Thanks Alan and Hans!
Doing the pretty graphics is quite a relaxing diversion when I want to get the sawdust out of my sinuses, glad you like them too! I suppose when you come down to it, unless a kit provides a nearly finished component instead of a pile of wooden planks or dowels, what we are all building is virtually scratch built! I'm sort of scratch building on top of the scratch building!

Finally finished the main part of the Bowsprit so here she is!

Ok then, here’s the full story of the Bowsprit!
First of all, a mention of the parts supplied by the DelPrado kit. According to the instructions, the Bowsprit is composed of three pieces of dowel, the main Bowsprit of 8mm diameter, the Jib Boom of 6mm and the Flying Jib Boom of 4mm. The Jib Boom is connected to the Bowsprit by a two-piece plywood cap whilst the Jib and Flying Jib are joined together by a single plywood ‘figure of eight’. We also have the instructions to make the spritsail yard and the spritsail topsail yard but I won’t bother with them yet, they’ll keep until I’m into the main yards etc.
Checking the dimensions in the McKay Victory book, the Bowsprit was 2ft 5 ins in diameter which scales down to 8.6mm in 1/100 (note the effortless switch from feet to metres! Great until I forget which one I’m working in!) So in actual fact the Bowsprit is slightly under sized but not really noticeable. As for the other two however, the 6mm Jib Boom (1ft 5 and 3/8 ins in real life) reduces down to not 6mm but 3.8mm! The Flying Jib Boom ( 7 and 5/8 ins) comes down to 1.9mm in diameter, NOT the 4mm as supplied! This would mean a complete scratch build using kit dowels meant for other parts of the build, ah well! Sort that out when I come to it!
The Bowsprit was made from the supplied wood therefore, (quite some time ago now,) but instead of a simple straight dowel it was tapered down slightly on the mini lathe reducing by about a mm over the length. The re-enforcing iron bands were cut out of lead strip and superglued into position after the fore and aft ends were cut to shape, the front to take the cap and bees and the rear to fit into the bow itself. After that, the little stubby bits that the later rigging goes in between were added along with the sheave blocks on either side which sit under the angled ‘wings’ called the Bees (No idea why!) The sheave blocks were filed out with a groove on the inside to take rigging lines and the Bees were also filed out to match up with them. Note! The sheave blocks are NOT symmetrical! The port one is set back further than the starboard. (Photos 7 and 8, ((8 and 9 might be missing their numbers!)) Also note the horizontal hole in the end of the Jib which simulates the sheave block of the original
A new Bowsprit Cap was formed from two layers of plywood, ( Photo 1) the kit version was about half as thick again as it should have been! Rather than having two holes in the ply and setting the Bowsprit dowel into the bigger one, I took a different route and drilled out the end of the Bowsprit to take a good old cocktail stick, (one of the very few in the UK that escaped Gandale’s clutches!!) (Photo 2). The Cap then fitted over the stick (very tightly) and was PVA’d in place. (Photo 3) Once dry, the cocktail stick was cut off flush and sanded smooth. The hole for the Jib Boom was drilled using a very similar method to the earlier hawse holes using, for the most part, hand held drill bits in the pin vice, this was the easiest way to ensure that the hole went through at the correct angle to feed the boom through afterwards as seen in Photos 8 and 9.
Work then began on the Jib Boom and Flying Jib Boom. Instead of the kit 6mm and 4mm dowels, I used 4mm for the Jib and 2mm for the Flying, each one being tapered on the lathe again. Both booms are circular for nearly all their length but octagonal at the aft ends, the Jib is also shaped the same at the fore end, the Flying merely ends in a grooved ‘cap’ The two Photos on the lathe (4 and 5) shows the creation of the Jib octagon. The boom was tapered up to the section marked ‘A’, once that was done ‘A’ was itself reduced down to the same diameter and then filed into the octagon by filing a flat into four sides and then filing the four edges between those flats creating the eight sides. This was done with the wood still fixed into the lathe chuck, the dowel is much easier to control that way and doesn’t roll around as it would on the workbench. The almost finished result of the fore end of the Jib is seen in Photo 6.
The final addition to the Bowsprit Cap was to cut and fix the downward pointing boom commonly known as a ‘Dolphin Striker’ (that’s a Hell of a high jump for any dolphin!!) This boom is equipped with four holes drilled fore and aft at its lower end, which will eventually take four lines of standing rigging. I did try to make the first three examples from cocktail sticks but they just kept splitting after the second or third drilled holes so I needed another solution. Remember that little tool with the glued on sandpaper I made to smooth out the hawse-holes? Well the wooden handle it’s got is considerably shorter now! The ex-handle Dolphin Striker was chamfered at the top to fit under the Jib Boom and superglued into place. Once firm, the three retaining iron brackets were fashioned from the lead strip and glued on (Photo 3) Note also the small groove which holds the end of the Flying Jib Boom, on the kit instructions, the oversized Flying Jib didn’t actually extend back to the Cap at all.
The final set of Photos (which were numbered 10 and 11 but now apparently aren’t?) shows the design of the iron bracket, which holds the Jib and Flying Jib Booms together. The one in the photo is actually a quick second copy just to illustrate the procedure, I’d already fitted and painted the real one so couldn’t photograph it very well! The Jib is the larger dowel which has been filed to the octagon and then fitted with a superglued lead band as has the round dowel for the Flying Jib beside it. Before joining them together by drilling a small hole into each and fitting a little brass rod in between, the Jib band was lightly gripped in the long nosed pliers seen above, gripping the flat of the octagon on all four opposite sides turns the round band into an octagonal one as per the original. Compare the size of this tiny bracket which IS to scale with the plywood figure of eight which is the same fitting as supplied in the kit! Sheesh!
Finally the last photo shows the completed Bowsprit in all its pokey out glory. The first section up to the Cap will shortly be glued into the bow, the Jibs are, at this point still removable, I really don’t want over a foot of thin dowel sticking out the front until I’m ready to add all the spars and ropes at the same time! The Jibs still need another coat of Admiralty Wood (Walnut) to finish them off but I must admit that colour goes together really well with the Yellow Ochre and Black which bodes well for the future! (Incidentally, in the final photo the Jib isn’t fitting flush with the Bowsprit, it’s own weight with the Flying Jib is tipping it down slightly, the tips will raise up a little when the Jib is fitted on permanently. I've seen some old photos of the real Victory and the sheer weight and length of those jibs makes them look more like a giant longbow than a dead straight model bowsprit!
All in all, quite a lot of work involved but compared with the original kit appearance, well worth the extra effort. And I’ll have to do all this and much more on the three masts too!!

