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Hubac's Historian

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  1. Hubac's Historian
    Bill, you really have done an incredible job, here, with your Soleil Royal. As noted, your pace is astounding and enviable. I think you have made excellent choices in what you have chosen to modify and upgrade. That can be a slippery slope, there, as my new friend Eric Wiberg is in the process of discovering. This has been an enjoyable journey to ride along on, my BlueGrass buddy! I, too, have learned a great deal from all contributors to this log.
  2. Hubac's Historian
    Wow! Creative solution to that particular problem. It looks perfect!
  3. Hubac's Historian
    What you are seeing on Marc’s model is a scupper for the manger. Because the timber is flush with the wales, in this area, it is not necessary to have a projecting scupper. On the interior, the Manger is like a big slop-sink that helps to shed water from the cables as they are hauled, inboard. The interior surfaces of the manger are lined with, I believe, lead sheet. On my model, I think what you are referring to are timber fills between the middle pair of wales. These are specifically to support the preventer plate links and eye rings. See, again, frolich’s model: Frolich didn’t blacken these timber fills, and their edges are a little hard to see, but they only extend the width of the chanels.
  4. Hubac's Historian
    I am also quite impressed with how neatly you inlet the hawser piece. I found this a very fiddly thing to do well.
  5. Hubac's Historian
    Eric, I like your scarf jig - those scribes look very clean. Since you are starting fresh, I will encourage you to pay close attention to the sweeping lines of the anchor lining. With permission I will use two pictures from Marc Yeu’s photo archive to illustrate the point. First is Frolich’s L’Ambiteaux: Next, is Marc’s magnificent scratch-build of Soleil Royal: What I’d like to draw your attention to, specifically, are the places where timber is filled flush with the neighboring wales; only between the pair of lower main wales does the surface run flush all the way up to the stem. As for the hunting port, I personally tend to find the VdVelde drawings to be credible guides for the placement of ports, as so many original drawings show the ghosts of prior port placement, which were erased and re-drawn. In other words, this was an important detail that they were trying to get right. So, yes, I think many French ships carried this hunting port as far forward as possible, so that the in-haul tackles were likely affixed right next to the cable manger, and so that gun recoil was less likely to foul the cable bitts. Once again, you’re off to a great start!
  6. Hubac's Historian
    I like your barrel hoist, by the way.
  7. Hubac's Historian
    Yeah, I’d say that is quite reasonable.
  8. Hubac's Historian
    Actually, Bill, I would say that is quite reasonable. How do they look on deck? They’re cast metal?
  9. Hubac's Historian
    Prieser makes figures in 1:100 scale, but they have to be heavily modified to look like 17th C. sailors. I thought the old Revell Spanish/English galleon kits came with figures in 1:96. Might be worth seeing if you can locate those on the market somewhere.
  10. Hubac's Historian
    For ease of consideration, Bill, consider the scale of SR to be 1:96, 1/8” to the foot. If the Hermione figures are 7/8”, or taller, they will not seem credible at all.
  11. Hubac's Historian
    Yeah, I have to agree with Ian, here. Straight out of the box, the Heller Victory is a significant undertaking. I have a pressing from the mid-90’s. Plastic quality is high, and the hull does not seem to suffer from the same warping issues as with the Soleil Royal. There are a TON of parts to deal with, though. As others have said, the sky is the limit when it comes to modifying and adding to the kit. Doing a creditable job on this kit definitely requires some advanced skill and even more patience.
  12. Hubac's Historian
    Just catching up, here - awesome work, as always. The stove looks really great! One question: after the flour/mortar application, is it even necessary to spray a final top-coat fixative, or will ambient humidity basically cement the flour in-place?
  13. Hubac's Historian
    Excellent work all-around! That eagle carving is very nicely done and very small!
  14. Hubac's Historian
    I agree you could go either way with this. Simpler may be better, though.
