand one forming a ‘U’. The long end of the wire is then bent back around the second nail to form a link just like on the simpler first link. Unlike the first method however, instead of crimping the two sides into the right hand nail and then bending both ‘tails’ around the nail and snipping them at the half way point, the two sides are crimped into the left hand nail and the overlapping wires snipped off about half way along the link. This sounds really complicated but hopefully the picture explains it better!
The snipped ends are then carefully manoeuvred to touch each other using long nosed pliers, before holding the formed link by the long end over a mini jewelers anvil, the crimped ring is carefully tapped with a jewelers hammer to flatten it as shown in Photo 2. Note that the action of flattening the ring and also the following stage usually opens up the gap in the cut and requires more delicate manoeuvring back into position! The final task is to grip the flattened ring in one pair of long nosed pliers and the remainder of the link in another and bend the ring until it is about 45 degrees off true as illustrated in Photo 3. The finished components are shown in their blackened state in Photo 4. At the time I was making up the first links I was sure that the chain was fixed into the hull with two bolts linked by a figure of eight iron third link. It wasn’t until after I’d created one out of copper wire that I realised the drawings showed the mizzen chains only have the single bolt! Oh well, it’ll come in useful on the main and fore channels!
This is where the little mizzen channel support jig comes in very useful again. I used the rotary tool with a diamond dust wheel to cut out a slot in the edge of the false channel, the same depth as the cut outs for the dead eyes and super glued a brass commercial ringbolt in to simulate the bottom of the dead eye strops. As you can see in Photo 5, I could then use the jig to test fit the chains in the same way as I did for the supports. (At this point I still hadn’t realised my mistake about the figure of eights!) The completed chains are shown in Photo 6. I really like the ‘rusty iron’ effect of the blacken it on these items, probably if I took more effort over cleaning and preparing the brass before the chemical bath I would end up with a pristine clean black effect but to be honest I think the ‘any old iron’ look is more convincing in this scale. Notice that cannon on the extreme left – funny story coming up about that one!
There is one further item to be added in the mizzen channel region, or rather, below it. This is the protruding wrought iron bracket to which the great wooden blocks for the Main Sheet lines are secured. This bracket is formed from two flat sectioned iron struts which are fixed to a large iron ring (probably made up in the dockyard smithy). As you’ll probably remember, I had to buy a couple of brass strips to make the channel support brackets with, as my existing stock was either too big or too small, well one of the over-sized lengths was just right for this one! In Photo 7 you can see the two brackets underway. The top one is complete whilst the bottom one is still being cut to size from the brass strip. I found it easier to drill out the holes for the ring in the strip before any cutting and bending. Once the two strips were cut and filed, the end was bent in the pliers to about 45 degrees before the ring was opened up slightly and inserted into the holes at the other end, (make sure the bent ends are facing in the correct direction – its very embarrassing when they aren’t!) The template used to get the correct size for the struts is shown alongside the ready to solder bracket in Photo 8. It’s simply a job of measuring the distance from the decorative square moulding to the wale below but note that the brackets are not placed vertically on the hull, there should be a slight diagonal slant to them (actually slightly more diagonal than mine are, I didn’t have enough space in there