Welcome to the forum Sparks, you will find a plethora of information on the site.
Will be interesting to see how you approach your build.

Peter

Welcome aboard Sparks. It sounds like your up for the challange as well as being in the right place for all the right type of help that you will require. Good luck wth your build, will be watching with interest.

Enjoy the upgrade!

I think the next major thing I did was the copper plating of the hull.
In the photo below I have scribed the water line and prepared the hull below it to give me a smoother finish to fix the plates to.

I purchased individual plates that were about 15X5mm in size( a bit larger scale wise than the actual plates used on Victory) with ready marked rivets around the edges.

I can't remember exactly how many I used but it was several hundred
One of the books I have used to good effect is Alan McGowan's "HMS Victory Her Construction, Career and Restoration"
In this book is a plan of the copper plating,


and I followed this plan as closely as I could. Where I had to cut the plates to shape, I re-did the rivet marks along the new edge by turning the plate over and using a hammer and small punch.
The next photo shows the plating getting underway.

As you can imagine, this was quite a long process. Below are some photos of the finished copper plating.




In the last photo of the stern, I have arrowed to a small hole, this is the jack socket that takes the electrical supply for the lighting.
As mentioned before, this work was done several years back and as you can see, the copper is quite bright and shiny. I did not lacquer it and over the years it has mellowed down and tarnished a bit as this more recent photo shows.

By the time I finish my Victory I should have natural patina on it
regards
Alan

While my attention is on the copper plating, I will mention the rudder.
Again,because of the time involved, I can't remember exactly, but the rudder supplied by Del Prado was incorrect. I think I used their rudder and re-shaped and sized it by adding additional timber.
I made the gudgeons and pintles from small brass tube,strap and rods, shaping as required and soldering the parts together, then painting black. Below is a close up of one of the gudgeon plates.

The rudder was then copper plated and the pintles fixed to it.
Here is the finished rudder with all the gudgeon plates next to it.

Also notice the spectacle plate above the copper on the right, I made this in the same way as the gudgeons and pintles. Below is a photo of the rudder in place, I have lifted it slightly to show the pintles fitting into the gudgeon plates.

Regards
Alan

Another alteration I did early on in the build, although I didn't realise just how early on until I saw my photos, was the skid beams.
Another major error by Del Prado. As you have probably seen on Robin's
(Plymouth57) build log, Del Prado just put the skid beams on the ribs that were within the waist area, just 4, without any regard for accuracy.
HMS Victory actually has 6 skid beams, so I cut the original 4 out and made locating cut outs along the edges of the waist area at the correct locations for 6 new skid beams to sit into.

The above photo shows that I had corrected the skid beam issue before I had finished the first planking. The following photo, showing a close up of the skid beam pillars, brings to light another of Del Prado's slap dash methods, the gratings. Early on in the build, before I knew better, I
followed their instructions for the gratings which consisted of making up
a frame from 4 pieces of timber and sticking it onto the deck with a piece of mesh beneath it to represent the grating.

Once I realised that small timber grating could be purchased from on line stores like Model Dock Yard, I took the plunge and changed them. As there were no cut outs in the deck for the Del Prado style gratings, they had to be made. I remember it was quite a task to get into the waist area and cut the holes in the upper gun deck, scary too
But it was well worth the effort as this next photo shows.

You will also see that I have formed the smaller openings each side of the main mast, another Del Prado omission.

Hi Sparks, very nice work Kind regards Mike

Hi Sparks, impressive progess there.....

Regards

Alan

Next up was the stern galleries. Del Prado's one wasn't too bad for shape etc as I recall, but no decoration and a piece of card with windows printed on it to stick inside, not very realistic looking to say the least. I think it caused so much negative feedback that they provided a cast metal replacement later on in the build, but by that time I had already made other arrangements.
Searching the internet looking for 1/100 scale HMS Victory parts didn't help much but did bring to my attention that there was a 1/100 scale HMS Victory kit made by Helller. I was talking to a fellow modeller I was working with at the time and he mentioned that he owned that kit, had purchased it a few years earlier with good intent, but never really getting started with it, and he was willing to sell it to me at quite a reduced price, so I arranged to go and see the kit.
Imagine my delight at seeing a nicely moulded rear gallery at the right scale. Delving into the kit further I was even more delighted to see that the ships lanterns were moulded in two halves from clear plastic, perfect for my lighting plans. Purchase completed, I headed home eager to make a start.
Once I had temporarily assembled the rear gallery parts and offered them up, it was clear that some modifications would be needed to make it fit, but the overall look was really good.
I added some internal floors made from scrap timber.

This was done mainly as a fixing platform for the yellow LED lamps that would illuminate the galleries.
The next couple of pics were taken more recently with my new DSLR camera.



Notice in the first photo looking at the stern how the ships name has faded. I made my own decal for the name when I did the galleries several years ago, this is how it did look.

I don't know why its happened, but I will have to redo it at some point, perhaps I should have coated it with clear varnish, any tips would be welcome.
The next shot is of the lanterns.

As stated earlier, they were formed in two halves and during assembly, a small yellow LED lamp was installed inside each one. Luckily, Victory's lanterns have a three arm bracket,

this close up of the underside of the centre, larger lantern shows the bracket, the two outer arms are actually the wires feeding the LED lamps.
More to follow shortly.
Regards
Alan

The Corel mouldings set was used again, along with a bit of scratch building, to enhance the beak head area.






As you can see from the above photo, I had to thin out the timber on the beak to take the figure head, that was made from 2 cast metal figureheads I had bought (using the best bits from each), and the cherubs were from the Heller Victory kit, I liked these because they looked more cherubic (and a bit more like the ones on the actual ship) than the ones on the cast metal figureheads I had.





Painting the figurehead seamed to take forever as I kept re-touching parts that went wrong or I wasn't happy with , but luckily the Latin text around the top of the shield came as a decal on one of the figureheads I had bought.
Regards
Alan