  15. Hubac's Historian
    With your most recent comments in mind, Haiiaphnk, I do not think the French ever designed the ornamental programs of a pair or even a series of ships to follow a single conceptual idea. The ships were named individually, and their names reflected the multiple virtues of Louis XIV, while the capital ships like the Royal Louis and Soleil Royal were given ornamental programs that reflected the hegemony of Louis XIV’s reign. The common threads are virtue and dominance above all other nations. The ornamental programs of each vessel explored numerous stories from antiquity to express those ideas. As I have been reading more recently in Ms Pin’s dissertation, La Symbolique Sur le Vaisseau de Guerre Francaise, individual ornamental programs were not literal representations of the actual influence and might of the monarch, but rather projections of his own grandiose self-conception. Propaganda, in other words, with the intent of cowing the opposition.
  16. Hubac's Historian
    Thank you Michael and Dan! I will continue to tinker with the chainplates. Eventually, I will arrive at something acceptable.
  17. Hubac's Historian
    The one example of very close sister ships that comes to mind are La Superb, and L’Orgieullieux. The following is often captioned as La Superb, but it must actually be L’Orgieulliex because La Superb was not present in English waters in 1672 for the Van de Velde’s to draw her. It is said that these two ships were built to the same specs and that they were virtually identical, although the ornamental programs must have differed.
  18. Hubac's Historian
    I’ve become somewhat stymied in my chain-making experiments, lately, as one of the tips of my Xuron PE snips snapped off, while cutting soft annealed wire (28 gauge). Maybe I’m using the wrong tool here, but should the tip really snap off after such relatively light use? Is there a better tool in the Xuron range for 1:96 chain making? Anyhow, that’s all on hold until I buy better/more appropriate tools. In the meantime, I just wanted to make some progress doing anything, so I finished detail painting the main deck gun carriages. I appreciate all reasonable advice to correct the implausible/impossible carriage trunnion mounts. After much hemming and hawing, during my phase of no progress, I have decided to let this one go in the interest of keeping things moving onward and upward. I am satisfied enough that I spread the trucks, and I will re-position the barrel trunnions themselves, so that the cascabels don’t overhang the back of the carriage to an unreasonable degree. Good enough for this go-around the May-Pole. I have blacked-out the truck axles and the glue blocks underneath all visible carriages. One other incorrect detail of my model that I would like to better understand the “why for,” is the rake of the channels. I have chosen to back-sweep the forward and aft edges of my channels: This just feels intuitively correct to me. To the contrary, though, all credible monographs show a slight forward-sweep to the fore and aft edges of the channels. What is the logic behind the design?
  19. Hubac's Historian
    You certainly have a loyal audience, but I feel like the broader MSW community is really missing out by not seeing the magical things that you do. You don’t strike me as one for self promotion, Michael, but MSW should have a featured builds page. I’m as guilty of it as anyone because I tend to stay within the late 16th into the 17th Century category, but I am frequently amazed at what I find when I do check-in on the 18th Century. Anyway, I love what you are doing here!
  20. Hubac's Historian
    I will also mention that when I did my lower battery guns in a dark bronze with a ver-de-gris wash, those decorations pop very visibly: Looking through my file pics to find the guns, I saw John Ott’s brilliant Photoshop (or some similar program) adaptation of SR’s sister ship La Reyne into Soleil Royal. This makes me happy every time I see it.
  21. Hubac's Historian
    Correct you are - breaching ropes through the carriages.
  22. Hubac's Historian
    Yes, that’s an excellent tip!
  23. Hubac's Historian
    You might find that the stock lower battery 36-pounders look more to scale on the upper main deck battery, if you wish to take advantage of the nicely detailed Heller barrels.
  24. Hubac's Historian
    I agree with what Ian is saying here. Generally, I find that it is better to go a little under scale than over scale - especially when it comes to hugely repetitive elements like the gunport lids and their hardware. It is useful to consider, not just how one lid looks in isolation, but how an entire broadside will look.
  25. Hubac's Historian
    There is this related paper from 2015, from Ms Theron, which I suspect covers much of the same ground: https://www.academia.edu/41636304/La_bonne_fabrique_et_le_superbe_ornement_Pierre_Puget_s_ship_decoration

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