to get them any more slanting!) On the card template, the hole at the ring end is on the edge of the card whilst the other one is on the bent section. In order to solder the bracket together, the struts are temporarily nailed to a scrap wood base and kept parallel by a pair of spring tweezers as shown in Photo 9, the handle of the tweezers is resting on another similar block of wood to keep everything level. The soldering iron is applied to the top of the ‘V’ with a tiny spot of solder on the tip to transfer the heat and the solder itself is then applied to the bottom of the ‘V’. As you can see in this shot, the ring is actually facing along the wood, not upright as it needs to be but this doesn’t matter. Once the joint is made and set, re-applying the iron to the joint will re-melt the solder and then the ring is swung upright using ordinary tweezers, not gripping the ring but just easing or pushing it up into place. The completed brackets are shown in Photos 10 and 11, each one was secured in place by drilling a tiny hole into the hull through the strut and tapping in a pre-blackened brass pin.
Remember that cannon? If you look at Photo 10 again you’ll notice that the flaming thing is missing! The starboard bracket went on without any problem, as did the upper nail on this port side one. The problem came when I was tapping in the bottom nail, after a few taps with the hammer I noticed that the cannon barrel wasn’t pointing straight out any more and the more I tapped in the nail, the more it swung around to the rear. Oh aar! Says I (nautical speak) that nail is obviously protruding through the hull and unseating the cannon from the deck – no problem, I can just cocktail stick a little super glue in through the gun port and re-fix it afterward. Unfortunately BIG problem! As those building the DelPrado will know full well (and at this point I’d completely forgotten) not all the gun ports on this model have cannons inside them! This was one of the majority of the ports composed of a metal cubicle with just a barrel sticking out of it. It wasn’t the cannon that was moving, it was the entire gun port! At this point I was in a real danger of losing the gun port down inside the hull which I had already done once right at the beginning of this diary. On that occasion I was able to enlarge the aperture, feed in a spare cubicle and fill in the gaps. That was long before the sanding and painting of the hull however, replacing that port would be a nightmare now. Fortunately I was able to use super glue gel on a cocktail stick to secure the metal box in place, albeit at a funny angle! Once secured and no further danger of falling inside I could then re-paint the interior black and replace the veneer gun port sides before painting them red ochre again. The gun barrel which had come out whilst trying to pull the metal box back had its locating pin bent off centre and using the super glue gel again, re glued in position slanting forward which cancels out the backward tilt of the cubicle. The result I’m relieved to say is a perfectly normal looking gun port once again!
Interestingly, anybody lucky enough to visit the old Vic in Portsmouth won’t actually be able to see these brackets in the flesh – she doesn’t have them anymore! Either they have been superseded by the simpler method of just lashing the main sheet block to a whacking great ringbolt during a subsequent post Trafalgar refit or the preservation society decided that since she’s not sailing anywhere there’s no point having a potentially rusting piece of ironwork bolted into her sides. Either way, Photo 12 shows how she appears today. In actual fact, that might even be the upper bolt hole of the bracket showing above and to the right of the block?
I’m not exactly sure what the next instalment is going to be, probably either starting the main channel or I might finish off this stern area by building up the quarter davits instead.
Until the next time, Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin.