Happy Building to All

Robin

Update! all the photo numbers have come back!
Double Update! I think I know where those numbers went now. I habitually print off the photo pages to use as a guide when composing the text, to save paper I printed all three pic pages on one sheet, the MS print thingy re-sized the pages to fit all three on and cut off the numbers in the process! Uppity computers!!

Nice work Robin
I was also aware of the discrepancy in the Del Prado mast and spar sizes and made a whole new set some time back, ready for fitting when eventually needed.
Regards
Alan

Many thanks to all the above for their kind comments and also to all those looking in (and pushing the views counter up and up!)
I know what you mean about that rigging Admiral! Work has slowed down considerably at the moment, not because there isn't tons to get on with, simply because of the location of my workroom. As some of you might have seen in the thread where we were describing our 'dockyards', mine is situated up in my attic. This means it's ruddy cold in the winter, but a fan heater sorts that out, it's the summer time that gets very uncomfortable, especially in a heatwave situation as we are in now (officially designated heatwave on the BBC weather forecast today! )
Mornings not too bad but after midday it's between 85 and 90 degrees until sunset up there! It used to be much worse until I had a skylight fitted which gives lovely light and a degree of ventilation, but even with a fan going full blast you can't work on anything without your hands going sweaty and sticky within minutes which is not very good when handling small bits of wood or rigging thread!!
I hope to put up a few pics soon, I'm trying to rectify a mistake I made months ago when I carved the knightsheads for the bow. Made them really nice, drilled out the bottom and added a brass rod for strength then drilled the bow and glued them in. They've been there for many months now and looked fine until I finally fitted the bowsprit a couple of weeks ago. Then, as I was checking the rigging diagrams I realised that I'd forgotten to drill out the slanting holes for the main mast stays to pass through!

