Thanks for that Mike, a few words of encouragement are worth more than a new pot of Admiralty Metal Black!

Out of all the eighteen 12 pounder barrels in this kit, there was only one that wasn't perfectly made. (Should have been zero, but never mind) The wonky cannon was ok except for the trunion pins which hadn't completely filled the mould during manufacture, as you can see in the top left photo the pins were too short to reach the carriage!
There were two possible ways to correct this, either a) file the stubby pins off completely, drill the barrel through and insert a new brass pin or b) keep the stubbies and make a wooden platform to support the barrel.
If the cannon was going to be in plain view I would have gone down the a) route but since I had a nice little out of the way place for this one, b) would be quite sufficient
The top photo shows the cradle built into the carriage and below that is the finished cannon. The right hand pic shows the miscreant cannon sticking out of its final position, (this was actually during a test fit before I painted the muzzle red ochre)
This is the same cannon which was manoevered through the waist section mentioned above, I told you it was an out of the way location!
I know that there is at least one out of the eighty plus dummy barrels which has no locating pin, there may be more but hopefully a simple drill and brass pin should be all they need to repair them. (Hopefully!)

By the way, my one and only 'big' 12 pounder from the first issue of the DeAg Victory (the one I'm going to put in a mini diorama later) is itself misformed, the hole for the trunnion pin is 45 degrees out of true leaving the breeching ring at a 45 degree angle on the carriage, did anyone else have this fault on one of theirs?

Back again!
Many thanks for the kind comments Alan

The cannon production is proceeding (ever so) slowly. The upper gun deck on the port side is now finished from the one above the entry port back to the stern and I have now started repeating on the starboard side. The next job will be to fix the dripboard on the middle gun deck port, fo'wd of the entry point so that I can begin the starboard fenders. All the gun ports from this point aft have already been fitted with their drips but the bottom two decks still need their lead pipes to be cut and glued in.
Up till now I have been drilling out the gun barrels with a hand drill but a couple of days ago I had to drill out a plate for the car's MOT so I used the pillar drill on the end of my work bench, (I don't use it too much as it sounds like a major earthquake through the whole house, and probably next door too!) Since I had to use it anyway I thought ... why not!
After much cursing and fiddling about to get the very small drill bit to centralise in a much bigger drill chuck than it was used to, I began drilling out some more barrels. What a difference! much quicker and far deeper into the barrels too. (For a second or two I even considered trying to drill one of the 12lb's right down to the breech end with a touch hole for an "experiment" before sanity caught up!)
The only drawback was that although the long barrel jig was fine, the shorter dummy barrel jig completely crumbled up under the extra pressure of the pillar drill. This has led to the creation of a far simpler multi barrel drill jig as you can see in the left hand pic below. There is no milliput in this one, just a simple hole drilled out first with the drill bit and then widened with the diamond dust knobbly thing both resting on the wooden block.
It does work - only not quite as I intended! I was hoping to be able to drill each barrel out in quick succession but it doesn't work that way, my semi-automatic system turned out to be a bolt action, well, plier action actually. On the first use the drill pressure pushed the locating peg behind the barrel down into the soft wood until the barrel proper reached the bottom of the hole and then the drill began to cut into the metal. That was fine, I could put up with that and simply adjusted the depth stop to compensate. The real problem comes when the drill is retracted up again - the flipping barrel comes up with it emerging from the block like an angry woodworm securely impaled on the drill! It's not too much of a problem really, I just have to pull the drill up, stop the motor, grip the bottom of the barrel with the aforementioned pliers, restart the drill and pull the barrel down and off the bit. Simples really. (Just not quite so quick as I was hoping for!)
Anyway! all the long barrels are now drilled out and I'm just starting to begin the big pile of dummies glaring at me from my parts box.
The right hand pic shows the 12 pounders on the production line, two are already on the quarter deck, one (without tackle) is in the port aftmost waist position, three are complete, six are 'nearly there', one is currently on the tackle jig and the last five carriages are awaiting their barrels.
Ah well, back to those fenders I suppose

Thanks for that Bernd, much appreciated.