Stunning work as always Robin and well done on saving the cannon

Rgd Martyn

Excellent Robin, another superb update with fab improvisations.....

Regards

Alan

Many thanks for that Alan, the old drill and stand is coming in ever more useful after all these years, in this installment I even get to use her as a drill!
Hi there HIZJIOQA, many thanks to you too and welcome to the forum! Virtually all my scratch building is based around the plans and drawings in the Anatomy of the Ship series book "The 100 gun ship Victory" by John McKay and the "HMS Victory Her construction, Career and Restoration" by Alan McGowan (both pictured below. My own model is based on the larger Jotika model of Victory so I've also downloaded nearly all of their website photos for reference too! If you are building this 'Old Lady' you can't do better than to get those two books, admittedly the McGowan is pricey (£40) but if you're really lucky you can find a bargain out there (I came across my copy in a back street bookshop in Paignton for £9.99!!! )
Onwards!

Carrying on from the last installment, in Photo 1 we have the edge-routered plank fitted out with the first of the many attachments; the ring bolts. As on the Mizzen Channels, these were formed from the copper (so called) 0.3mm wire, bent around a 1mm brass rod and the two ends twisted together in the pin vice to form the bolt and with a 0.5mm brass wire ring fitted in and squeezed shut. The bolts were painted with Admiralty Metal Black whilst the brass rings were given their bath of Blacken-It. Unlike the Mizzen however I didn’t grind the tail of the bolt back flush with the underside of the plank. When I thought about it, there must be a nut or something standing proud of the wood on the real ship to secure that bolt in place so I just snipped the tails off ‘as close as I could’ using my bestist wire snippers and when the underside was painted black, the tiny bit of wire left formed the nut! (Plus one less job to boot!)
Photo 2 is a family portrait of the dead eye collection minus the last two which I hadn’t made at that point! By now, because of the problems of blackening the solder joints I’d got into the technique of blackening the strop around the dead eye, and painting the part below the channel with the Admiralty Metal Black. Trying to paint that over the blacken-it results in an horrendous lumpy mess so my procedure now is to blacken the strop, tighten it over the dead eye and solder the ends together and then remove the blacken-it from the bottom part with a wire brush in the rotary tool, hence the gleaming ‘polished’ metal seen in this photo. All apart from that second mini-microscopic one on the left. In that size the formed brass strop is so firm that it isn’t going anywhere and since the join is hidden in the channel cutout and behind the decorative edging, I didn’t bother soldering it and left it ‘blackened’ instead. I forgot to include the photo of the constituent parts in this shot so they’re coming a little later!
Another little experiment I carried out was to see if there was any difference in the dead eyes between soaking them in the Admiralty Ebony Woodstain and simply painting the stain on by brush after the dead eye was ‘stropped’. The result was barely any difference whatsoever! In Photo 2 you can see the second large dead eye on the left is a little lighter than the others, this one was brush stained, all the others were dipped. After another couple of coats there was no difference visible. Photo 3 illustrates the port channel with all it’s dead eyes glued in place, the second on the left is that slightly lighter one, the last one on the right is bare wood awaiting the black stain. I ended up with quite a few rejected strops during this process as you’ll see shortly. I think the problem was that I was forming the brass wire strops around a bare wood deadeye glued onto the jig for that process but was then trying to fit the strops on to wooden dead eyes that had been soaked in the water based wood dye. In short, I think they must ever so slightly swell up in the soak – not enough to see with the naked eye but enough to make the strops too small to fit around – another reason to brush stain them with the strops in place!
In Photo 4, the 0.5mm decorative copper wire has been super glued into position in the routered out groove. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten there was an additional item to add later which required two sections of the copper to be ground away again – more on that to come!