I tried to drill out the holes in situ but with the bowsprit and the beakhead timbers blocking easy access even to the pin vice, the result was far from pleasant to put it mildly! One hole was just about useable but the other went through completly off line, it was slanting all right, just not in the right direction! Only one solution at this stage, snap!, snap!, time to make two new knightsheads!
This I've now done, complete with properly aligned holes, a quick check in the McGowan book and lo and behold, they've got three iron rings set into the front face below the stay rope holes. A look through my brass spares collection for ring bolts confirmed that the only ones I had left over from the Grimsby additions were too big for this scale so scratch built ones it would have to be. I used the same 0.5mm brass wire looped around a clamped drill bit (just like making the rings for the cannon tackle) and then soldered the end of the 'ring' back to the 'pin' part after they were cut to length. They don't look too bad at all once drilled and glued into the posts.
I'm now going to make up a simple jig with the knightshead stuck into a drilled hole with a length of bamboo kebab skewer (unused I might add! ) a couple of inches away to act as an anchor for the block and tackle which attaches to those iron rings. I'm going to add that on before I glue the knightsheads back on the bow and then, like Sparks, make up the rigging with the hearts etc which pass through the knights and the Marine's Walk, it'll be easier than doing it in position later!
The problem I have now is that even with the McKay and McGowan books, I don't have a clear diagram of where those knightshead block and tackles actually go to! They start at the knights and obviously head up the bowsprit but to where I'll have to find out later. It shouldn't be a problem until the fore and main masts are in and the rest of the jib boom and flying jib go on to meet them - months away yet (maybe years if this heatwave doesn't ease off soon!)

Back with those pics soon.

Robin

I know how you feel Robin, my office/ hide hole is in the loft and I can't go anywhere near it in this sort of weather, I've always had a Velux roof window, but even with that open the temperature is in the 30's C, not a good place to be when you're trying to work out an invoice!
I even fitted a split AC system up there and that does reduce the temperature to something bearable in about 30mins, but the cost of running it on a regular basis is astronomical so it only gets used in emergencies.
Regards
Alan

Very nice work Robin.
I remember the yellow plastic (oversized) blocks and deadeyes
Regards
Alan

Robin, thanks for this very impressive build diary!
Lots of details, great ideas and a very good description!
Best regards,
Bernd

Many thanks to the Alans, Bernd and Admiral! I think once I start up into the masts and rigging there'll be a lot more little jigs on the way, it's so much easier to knock up the blocks and tackle off the actual model and then simply transfer them on to it once they're done. It can't be done for every bit by any means, but any ways to make it easier can't be bad!