In a quick break from the guns, (thank goodness!) I've had to fit in a little up-grade to an earlier up-grade on the upper gun deck. The original kit has no provision for any of the pillars which run from the upper gun deck to the beams of the quarter deck. I had already fitted in the thin pillars which run down the middle of the waist and had also placed in the two wider pillars just before the main mast. Whilst going through my reference book I realised that the ones I had put in were far too thin in cross section so it was time to put it right before the waist started filling up with cannon.
The first photo shows the first pillars which were just two simple slats of wood and the three part replacement including the horizontal shelf. The piece on the right is one of the originals.
The second photo shows the better pillar set up in place.
The DelPrado kit supplies a simple metal main mast bitts which should be glued directly to the deck instead of passing down through the open hatch to the deck below. That will be replaced with a wooden full length pillar and belaying rack. I had intended to try and fit the lower shelf which should be there on the upper gun deck but there is no physical way to get in there, especially with those little pillars which continued under the quarter deck (damn my earlier "authenticity"!).Fortunately it's very difficult to see the shelf under there so I should be able to get away with that!
I have also noticed a glaring kit ommission in the area of the main staircase but more of that later...after these flipping cannons hopefully!

Happy building to all!

Happy to oblige Harty, just as soon as I've prised this damned superglued drip board off my forearm (stupid springy tweezers!)

Best Wishes

Robin


'eer, I just realised, I thought I was going to be watching YOUR diary for hints and tips!!

Hi to all and Merry Christmas!

Managed to get a little more done over the festive season. The starboard fenders are now complete and the upper gun deck dummies are glued in from the entry port aft.
All of the starboard gun ports have now been rebated after the last of them were fitted out with their drip boards. (Couldn't draw around the port lids to mark out the rebates until the drips were in place to hold the lids!) Only one drip needed any filler and that was the one on the lower gun deck at the bow where the hull is most curved (second picture on the left).
Only the lower gun deck on this side needs the lead pipes to be added now. On the port side there are another 12 sets of pipes and another 7 drips to add (plus the rebates of course) At long last there are more ports finished than I've still got to go!
The cannon tackle is also coming along now but I've resisted the strong urge to get them glued in place, I have an automatic tendancy to grip the opposite side of the deck/hull when working on the gun ports to hold the ship steady. Those fingers are very close to the waist gun positions and I've already had to re-glue one of the quarter deck guns after accidentally pushing against its barrel so I don't want a whole row of them going the same way!
I can work on the aft half of the cannon complement without too much trouble but once the forward half of the ports have their drips in place I'm going to have to think about the catheads and the curved timber which runs down from underneath them before I start sticking protruding barrels and lids in the way!.

Hope you enjoy the unusual photo at the end and a Happy New Year to you all.

Very nice details, you make a good job!

Regards, Bernd

Am I impressed!!!! You bet I am, detail is superb Plymouth.... great work m8...

