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My Mum -God rest – bought me the Airfix kit of Victory for Christmas way back in the early 70s. It was somewhat off the beaten track for me then because I was and still am to a large degree a pure and simple airplane nut. I “had a go” at building, painting and even rigging it, but it was a styrene cement smeared and paint splodged wreck in the end. ☹ History has a habit of repeating itself and several Christmas’s back the other VIP in my life bought me the 200 year Battle of Trafalgar anniversary Revell HMS Victory set, which went straight into the stash once I copped a view of the many sink marks, prevalent flash and ejection pin marks the kit had on multiple parts. Covid lockdown had me looking at it again and this time I’ve seen it in a different light and have decided to dive in. Revell put quite a high level of fine detail into a kit that was tooled way back in 1959, especially on the hull sides and transom. As a child from the dawn of the Space Age I can definitively state that there was no CAD/CAM in 1959, so it was likely all done with slip sticks and mechanical pantographs! By the way, Revell were no doubt so proud of their efforts that they embossed their trade-mark and the date prominently on the Poop deck, rather than hidden away internally. The removal of this therefore requires very careful use of a scalpel.😊. First thing to note is that although I was able to airbrush the copper bottom plating and the base black colour of the hull sides, every other aspect of its painting so far has required brushing by hand. At my age near sight is non-existent and a steady hand hard to find, so a pair of reading specs and a stiff drink to steady the hand were an absolute must. For us olden types, the derivation of “Copper Bottom Guarantee” requires no explanation, but I still had to explain how this phrase came about to the Wife. History Graduate and Eldest Daughter was however better informed and knew that Welsh copper was used to plate the underside of Royal Navy ships as an anti-fouling measure in the late 18th Century and even suggested that Victory was probably plated up in the Pembroke dockyards(?) However, this all begs the question, is a “Copper Bottomed Guarantee” better than a “Cast Iron Guarantee”? I wanted to try and reproduce the “correct” Trafalgar colours in which Victory was recently repainted, so I chose Tamiya Nato Black acrylic for the dark grey/black elements and Tamiya Flat Flesh for the yellow ochre side stripes and other detailing. The hue of the new yellow ochre is reported to change with the lighting from a salmon pink through to a washed out yellow, so Tamiya Flat Flesh was only ever going to be an approximation. It became clear that a lot of the painting would have to be done before assembly of the hull, which sort of goes against the grain for me and how I learned to assemble an aircraft kit. Any fears I had about spoiling the paintwork with styrene cement on assembly was assuaged by the knowledge that Tamiya Extra Thin can, if applied carefully, have minimal impact on the paint finish. As far as I can tell, the kit so far is a fair approximation to the real article, but for some reason one of the gun ports was missing from the lower deck on the starboard side after the side door, so I fabricated one out of plastic card strip and Mr. Surfacer. The canopy support pillars on the side entrances are also a bit lacking but at this scale I decided to let these go. The build process and current state of play is shown below. The hull and Transom are nearly complete, apart from some further tidying up and flag painting, but the upper deck needs finishing and is only a dry fit currently. It’s obvious that the bulk of the work in finishing this kit will be the rigging. The kit provides two thread types to rig the ship, but I’m wondering if it would be better to invest in some elastic rigging thread to complete this. Are there any expert riggers out there with a view on this? Should I use the supplied thread, or get some elasticated line? Above: Missing gun port in Mr. Surfacer grey. After checking that the rear guns can’t be seen through the upper deck aperture I also closed out the rear 4 gun ports on each side of the upper gun deck because a dry fit test showed that the projecting guns would be out of alignment with these ports. Above: Port hull side with upper gun deck loosely fitted. This convinced me that I needed to add additional lugs internally to the hull sides to get a good alignment on assembly. Abive: Upper gun deck and hull sides. Rear cabin windows and Ochre detailing still to be completed. I left off the 4 last cannon on both sides at the rear. I can't understand why the deck looks grey in this pic. Its sprayed with Tamiya Deck Tan! Above: Hull after