Photo 5 shows the component parts of the dead eyes and their strops that I missed out earlier. As I said there were quite a few rejects among the strops, nearly all due to them being too small to come back together once fitted around the dyed wooden dead eyes, seen at top right in the photo. Now for those extra bits on the Main Channels. They are in fact called the Stun Sail Boom Brackets (or ssbb as I named all the photos taken of them!) These are two iron brackets almost like an old country gate hinge which are bolted into place right through the wooden channel. (The Stun Sail or stun’sl as they were usually called were the extra ‘add on’ sails which were rigged up on stun sail booms attached to the yards to use every last breath of wind, effectively extending the width of the standard sails. If you have watched Master and Commander, think of the scene when the Acheron appears over the horizon and the Surprise has to run like hell until dark to escape. Both the Surprise and the Acheron deploy their stun sails to gain as much speed as possible. When not in use, the booms which are used to support these sails are laid up along the side of the hull supported on the outer edge of the main channel. The forward bracket ends in an iron tube into which a ‘gooseneck’ or ‘L’ shaped metal rod on the end of the boom fits whilst the aft bracket is a simple ‘U’ shaped receptor which the other end of the boom rests in. The boom would also be securely lashed to the strops as well of course. Photos 6 to 9 show the first attempt at making the brackets up from 1/16 inch brass strip. The first job was to simulate the four bolts by using a steel nail and hammering the strip from the underside. The brass is just a little too thick to get a good clean definition unfortunately but you can just make out the ‘rivet’ detail in these photos. Next I drilled a hole in the strip as seen here using the two pin vices shown. The two pencil lines on the strip are marking out the thickness of the channel wood. The following task was to bend the strip around into an elongated ‘U’ to form both sides of the bracket as shown in Photo 7. This worked reasonably well on the first bracket as seen here but I just couldn’t get a good right angle bend, none of my long nosed pliers were ‘dainty’ enough to fit inside the bend and so it ended up with a rounded ‘nose’ as seen here. The single hole is to allow the two different end pieces (the tube and the ‘cup’ to be made up separately and pinned into the wood afterwards. The problem was, after this ‘not too bad one’ every succeeding attempt resulted in the bracket snapping in two at the hole! As you can see in Photos 8 and 9, this was where I realised I’d have to remove a section of the copper wire where the brackets were to fit! After the third breakage, I called it a day and decided to think about a different approach!
By the next day I’d decided the problem was trying to make the whole of the double sided bracket in one go! Although this was how the original was made out of wrought iron there was an easier way to create the thing in 1/100 scale in brass. The following photos illustrate the much improved (and easier) MkII. The first task shown in Photo 10 was to carefully rub the strip over very fine glass paper to take the brass back to a dull matt finish. I’d noticed that the first attempt seemed to take ages to blacken down compared to the brass wire rings and suspected there might be some form of finish or lacquer on the strip that needed removing first. The next job was to measure the length of the upper bracket, mark it off and then drill out the bolt holes instead of hammering them out from below. This was quite a pleasure for me – I’d at last found a suitable small drill chuck for my ancient Drillmaster (shown in the last instalment) and was able for the first time in years to use the drill and stand as a drill and stand! (And so much easier than the pin vice on metal!) Shown in Photo 11.
With the four bolt holes completed, I then bent the strip at the pencil mark to create the right angle for the edge of the wooden channel. Into this was drilled another hole to take the eventual end piece as seen in Photo 12. The brass strip was then snipped off slightly over sized by clamping both the bent strip plus another length of the same strip to both sides of a section of the channel wood (the test piece used to set up the router last time) as shown in Photo 13. With the wood and brass clamped together, I used the rotary with a cutting disc to grind down the excess brass until it blended the top and bottom sections together. (Also seen in the same photo). This all sounds confusing but hopefully Diagram 14 will explain it better! The top section of the new bracket overlaps the front of the wooden channel (sitting in the gap made by removing a strip of the copper wire) and the bottom section butts up to the top with the join hidden away underneath. As you can also see here, the original impressed bolt heads are now replaced with snipped off heads of brass pins glued down into the holes drilled through the brass bracket. There should of course be bolts and nuts showing on the bottom part of the bracket too but once Victory’s on her base, who’s going to see them!!
In Photo 15 we have the two sets of brackets after their blacken it bath – I really like that effect, it looks just like something I might have found in the back of the old leaky garage after a decade of forgotten ‘storage’! Finally for this instalment, in Photo 16 the forward bracket has been super glued down in position on the port channel with the pre-blackened cut off brass pin heads pretending to be great hefty iron bolts glued into the holes (ruddy fiddly too!). Now I just have to work out how to make the two ‘plug in’ end bits, I sense some soldering on the way!

