Taking another little break from the hull (gun port completion) here's the procedure that I have taken for the 12 pounder long guns which will be placed on both the upper gun deck and the quarter deck. The building schedule means that I will have to get these finished before the next lot of structural components can go in: The upper gun deck cannons (12) will have to be in place before I can make and fit the waist ladders and I'd rather get the quarter deck guns (6) in position before the ladders and 'gantry' leading up to the poop deck make getting at the inner bulwarks more difficult.
When the DeAgostini Victory part works first came out I bought the first issue (the cheap one!) just to see what the series would be like. I've actually done this for most of the ship part-works, mainly out of curiosity but also for any useful bits and pieces! I also bought an extra copy of the Del Prado issue 1 just to get the ship's boat to add to my first model (see photo above)
The piece of interest in the DeAgostina first issue was the 12 pounder cannon, I'm going to make a little stand alone diorama with that one later on with a section of decking, hull side, gunport and full crew but more on that much later.
The guns on my Victory are much simpler and much smaller than the ones most of you will be dealing with!. The DeAgostini 12 pounder comes in its own little plastic pre-formed 'box' comprising of 13 pieces (14 once the two halves of the truck are separated, I see the Jotika version comes in 23 pieces! - wow!), The Del Prado version has thoughtfully (NOT) reduced these to just two pieces: the cannon barrel and the truck or carriage. Both parts are cast in the same bronze-y looking metal as was used for many of the decorative components in this kit.
The photo below shows the process of bringing these guns up to a more acceptable standard before their eventual placement on the decks.
In the foreground is a carriage as supplied in the kit. The first job is to remove the nasty mould lines from the wheels resulting in the carriage at top left, you will notice that the barrel sitting on this one also comes complete with mould lines down the middle which must also be removed with a round rat tail diamond file with a flat one used for the forward end of the barrel
A cleaned up barrel sits on the carriage at top centre, the next task for the barrels is to have their muzzles drilled out, I have done a few of these by hand but I'm going to make up a wood and epoxy putty jig to hold the barrels dead straight for the mini-drill press to make things easier (the jig will incorporate both the full 12lb barrels and the dummy barrel 'plug-ins' for the rest of the 100+ gun barrels)
The carriage has been given three coats of Admiralty Paints yellow ochre (this bronze stuff needs at least three coats of light paint and two coats of black-metal to cover it properly). Once dry, the carriage plank lines were added with my finest paint brush using thinned down Citidel Inks Chaos Black, the edges of the planks in the 'steps' and around the wheels were also given shadows with the same ink. Once all this was dry I then dry-brushed the edges and corners of the carriage with white (Admiraly or Citidel, for dry brushing either one is fine)
The right hand cannon is complete as far as the paint scheme goes, the wheels have been painted in natural wood (walnut) with their axles added in a drop of yellow ochre and the drilled out barrel painted in Admiralty Paints Matt Black (Metal) with red ochre muzzles.
Also in the foreground is a length of brass wire wound around a metal drill shaft and cut down its length to produce metal rings. These were made for the 'window-type' gun ports, the ones for these cannon will have to be even smaller! What I will have to do soon is to glue thin squares of wood under the carriages sanded down to the wheels to provide a glueing point to fix the guns to the deck.

Hope this all makes sense, the next job after all the cannon are completed is to work out the gun tackle from multi strand electrical wire.
One word of advice - When you've got loads of cannon to make some of which are semi-hidden away below decks and some in plain view, DON'T make them one at a time and glue them straight down, make them all up as a separate project then keep the best looking ones back for the upper decks and use the others for 'down below'! Sounds ridiculously obvious but Mr. Sod's law usually rears its ugly head in these situations!!

Hey there Admiral!

Glad you're enjoying the diary, I must admit, since I joined this forum and began this build diary I've been taking far more photos of the old girl than I ever did before (you know, just in case!! )
How far into your build are you? Still on the main hull like mine or way up into the masts and rigging! If you're still on the hull then the improvements to the stern galleries could still be feasible as it was mostly a case of simply removing the kit quarter galleries completely and adding the new ones onto the sides of the stern plate. The replacements are a little bigger than the originals, extending a couple of mm further forward so any marks or damage from the removals should be hidden away under/inside the newbies, the rest of the lower stern was added on top of the kit parts too.
I was also a little further ahead in the focs'l (how do you spell this word properly? it never looks right!), when I started the build again, I had brought the hull planks up level with the decks and had to strip the topmost ones off in order to carry on up the extended bulwarks, it didn't look pretty but it came off quite well. And don't forget the 'real' ships were constantly being ripped apart and rebuilt/redesigned, just look at the real Victory's stern, she looked more like a Spanish galleon at the start of her life!!
Keep popping back though and I hope you like the rest of my build (even though it will be slowing down soon when I've reached the end of what I've built already and move into the 'what I'm building now part!)

Im pretty much up to the rigging the masts and gallants, im not following the magazine though because they're really poor and unaccurate, so im just following a bunch of pictures from some really good models, so far so good. i think i'll keep the rest as it is and along the way buy a new HMS victory model, maybe one along the same scale as Sovereign of the seas.

This is getting more intricate by the minute so the gun building will now be in three parts!

