Thanks Hans and Jase!

The Carronades are finished at last, most of the explanatory text is on the photo pages so no need for more here!
I'm still working slowly backwards, the waist area safety ropes and hammock netting should really be next but as I'm going to be adding crew figures down below I'm leaving that off until they have all

a) Been designed and or converted,
b) Had their moulds created (that silicone rubber is over £32 a tin now!!)
c) Been cast up in white metal
d) Been painted and trimmed off their bases and glued down on the deck.

Don't expect that netting any time soon!

I will instead be concentrating on the entry steps, the aft waist barricade (shiver!), the main mast belaying rack and then up onto the poop deck (even more shivering!!)
Oh! and the Marine's Walk and lower bowsprit too.

Should have got the Titanic instead!

Happy Building to all!

Robin

Very nice, and great photos too, wish i could take a picture like this!

Excellant work there Rob, will be taking on board a lot of that detail

Stunning work there Robin.

Hi again to all!

Well, here he is! the very first completed member of the Victory's crew. Firstly my grateful thanks to Sparks for pointing me in the right direction for these brilliant scale figures. After hours and hours trying to find 1/100 scale figures with no success Sparks showed me these figures, not 1/100 scale but 15mm! (which is basically the same thing!) Personally I think it's age discrimination, modellers of my generation think in terms of SCALES not ruddy dimensions!
I now have a few sets of various figures including the Marine Command Set from which this little chap comes together with British Seamen, Firing Marines and a lovely little Gun Crew.
I'm still carrying on with making up my own figures from the 1/100 scale railway figures, the more poses the better! And the gun crew are being altered slightly in order to create my own casting moulds, I simply can't afford to purchase a full gun crew for the whole waist area. Of course it's still going to cost me over £30 for another tin of silicone ( ) but I'll need that anyway to create my own figures plus any other Brandywine miniatures as well so there's no way around that.
It's amazing how much time goes into these figures, I think I spent almost as much time painting this one as I used to spend on a 1/35 (54mm) figure many years ago (although I used to be able to paint them with the naked eye, I need something close to an electron microscope for these blighters!)
The figure is mainly painted in a mixture of Citidel and Admiralty Paints with the British Scarlet formed from mixing Citidel Blazing Orange and Red Gore, I love their paint names! (I mixed up a fair quantity in an air tight pot so hopefully it won't go hard!) I mainly used just two paintbrushes, 'Premier Finest Nylon P41 Germany' brushes, size 0 for the most part and size 1 for 'slapping it on'! (Black Gaiters)
The drummer will shortly be taking his place between the grating and the aft steps 'beating to quarters', all in all he hasn't turned out too bad, the only question now is "What the Hell have I let myself in for!!"
Happy Building All

Robin

As long as they're BIGGER than 15mm's Alan!!

Well done Robin, only another 799 to do



sparks

Hi All!

Here's a quickie (relative term, took me about 45 mins to put the post together, took about six hours to creat the figure!)

As I said earlier, I've got some crew figures to be getting on with including the Marines as in the earlier post. What I haven't got in those sets however was a Marine Sentry to be posted at the various steps around the ship so time to think about some major surgery again!
This is my fifth scratch built figure from my packet of train passengers, Lt. Furstman came, err, furst followed by a Boatswain and two seamen, one in shirt and the other with some very minor sanding, in shirt sleeves!
This is by far the most detailed conversion (until I get to Nelson and Co.) and is composed of three figures, the basic standing passenger with his hands in his pockets another walking male to provide the arms (same figure as the seamen) and a head from a third. (Didn't actually want another head but the original one was accidently broken off when I was carving the body! - and I'm supposed to be a first aider too! )
Both arms were cut away from the body and the bottom of the coat was carved down with a safety razor blade to form the short front and coat-tails of the Marine's jacket.
I then used the self adhesive copper tape cut into ultra small strips to form the cross stripes on the front of the jacket, once in place a drop of superglue secured the strips in place.
The cross belts were then cut out of a scrap of decra-led lead strip which I'd rolled out under a cylindrical knife handle to flatten it out a little, once cut and moulded into place, again secured with superglue.
The brass belt plate and the cartridge pouch were made from un rolled lead sheet, the pouch folded double to create the flap.
The Marine's Hat was a lead disc puched out of the sheet with a wooden 'top hat' filed and sanded to size then superglued into position and the lead brim rolled up at the sides and down front and back. The cockade was a stroke of luck - if you have used cocktail sticks to apply drops of superglue to small items you'll know how it eventually gets a rounded 'blob' of dried glue on the tip, carve down the stick below it and - one tiny cockade!
And that should have been that except for a slight problem, the Marine was built onto a 1/100 scale figure, the other Marines are white metal 15mm ready made figures. A TRUE 1/100 scaler should in fact be 18mm ! The sentry was a good head taller than his comrades! Not really a problem except that stood in the waist well his hat was taller than the waist beams
Only one thing to do, he had been complaining about painfull knees so I did him a favour and cut his legs off just below the knees where the black gaiters start, removing about 1.5mm off his legs above the cut. (You can just make out the slit in the photos) He's still a little taller than the metals but not so bad now.
He looks a little rough in his undercoat grey but once he's cast up and painted he should look a lot better. Just got to find a 1/100 musket now!
Hope you enjoy my A & E periods! I'm getting a longing to get back to some good honest wooden ship bits now!

Bye for Now

Robin

Wow, Robin, methinks you have too much time on your hands. What an excellent tutorial. Extremely well done. Definitely going in my things to do list. Thank you

Thanks to Alan, Hans and Moriarty, appreciated as always!

Have to admit that this is the smallest scale I have ever figure-modelled in! I have painted smaller figures in the distant past namely Ancient, WW2 and Modern period wargames vehicles and soldiers, I can't even remember what scale they were now but a single figure was about 5mm tall! I think I did use a magnifying glass on them!

I used to use a visor type magnifyer with adjustable lenses when I began the Vic's smaller bits but I found sometimes the actual rim of the visor would get in the way (the built in LED light was a big help though!) I now use the far simpler set up seen below - the brownish framed spectacles are my standard reading glasses from Boots Opticians (pretty much the same from any optician ((Oh sorry they're Optimetrists nowadays - where the hell did that stupid name come from?)) of course!), the frameless glasses in front are a simple pair of reading glasses from the Pound Shop! They just sit on the bridge of my nose and the doubled magnification is perfect even for these 15mm / 1/100 scale dwarfs!. The other really handy bit is that I can simply push the second pair up out of the way so they sit on the top of my readers just like the visor does! Being closer to my eyes, they also have a much bigger field of view compared to the visor as well.
Highly recommended, and if like me you already have to wear spectacles, a very cheap solution too!

Thanks again guys and Mori, that restoration is coming on fantastically! ('Course you'll need to start your crew soon!! HAHAHAHAHA!

Robin