I'm not surprised the view count keeps going up and up Robyn as your posts full of useful tips with detailed instructions of how you achieved what you do, a most fascinating read indeed.

Well, she’s back! The last posting for this poor old girl was seventeen months ago, and the last time I worked on her was even longer than that, first the Messines diorama, then the Scramble, then Frederick in his armour and finally the Pups – all of them meant I’d very little time and even less working space to get on with my DelPrado Victory. Until now though, a partial re-working of my attic workroom with some extra work top space means I can now rotate the Victory in and out of the work area which she is now sharing with the Chindit bust scratch build. I should really be continuing on with the chainwales but first I wanted to try and do some alterations to the figure head for reasons shown below.
Photo 1 shows the two cast side sections of the DelPrado kit figure head (I’ve already done the central coat of arms section shown earlier in the diary). The part on the left which is the starboard section isn’t too bad but the opposite port piece (although you can’t tell in this shot) is awful! Photos 2 and 3 illustrates the problem – the upraised arm supposedly holding the coat of arms on the starboard cherub is ok, the port one however is mounted on a slab of extra metal with the upraised arm attached to it (his arm therefore is about three feet wide!) As you can see in Photo 3, I’d begun to try and file the extra metal away (started before the last post in fact and shown by the yellow arrow) but although this casting metal is brittle at times, it’s as tough as hell when you’re trying to file it down, even with powered diamond dust grinders! Anyhow, after all the newly learnt resin casting skills acquired with the Pups I thought – why not make a mould of this ‘orrible thing and cast it in resin. Then I could cut away the excess parts far easier than in metal. The titchy little mould is shown in Photo 4, the metal casting is simply pushed onto the soft plasticene base and a basic wall of lego pushed down around it. A couple teaspoons of silicone rubber later and I had an open ended mould to pour a little resin into. The first result was as shown in Photo 5, almost a perfect casting except for a single air bubble – marked by the ‘x’ and right on the very arm I was trying to create! Typical! On the second attempt I moved the resin around in the arm space with a cocktail stick and the result is shown in Photo 6 along with the paper/card modelling knife and the resin waste, which was carved away to create the ‘proper’ shaped arm.
Unfortunately for Victory this isn’t the end of the re-construction work. When I glued on the decorative mouldings onto her curved beakhead (again, metal castings) I didn’t glue the outer one right out to the edge of the beakhead as there are holes that needed to go in there for part of the bowsprit rigging. As a result, there isn’t enough space for the figurehead side panels to fit flush against the wood. To be honest, looking at the area at the bow, even if I had fitted the moulding further forward I still don’t think the side panels will fit in there. Consequently I am currently planning out an additional section of wood to move the coat of arms forward allowing the cherubs to fit in behind it. I did think about snapping off the mouldings (a la Gibbo) but I’ve already built in the anchor rope re-enforcement timbers to fit the existing shape of the moulding (plus I haven’t got Gibbo’s guts!) So in the next instalment, re-shaping that beakhead and hopefully completing the figurehead!

Until then, Happy (Re)Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Very neat Robin.

I really do like how you cast these resin replacements.

Great to see you back on the "ol girl" Robin and a lovely job on the casting, i'll have to check mine tomorrow now to make sure i haven't got the same problem, if anybody can make this work it's you mate, looking forward to seeing how it all works out.
Regards
Paul

Thanks once again to Martyn, Tony, Alan, Paul and Ian! It's nice to be back on her again after all this time - although after all that nice clean paper and card building the Pups I'd forgotten just how messy wood working was!
In the end I decided to go the whole hog NO! I didn't rip everything off! I went and cast the other 'better' cherub as well to even everything up. In this installment, before painting up the castings and fitting them in I've had to re-model the top of the beakhead to allow enough space for the resins to fit....

Photo 7 illustrates the position of the coat of arms centre piece of the figurehead before the problems were found. Note the forward decorative curved strip, it terminates right under the scroll-work of the coat of arms. The side pieces with the cherubs is supposed to fit between the centre piece and the upper most curved beam (with the netting attached) – well it won’t!
Without ripping all the bow decoration off (faint) the other solution is to move the centre piece forward creating more space for the cherubs. The first task therefore was to fill in the cut out on the top of the beakhead where the coat of arms fitted onto. The metal centre piece came off very easily (which didn’t bode well for other parts super glued on!) I then cut a section of the thick sapele wood planking which came with my old Constructo Grimsby kit and glued that into the space as shown in Photo 8. Then, with another length of that same plank (you can see how thick that stuff was) I cut a section to run from the top of the beakhead about halfway down to the waterline. This was given the necessary curve with my Amati plank nipper as shown in Photo 9. This tool is years old now, bought to build the Grimsby with decades ago. Back then it came with just the blade in the jaws, not with a selection AND a brass bending gizmo too! Once there was a slight curve, I then sanded the plank down on the outer face, reducing the thickness to a razor edge at the bottom and then re-nipped the plank over and over again until the curvature matched the profile of the bow. The formed plank was then glued to the beakhead with Gorilla wood glue (I didn’t want that piece going anywhere!) This is shown in Photo 10. I then carefully sanded down the sides of the add-ons until they were flush with the existing wood and re-sanded the front edge to fair the join together (Photo 11). When satisfied with the finish the new wood was painted with Admiralty Dull Black to match the old as in Photo 12 and once dry the centre piece was super glued back in position. If you compare Photo 13 with Photo 7, you can see how the coat of arms has now moved forward with the bottom scroll now further to the bow, allowing the side pieces to fit in place.
In the next installment, once I’ve bought some more gold acrylic to replace the Citadel Shining Gold which I’ve just discovered has dried out on me, the cherubs and scrolls can get painted up and fitted in place.

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Very nice work as usual Robin, looks fab.... .. I like using the plank nipper for putting curves on wood, especially hard wood. As long as you can't see the inside of the piece then its an ideal tool....

Regards

Alan

A great job Robin, they look fantastic mate.
Regards
Paul

Great job on the painting, the figures and crest look superb.

Graeme

Hi Robin,
Congratulations on you paint job, especially the Figurehead. WOW!!!
Kind regards,
Garth

Fantastic job on the figure head.