assembly and rear cabin window detailing. It doesn’t catch the eye so much in the flesh, but admittedly the rear cabin detailing looks a bit wobbly. I might have a further go at tidying this up, but I am at the limit of my hand brush work here. The tan colour of the upper deck in this shot looks more accurate than the upper gun deck colour in the previous one despite identical lighting. Finally, for now at least here is the Transom. I removed the overly large lugs for the stern lanterns with a scalpel and built up the central Fleur-de-Lys at the top using putty and Mr. Surfacer. I haven’t quite nailed it, but it’s getting there. I had a go at dry brushing it at first, but in my opinion you end up with too thin a line on most of the detail doing this. So I went back to using a fine brush and thinned the acrylic paint with air brush cleaner to improve fluidity, plus delay drying of the paint. I did wonder if light blue windowpanes would be a mistake, but once I had the frames painted I was happy that they add a suggestion of reflected sky and sea to the windows. I’m not sure if the lettering should really be in white or ochre, but the ships name was drawn on directly in one go using a 0.35 Rotring pen primed with white ink and the spaces between the columns in the colonnades were touched up with a 0.5 fine liner black pen. I quite like the slightly off kilter lettering in the name. For me the lettering on the real thing looks way to neat for an early 19th century letter writer hanging off a bosuns chair on a choppy sea using horsehair brushes and no masking tape, plus who can prove definitively what colour the lettering was on the day at Trafalgar? Go on, tell me I’m wrong.😉. I’m debating whether to seal the water based ink with a spray coat of matt varnish before I put it on the hull. Anyone have a view on that? Will it just smudge, or not?

Hi folks, Just finished off some more Aeronautica Imperialis models - these are the smaller T'au Barracuda fighters. I have the larger Tiger Shark bombers painted and decalled but haven't done the panel lines and finishing on them yet. They were supposed to be done in a day or two, but I've been short on modelling time and to be honest painting the fiddly bits took a lot longer than anticipated. So many panels and grilles and things! The main colour is insignia white over hellblau (Tamiya lacquers) with the fins in a mix of bright red and hull red. Everything else is Citadel, although I did use a Tamiya enamel wash for the panels. I sealed everything with brushed Klear, but with all the detail it tends to bubble and it's hard to find and remove them all, particularly in recesses. Less obvious under a matt coat. I do wonder if using acrylic washes might be a goer as well, since the enamel makes everything sticky and turns it into a dust trap while the thinner is damp. I took some pictures of the undersides but despite all the detail they weren't very satisfying. So it's just the tops for now. The undersides are similar but blue-er. I'll try and get the Tiger Sharks done to a similar standard but in less time Then I'll have a painted force! Cheers, Will

Hi all, I've made and painted some of the knights from GW's Adeptus Titanicus range and posted my doings on here earlier in the year. While I haven't started painting a Titan yet, I have built some: Unusually for me I've actually played a game of the new Titanicus rules too! Our local GW was running demos and my daughter and I had a go. It's pretty good, the big titans feel very ponderous and there's a lot of raising shields, cooling the reactor etc. Like submarine warfare with legs. It was very easy to find yourself making the relevant noises which is probably a good sign. Bad sign? Not sure! Anyway, I was lucky enough to pick up the big box of modular building parts half price a few months ago, and I've since acquired the set of spires they brought out afterwards. After some playing around and some smaller buildings I came up with the following: The lower part of the building is from the Civitas Imperialis modular sprues, and the upper part is mostly the spires. I bashed some of the roof pieces into landing pads and used flying buttresses to add "princess towers" to get a silhouette that looks a bit more like some of the old Hive City illustrations from e.g. the Necromunda rulebook. There are a few additional parts from N-scale Green Max kits (ladders, pipes) and my stash of sacrificial Trumpeter bits (antenna and some other small details). Held together with scraps of styrene where necessary. I'm not quite sure how to paint it, but I guess I want to match the feel of the Knight bases, so a slightly overgrown look? Having an excuse to add some green flock is a) always welcome and b) very handy for hiding joins, but I don't know if the Imperium will stand for it? Cheers, Will

