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Hubac's Historian

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  1. 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.
  2. Hubac's Historian
    Thank you Michael and Dan! I will continue to tinker with the chainplates. Eventually, I will arrive at something acceptable.
  3. 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.
  4. 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?
  5. 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!
  6. 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.
  7. Hubac's Historian
    Correct you are - breaching ropes through the carriages.
  8. Hubac's Historian
    Yes, that’s an excellent tip!
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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
  12. Hubac's Historian
    Aha - okay! I will also endeavor to track this down. This is something new. I thought, perhaps, that you were referencing the Portanier thesis, which had some good information in it, but which I did not find to be especially enlightening.
  13. Hubac's Historian
    Hello Late to Soleil! Are you mapping out an SR conversion project of your own?
  14. Hubac's Historian
    P.S. I have also found John Ott’s log to be a treasure-trove of accurate historic perspective, and modeling technique.
  15. Hubac's Historian
    Thank you, Eric! As you are discovering now, much of plastic scratch-building is not as difficult as it may initially seem. When I started my project 7 years ago, I had done very little kit modification. Before I knew it, it had taken on a life all its own.
  16. Hubac's Historian
    You’re not going to like what I’m about to say Bill, and of course this is a matter of opinion, but I think your model will be better served if you show your lower courses fully set. The topsails, t’gallants, etc all look very good, but the material you are using for the sails is too heavy, in my opinion, to show a sail in its middle stages of being either set or furled.
  17. Hubac's Historian
    I just love a good reclamation project! Hi Eric, you are off to a great start here, and I love what you are doing with the upgrades and modifications. I do have to say that I tend to agree that the skids/fenders are a little too deep. Heller markets the kit as 1:100, but for my purposes I build to 1:96, as 1/8" to the foot is just an easy dimension to translate to scale. Personally, I would sand the skids a little closer to the hull tumblehome, and I would also round their bottom ends to a nice soft return on the lower main wale. I look forward to watching your progress. All the best, Marc
  18. Hubac's Historian
    Can I ask you, Empathry, who the author of this thesis is?
  19. Hubac's Historian
    That bulkhead looks sharp, Michael!
  20. Hubac's Historian
    She is a CAPITAL ship, she is. Nice detail with the bowsprit shrouds!
  21. Hubac's Historian
    Looks pretty perfect to me.
  22. Hubac's Historian
    Foot-ropes should absolutely be behind the sails. Whether they were even fully or partially present on French ships before the 1690s is a subject for debate.
  23. Hubac's Historian
    I was, indeed, wondering that also.
  24. Hubac's Historian
    Michael, is any of the model glued together at this stage?
  25. Hubac's Historian
    Thank you, Michael! Agreed - the clarity of those images is pretty astounding!

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