Revell 1:225 HMS Victory – A kit almost as old as me from 1959

[NellyV]

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?