Hi folks, These were supposed to be quick but have ended up taking almost a month in elapsed time. I blame the summer, which has been extremely hot and sticky, to the point that there was a (smallish) brush fire at the other end of the hill we live on. Thankfully no damage but it took out a logged area which I regularly run through. Probably they should've done more than just leave a giant pile of wood chips behind. But I digress, Imperial Knights are here: They're painted in Alclad metallics (freehand) and then the coloured panels have all been filled in with a brush. I used a mix of transfers (mostly) and paint (little bit) for the insignia, GW acrylics for the colours, and a mix of enamel and acrylic weathering. The bases are done with one of the GW texture paints (better than expected!) plus scrap sprue and plastic sheet for the concrete bits. I'm quite pleased with the end result - I can see lots of things that could be better/more finished-looking, but it's mostly about where I decided to paint them in a "minis" style with highlights and such, and where I didn't. And frankly there's just so much detail that it was easy to get fatigued by the process. As you can see, they're quite little: I have two more which are a different (larger) pattern and about halfway-done at the moment, so I should probably finish those while all the steps are fresh in my mind. Thanks for looking and to all those who joined in the WIP thread, it's always appreciated! Cheers, Will

Hi all, Between computers at the moment as my out of warranty Surface went back to MS for replacement owing to a hardware fault they *finally* acknowledged. So I'm a bit behind on the forums. I haven't done much modelling over Christmas but I did put some stuff together and finally got some paint on some of it. I know I should really be finishing unfinished things, but these are pretty cool models and have been calling to me for a while. They're two varieties of Imperial Knight from GW's new Adeptus Titanicus line. I really tried to avoid this because it doesn't have tiny tanks, just stompy robots. But I failed obviously, mainly because I read a novel about Titans by Dan Abnett which was really rather good. I'm quite fussy about my sci-fi so I was surprised how much I liked it, and it kind of sealed the deal on a purchase. The smaller Questoris knights come three to a box on a single sprue, and are pretty easy to build thanks to a sensible parts breakdown. They capture many of the details from their 40K scale brethren but are just 40mm high. The larger pair are two to a box, also on a single sprue, and are maybe an easier build with fewer fiddly parts. They also have nice non-poseable legs which put the feet in stalking positions which rather suit their lanky look. I primed them black and airbrushed the metallics freehand with Alclad. I think I used Jet exhaust and exhaust manifold for the dark areas, and light aluminium for the trim. I realised when I started painting details that I missed quite a lot of trim as it was hard to read the surface of the model in black primer. Copper bits are Exhaust Manifold with Copper over it, and the reactors are Brass and Pale Burnt Metal. After that I started filling in all the armour panels with thinned Loren Forest and Averland Sunset (oh, and Eshin Grey for the black bits). The green and grey covered in 2-3 coats, but the yellow needed 4-5 despite being a "base" paint because I thinned it quite a bit. The idea was to use the surface tension to find the edges rather than having to line them all individually which mostly worked OK. I was able to remove any blobs on the trim using a wet cocktail stick because the Alclad is quite tough. With most of the armour and weapon areas painted I washed the green with Athonian Camoshade, the yellow with Casadora Yellow, and the black with Nuln Oil. The yellow and black look nice and I like the colour of the green but I had some problems with the matting agent clotting and leaving little lumps in/on the surface which I've had to pick off and clean up. Luckily it only happened on one model, I think I probably picked some wash from the rim of the pot and got some dry bits with it? It's hard to see when you're doing it as they tend to have bubbles. I then spent a long time lining all the carapace panels and grilles with Agrax Earthshade and a fine brush. Which is quite impactful in real life, but not in this lighting. I might seal it and add some enamels, not sure yet. I've also been round the edges of some of the armour panels with this wash as well which looks quite good but is time consuming and invites more cleaning up. I'm currently trying to make the backs more interesting with some dry-brushing and detail painting, we'll see how that looks tomorrow. Cheers, Will