The photo below shows the continuing story of the Del Prado cannon upgrade as follows:

Photo 1 shows a length of 0.5mm brass wire wound around a 1.2mm drill bit to form the tiny rings needed for the gun tackle.
Photo 2 shows these rings being cut from the resulting coil. As you can see in this picture I've added another piece of planking on the end of the deck, this was originally to form a trough to hold the coil whilst I cut out the rings still around the drill bit with a razor saw. Unfortunately this proved more difficult than I expected so I've gone back to deciding that my smallest electrical snips are in fact small enough after all!, the trough or channel now simply keeps the coil in place so the rings don't fly off into the distance. On the right you can see the little channel routered into the base to form the copper tape square caps 'arch'.
Photos 3 and 4 show the brass rings held in the tip of a pair of self closing tweezers before and after soldering the joint.
Photo 5 is the completed block and tackle with the two brass rings soldered into place. The top ring goes against the inner hull and the one at 90 degrees will be superglued to the side of the carriage.
Photo 6 shows the same tackle painted and in position against the cannon. The ropes were painted with Admiralty white and walnut approximately 50-50, the blocks are walnut and the rings are Admiralty matt black (metal).

All that remains to complete this section is to cut the pin-head blocks away from the pin shafts (either by snips or cut off disc, not sure yet) and then just another 31 more to make!!
I had intended to make the recoil ropes out of the wire as well but having made up a trial twisted rope I will try making another out of traditional rigging thread with a light pva coating to mould it into shape instead. I'll find out by part three!

Cannon Update...

The gun building is proceeding slowly (understatement) and I've made a couple of slight adjustments to the cannon jig.
Firstly I've made a secondary jig to make the wire and brass pin tackle on, this is simply a scrap piece of wood with pencil lines to mark the positions of the pins. There were two reasons for this, firstly having the pins in the same jig as the cannon is fine at first but it becomes difficult to produce the second tackle once the first is in place on the cannon and secondly it was becoming obvious that after just a couple of tackles had been made up, the next pair of pins were becoming very loose which made trying to cut them off a nightmare! The cutting disk was simply lifting the whole tackle assembly out of the jig instead of cutting through the pin shafts.

The second addition is a set of little 'L' brackets made out of the same 0.5mm brass wire as the rings set into the bulkhead. The rings on the recoil rope and those soldered onto the wire tackle now slip over these brackets which is much easier (see the first photo)

The second photo shows the first two 12lb-ers rigged up and glued in place, these will be under the steps to the poop deck soon(ish)

See you soon and Happy Building!

PS. The black edge to the poop deck doesn't actually stick out over the edge! thats the first two gun port lids in place!!

Whilst the cannons are ticking along ever so slowly (I'm waiting for a replacement soldering station to arrive now!)
Here's a quick look at where those cannons will be going to live.
Built as per the instructions, the gun ports don't have that thick wall of oak effect which is so obvious on the real ship. To improve the 'look' of this part of the hull I decided to add an inner side and bottom to the gun ports which, when painted in the red ochre against the matt black interior gives the desired effect. The extra panels were simply off cuts from the darker wood veneer supplied with the kit for the second planking of the hull, each set of three per gun port were cut to size and glued in place with pva (I wasn't going to risk super glue in there!!)
As you will notice I've included the two metal rings which hang off the inside of the lid. Adding these really seems to increase the 3D effect of the gun port lid and I think is well worth the extra effort.
The finished gun port in the final picture is one of the only two completed at this stage. Two down, only another ninety eight to go.
I thought this hobby was supposed to be relaxing!

Wow! Nice tweaks there!
I'll be following this thread with great admiration

Thanks to all the above for their kind comments, I'm really glad you are enjoying the diary as much as I'm enjoying the build
And Alan, "first rate", best pun ever!!

Be back as soon as I can (flamin' gun ports permitting)

Hi again all!

Just a quick update to illustrate the steps required to slightly alter the stock gun port lids supplied with the kit fit in with my hull improvements.
The photo below shows the stages involved beginning with the drip boards along the top line.
'A' shows the front of the unpainted drip board. As mentioned earlier in the build, there should be two versions of this for absolute accuracy, the upper gun decks should have an upside down 'V' shape whilst the lowest gun deck would have the 'U' shaped ones shown here.
'B' shows the rear of this same part, for some unknown reason DelPrado supplied these bits in two versions, about a third of them were flat on the back apart from the two locating pips in the centre, the other two thirds are like this with the two pips plus a raised bar above them..WHY? These drips are supposed to be glued flat against the hull above the gun port, this bar simply raises the drip out with a tiny but noticeable gap behind it!. The only remedy is to file off the raised bar back level again as can be seen in 'C'

Fig 1 indicates the stock lid from front and rear. In the kit build there are two little lugs which are supposed to fit into the space behind the drip in the metal 'box', trapping the hinge in place. In my upgraded hull there is a larger gap between the box and the drip so the lugs don't work anymore! Since the drips are glued in place before the lids the lugs have to come off (ground down to be exact).

Fig 2 shows these lugs removed, the edges of the lid have also been sanded to remove the slightly rounded faces and the rear has had its first coat of Admiralty Paints Red Ochre

Fig 3 is the final stage with the black front and black metal hinges painted and dry brushed in white and the rear given a second coat of red ochre and similarly dry brushed with white.

Their fitting can be seen in the post before this one, slightly the wrong way round I know (the posts I mean, not the lids!! )

Back soon.

Well done, Robin!
Your hull-upgrades are looking great.
And thinking that everything is quite a bit smaller compared to deAgo's Victory ....
Keep up the good work!

Best regards, Bernd