Until next time, Happy Modelling to you All!



Robin

Many thanks for those kind words Alan and greatly appreciated too!

The main task from the last instalment has been to play ‘catch-up’ on the starboard main channel as shown in Photo 1. In this shot, all the deadeyes have been completed and soldered into their blackened brass strops. I had a little problem on the second channel, as mentioned last time, I ‘adjusted’ the positions of the deadeyes to ensure that the following chains didn’t clash with the gun ports below. Great in theory, what I didn’t allow for was the group of four large deadeyes with the little tiddly one beside them. The holes for the strops fitted perfectly along the edge of the wooden channel but I’d neglected to check that the actual deadeyes would fit in between them! Guess what! The first three were fine but the fourth was about 2mm too tight. There was no option but to move the last big one back into the gap between the original cut out and the tiny deadeye and then move the tiny deadeye back a couple of mm too! The four big chains will still fit with no problems, the little one is going to be ‘ahem, tight!’ But should just avoid the gun port lid below. To me it always seems harder (or just longer) making up the second, opposite assembly, the enjoyment is in designing and creating the first one, having to do it all again is often more of a chore! (But has to be done of course!)
Photo 2 illustrates the design of the forward stud sail boom bracket shown last time. Originally I was going to solder a section of brass or copper tube onto a brass pin to form the simpler socket shown in the last instalment’s diagram but after I discovered this drawing I realised that the design of the socket is a little more complicated than that! As you can see here, the socket part doesn’t just join straight on to the flat part of the bracket but is connected by a graceful chamfered neck. To create this effect I used a brass square section rod of about 1.25mm square. (This is the same piece I was going to use for the simpler tube and pin design anyway!) Photo 3 shows the bare brass rod after a quick polish up on the end with a wire brush in the rotary tool to remove any surface contamination. The first task is to create the chamfered neck as illustrated in Photo 4. On the port side one I used a diamond dust grinder in the rotary, but on this pictured one I did the same job with a round diamond dust rat tail file. (Only because I think I may have clogged up the grinder with brass dust – it was taking far longer on the second one!) With the neck contoured, the flat slab on the end of the rod was then ground down using the diamond dust wheel (which doesn’t seem to clog up at all on brass) to round off the end producing the socket. This was then drilled out with the good old Drillmaster on its Drill Press stand. This was done ‘free-hand’, resting the brass rod on a scrap of wood under the drill but in hindsight I think it would have been easier and more accurate if I’d clamped the rod in the mini vice (the first starboard socket was spoilt by the drill going off centre and was replaced with this one!) After the shaping and drilling shown in Photo 5, the brass rod was cut off with an Exacto razor saw in my £1 ‘Tool Box’ store mini aluminium mitre box (one of the excellent (and cheap!) Rolson tools) and the resulting tiny shaped piece was clamped in the mini vice and drilled down into the rear face as shown in Photo 6. Into this hole was tapped a 0.7mm diameter length of brass rod to form the locating pin seen both here and in the ‘full view’ in Photo 7.
Photo 8 shows the bare brass socket in a test fit into the port main channel, the locating pin having been gently pushed back into the hole drilled through the hole in the vertical part of the bracket, back into the wooden plank. Once everything was seen to be fitting ok, the brass sockets were given their dunking in the Blacken-it before the ‘rusty’ end result was pushed back in place and secured with a drop of super glue as shown in Photo 9 followed a couple of days later by the twin starboard one shown in Photo 10. I’m not sure if I mentioned this earlier but after reading various other websites and tutorials regarding the chemical blackening procedures, I’ve discovered that the Blacken-it works just as well in a 1:7 diluted mix with clean water as it does in a neat solution. This is what I’m using now, it means of course that the bottle should last seven times longer than before and I only use it neat now if the brass doesn’t seem to want to change colour easily (which some bits don’t!) It takes a lot longer – up to a couple of hours instead of a few minutes but if necessary I can even leave it overnight with no ill effects.
The final Photo 11 illustrates the changed routine for adding the copper decorative moulding to the edge of the channel. As I mentioned in the previous instalment, on the port channel I glued in the copper first and then had to cut away two sections to allow the brackets to fit in. This time I got it right and fitted the brackets first and THEN added the copper! I cut a length of the 0.5mm wire from the coil and then gripped it with a pair of pliers at each end and pulled tightly – this has the effect of stretching the copper by a couple of mm but leaves it as straight as a die, much easier than trying to keep a slightly curved piece in place while the super glue takes hold! As you can see in this photo, the two outer lengths of copper overhang the end of the channel by quite a bit. The intention was to let the super glue dry and then to bend the copper around the corners, pushing it into the concave sides to be glued in place. As I suspected, the short length glued to the front face of the channel wasn’t strong enough to keep the copper in place and both ends came off as they were being pushed into shape! No great problem though, the copper is soft enough to form the curves by just pushing it into the groove along the edge of the wood and once formed, a few drops of super glue easily fixed the end sections into position. Incidentally, I’ve found that this 0.5mm copper is easily cut to length with a safety razor blade held in the cutter, this gives a far neater end than using the fine wire snips that I use on the brass rod (the brass is too hard to get the same cut with the razor blade though.)
The aft brackets will be left for a little while until I can get the dimensions for the actual studding sail boom in 1:100 scale, there’s not much point in making up the ‘U’ piece until I know how big it needs to be!
In the next instalment, making up the next addition to the wooden channel jig to make up the set of supporting iron brackets to go underneath.

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin.

Yet another stunning update Robin looking forward to the next one

Rgd Martyn

Marvellous piece of work and your attention to detail is inspirational.... ..Very well done once again Robin....

Regards

Alan

And the first taker was Martyn! Hope you enjoy it mate!

Robin.

Hi Robin.
Just caught up with your last couple of updates. looking very nice, look forward to seeing more of your great work.
Ian