Regards

Alan

Ok! So far, so good.
As I mentioned above, the final curved head timber did not go according to plan! My intention was to buy a length of Plastruct square section 1.5mm strip, router or file the groove along one side and then heat-bend the strip into shape with either a candle or gas flame. Unfortunately, once I got into the Model Shop in Plymouth I discovered that Plastruct square strip only goes down to 2mm!
In order to still use the plastic option I would have to file and sand the 2mm square down to a perfect 1.5mm square making sure that it was exactly the same width along its full length - possible with some effort but not a job I would particularly enjoy doing!
Before the plastic option reared it's ugly head I had considered using the same 1.5mm square brass strip which I had already used to make the other head timbers. If the strip had been just plain that's what I would have done but I kept coming back to that rotten concave groove that runs along the outer side (the bit painted French Blue on the original). I had tried fileing this groove but it was extremely difficult to get the file to stay in the centre and not skid off the edge. If all else failed I was going to mount a dremel type grinding wheel in my Mantua baby wood lathe and build a temporary 'bridge' below the wheel to slide the brass strip along, cutting a very shallow groove into it as it went.
While I was looking around the materials in the model shop however, I came up with possible option No3. This was still brass but instead of a solid square section it was a 1.5mm U section. If I could bend this into the correct compound curve I might be able to fill the centre in with milliput and shape the groove into that.
As you can see below in photo 1 that didn't work! As I suspected, trying to bend the U section simply made it kink at the bend. I could have tried using one of my miniature pipe bending springs but I think it would still have done the same thing, the springs are designed to bend tubes, not open profiles.
What I needed was a filler inside the U profile that was strong enough to prevent the side walls from kinking but at the same time soft enough to bend into shape along with the brass. It suddenly occurred to me that I had already been using such a material with the other brass items in my scratch building - solder!
What I managed to do is illustrated in photo 2 (and it was damned hard to photograph too!, my digital camera is right handed only so I had to operate the gas flame left handed and click the camera with the right all the time trying not to melt the plastic camera body!)
What I did was to heat up the brass section until I could apply the solder into the groove where it instantly melted and flowed along the channel. Once a long enough length was filled in I played the flame over the top to level off the solder (as much as I could) and then let it cool and solidify. Once solid I could then file along the solder to create a smooth finish.
The solder filled strip could now be bent into shape, (before cutting to length, it's easier to bend a longer strip), following the contours of the Victory's hull mainly using the rounded edge of my work table (kitchen work top in actual fact). The result can be seen in photo 3.
Photo No.4 is this same piece with two coats of Yellow Ochre and the French Blue inner groove.
The final result is shown in the last photo with the curved Head (brass) Timber glued in place with superglue, (two attempts, the first didn't line up exactly with the bow timbers! )
Overall, it's not looking too bad but I did overlook one little detail, the brass was 1.5mm square and the plywood support bracket which it joins onto was 2mm thick! True the ply has been sanded down a little to smooth it off but there is still a very slight 'step' between the two so Harty!, if you go down this same road I would recommend slightly 'flaring out' the side walls of the end of the brass section before filling up with solder, that should improve the flow of the joint. (that's unless all the solder flows out the end of course! )

Ingenious!It's amazing what peoples brains can come up with a little lateral thinking coupled with imagination.

Hi Hans, Rob and Alan, thanks for your kind remarks!

Most of my ideas come from a section of my brain called "Desperation!", with no income at the moment I'm always trying to think up ways to get the best result out of as little money as possible!
I must admit though that in this instance the cheap solution was not quite what I got. The last time I bought these brass profiles was years and years ago (from the same shop in fact) and they were only a couple of pounds for a packet, this time however, a tiny piece of brass, and not even solid brass at that, 1.5mm square by 305mm long ... £5.70!!!!
Still it did the job in the end and thank God the Vic isn't covered in the stuff!
I checked on ebay afterwards to see if there was anywhere cheaper but all the suppliers were round about the same price. Getting it direct from the manufacturer IS a lot cheaper, that's where I got the rest of my brass which I used in the bow section (I'll be doing a fuller account of that soon in the build when the bowsprit has to go on)) but wouldn't you know it, they did a 1mm sq and a 1.5 x 2mm U profile but not 1.5mm sq!!
The port side brass is about to go on now but for some reason the wale which the starboard curvy butts up to nicely is about 1/2mm too proud to allow the port to do the same. Not sure if the wale is slightly thicker for some reason or, more likely, the actual curvature of the bow (thanks to the kit ribs) may not be exactly symetrical. It's not noticeable by eye but just enough to push the brass profile out of line. Anyway! I've had to router out a slight groove into the wale and fill it back with wood filler, once completed it should be hardly noticeable.

Thanks again for the comments and I'll put up this finished section as soon as it's done!

Happy Building

Robin