The bow is now proceeding at a rate of knots if you’ll forgive the pun!
The first job was to produce a set of six eye-bolts from the 0.5mm brass wire to make up the six that are found on the bow bulkhead just below the fence. These have to be drilled into the decorative strip as can be seen in photo 1, not the easiest job as the strip is hardly any wider than the drill bit used to make the holes! These are all now in place and will be painted with the Admiralty Metal Black fairly soon.
The second bit of ironmongery that was needed was the eye-bolt and corresponding ring which is located slap bang in the centre of the Marine’s Walk gangway. For this I again used the 0.5mm brass wire, but unlike all the previous rings and bolts I used my brand new roll of brass wire, which I’d just got direct from E-bay. It’s pretty damned good stuff too! A full 10 metres for around £3.50 or so, (just under a fiver with the p&p) so very good value. It’s not as soft a metal as my first lot which was either supplied with the DelPrado kit itself, or else was left over from the Bounty kit by the same manufacturer. Despite being stiffer, it will still bend around the drill bits to produce the bolts and rings and, even better, with a light sanding with a foam sanding pad it WILL accept the ‘Blacken-it’ chemical ‘converter’. All my other brass supplies simply won’t turn black! I suspect they have some form of protective lacquer which still seems to affect the process even after I’ve deliberately sanded it off. It will eventually go a dark grey/black but the finish is all lumpy and bits would fall off when it was handled or wiped dry.
As you can see in photo 2, it produces a lovely authentic ‘rusty iron’ effect, just what I was after in fact so from now on all the rings etc, to go into the deck for the rigging will be produced this way, and hopefully, the chainwale chains as well when I get there.
Before the Knightsheads could be glued down in place, there was something else which had to go onto the bow – namely the safety netting to stop the ‘rummys’ from falling overboard during their night time ablutions. The first step was to cut out a strip of stiff card, (I used an off cut from a Pound shop pack of inkjet photo paper!). The strip was slid in behind the head timbers and two marks made on the left side, these correspond to the height and width of the single toilet which sits alongside the curved roundhouse. Once that was cut out and the fit was nice and snug, the right hand side was marked to follow the curving head timber. The actual length of the inside of the timbers is a little misleading from the outside, hence the need to stick an extra piece of card on to the first attempt! Once satisfactory, the template was used to cut out the black nylon netting as seen in the same photo. This was the stiffer of the two types of netting that I got for mere pennies from the Plymouth Pannier Market.
Photo 5 shows the cut out section of netting with the supporting rope of 0.3mm rigging thread which has been woven through the top row of ‘complete’ holes in the mesh. (The netting has already been painted with the Citadel grey acrylic ) The easiest way to thread the rope is to simply make a single drop of superglue on a card and just dip the first half an inch of the thread into it, quickly wipe off the excess, finger and thumb is fine if you’re quick and let it dry for a minute. Once dry you now have a length of rigging thread equipped with it’s own built in needle! Just thread the stiffened tip in and out of the mesh from one end to the other. (This method is also a must when rigging the block and tackles, the ‘needled’ thread is easy to pass through the blocks or deadeyes (as long as you have stuck a drill bit through those holes to ensure that they are clear first). Also in this photo is the first of the brass wire stanchions which also support the netting, one on each side in the middle. This one has also been blacken-it-ed.
Using the card template again to give me the height for the supporting rope, I drilled a small hole into the gap between the curving head timber and the roundhouse. The port side was a right so and so as there WAS no gap, so I was forced to drill directly into the metal of the ‘house and head timber joint, the starboard side did have a tiny gap into the wood behind – much easier, so much easier in fact that the rotary drill chuck almost followed the drill bit into the hull as it passed through the hull much faster than I was expecting.
With the little holes in place at the right height, the superglue trick was performed on the end of the rope and the stiffened end was tweezered back in to the hole and superglued in place. Once secure, the netting was gently run back along the rope until it fitted into the corner snugly and then the forward end was tied around the head timber to fix the front end. Note! To be absolutely authentic, that front end should be secured to a small bolt in the head timber but that bronzey metal is an absolute nightmare to drill into so I settled for a simpler tied off appearance. (The whole lot had been shot away before Victory ever reached the enemy battle line so who’s to say!!) When the netting was safely in place, the stanchion (I had already drilled it’s locating hole into the deck before the netting went on) was threaded down through the mesh and into the deck. The shaft was made longer than it should be deliberately. When it was in position it could be seen sticking out under the head timbers so I could then very gently push it down a further quarter of an inch, snip it off level with the head timber and then push it back up for a nice neat finish. Also note in photo 7, the far side netting has got its stanchion, the near side hadn’t when I took the photo!
Photo 8 is the same bit from a lower angle whilst Photo 6 above it shows the Knightsheads in place earlier on. They weren’t glued in yet so I could get them out of the way for the netting. Also the starboard front support for the Marine’s Walk (the one which came off is still missing in this pic, (it is back in place now though).
That’s it for now, I’m just working on the main mast stay supports which pass through the Marine’s Walk at the moment, VERY fiddly so some more pics to follow soon.

Happy (cooler) building to All

Robin

Nicely done, as usual, Robin
Regards
Alan

good work

Very nice, - I plan to use a wash on mine later in the build as well - I have the full range of vallejo washes and find them very good on armor builds.
Steve