- Joined
- Oct 25, 2026
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- 3
Just occasionally a dormant childhood interest re-awakens. As a product of the original Airfix generation, I made up a few of the sailing ships that they produced, being particularly interested in Lord Nelson & HMS Victory. I recollect making a jig-saw from a large postcard of Victory glued onto plywood, treadling away on my Hobbies fret saw. I started, but never finished the Airfix HMS Victory. Visiting the Greenwich Maritime Museum and Portsmouth Historic dockyard I was amazed by the large scale ship models and have always maintained a reading interest in naval matters.
As fate would have it, this (not so little) 1/72 scale beauty appeared on Facebook marketplace for a very reasonable price recently - significantly less than the new Caldercraft kit price. It is very well made and truly magnificent to look at. I didn’t think I would live long enough nor have the patience for such a project, but I believe I’ve earned a bit of an indulgence this year, following too much time with the medics… I soon began to read around again on the subject, visited Portsmouth and cast a critical eye over the new acquisition, especially its colour, but more of that later.
I was not quite sure about the detailing and shape of my already-built Victory transom. The Caldercraft kit uses etched balusters, which is a good way of getting uniformity and very good for a kit 20 years old, but they look rather flat.
Fortunately, Neil at Woody’s Model Works (https://www.woodysmodelworks.co.uk/store/p1/HMS-Victory-Gallery-Enhancement-Kit.html#/ ) makes some excellent replacement 3DP mouldings for improving Victory in a variety of scales. The first job was to clear away all the kit castings and etches above wardroom level and re-paint the black (actually dark grey).
Looking at the prototype, the outer edge of the transom should be parallel with the window frames: it wasn’t, and so the sides were trimmed away towards the top.
I think it has a much improved appearance with the ‘shoulders’ trimmed.
On the side of the transom there is a fine vertical triple moulding which becomes part of the peripheral rope decoration on the stern.
These rope mouldings are available from Woody’s and were then fitted along with the vertical mouldings cut from buff coloured styrene sheet, glued to a 20 thou black background strip.
As fitted along with the excellent baluster mouldings
The Trophy of Arms was the next consideration. The original white metal casting (top) is much too big and so was replaced with a 3DP.
This is the appearance with all of the Woody’s mouldings fitted:
However, when I compared this against the prototype, the rope decorations were a bit oversized, the shark’s tooth swagger was of the wrong pitch (too many teeth per inch) and the Trophy of Arms came in too low. Fortunately, the Caldercraft etchings are the correct size but need a bit of refinement to make them more convincing. The inner edge of the rope decoration was filed into a notch every twist using a fine needle file.
The vertical rope twists had metal strips soldered to them so that the triple vertical moulding would maintain a visually sharp outer edge. The decorations were therefore soldered to an over-width strip (tinning both components before soldering) and then the excess parts of the strip filed back until it was 0.5 mm wide.
Filing down the strip to size.
Meanwhile, the shark’s teeth were sharpened, the top edge rounded and a more pronounced curve bent into the etch so as to push the Trophy of Arms nearer to the taff rail. I was now happy with the transom decoration.
I think that is more than enough for one post! The ‘Restoration’ within the title is in inverted commas because the model was itself really good but I just wanted to make it a bit more as I saw the ship in Portsmouth.
Tim
As fate would have it, this (not so little) 1/72 scale beauty appeared on Facebook marketplace for a very reasonable price recently - significantly less than the new Caldercraft kit price. It is very well made and truly magnificent to look at. I didn’t think I would live long enough nor have the patience for such a project, but I believe I’ve earned a bit of an indulgence this year, following too much time with the medics… I soon began to read around again on the subject, visited Portsmouth and cast a critical eye over the new acquisition, especially its colour, but more of that later.
I was not quite sure about the detailing and shape of my already-built Victory transom. The Caldercraft kit uses etched balusters, which is a good way of getting uniformity and very good for a kit 20 years old, but they look rather flat.
Fortunately, Neil at Woody’s Model Works (https://www.woodysmodelworks.co.uk/store/p1/HMS-Victory-Gallery-Enhancement-Kit.html#/ ) makes some excellent replacement 3DP mouldings for improving Victory in a variety of scales. The first job was to clear away all the kit castings and etches above wardroom level and re-paint the black (actually dark grey).
Looking at the prototype, the outer edge of the transom should be parallel with the window frames: it wasn’t, and so the sides were trimmed away towards the top.
I think it has a much improved appearance with the ‘shoulders’ trimmed.
On the side of the transom there is a fine vertical triple moulding which becomes part of the peripheral rope decoration on the stern.
These rope mouldings are available from Woody’s and were then fitted along with the vertical mouldings cut from buff coloured styrene sheet, glued to a 20 thou black background strip.
As fitted along with the excellent baluster mouldings
The Trophy of Arms was the next consideration. The original white metal casting (top) is much too big and so was replaced with a 3DP.
This is the appearance with all of the Woody’s mouldings fitted:
However, when I compared this against the prototype, the rope decorations were a bit oversized, the shark’s tooth swagger was of the wrong pitch (too many teeth per inch) and the Trophy of Arms came in too low. Fortunately, the Caldercraft etchings are the correct size but need a bit of refinement to make them more convincing. The inner edge of the rope decoration was filed into a notch every twist using a fine needle file.
The vertical rope twists had metal strips soldered to them so that the triple vertical moulding would maintain a visually sharp outer edge. The decorations were therefore soldered to an over-width strip (tinning both components before soldering) and then the excess parts of the strip filed back until it was 0.5 mm wide.
Filing down the strip to size.
Meanwhile, the shark’s teeth were sharpened, the top edge rounded and a more pronounced curve bent into the etch so as to push the Trophy of Arms nearer to the taff rail. I was now happy with the transom decoration.
I think that is more than enough for one post! The ‘Restoration’ within the title is in inverted commas because the model was itself really good but I just wanted to make it a bit more as I saw the ship in Portsmouth.
Tim
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