hexnut

Welcome to my build Gary. Paper modelling has it's own challenges, the solutions to some of which I've been fortunate to pick up from other MSW members and others from European Paper modellers. The medium is huge over there, probably as big as wood or plastic modelling  .
 
In the words of Bachmann Turner Overdrive - "You ain't seen nuthin' yet"  .
 
The crank pins are dealt with in similar fashion to the axles, using 2.0mm brass tubing and 1.6mm styrene rod which I heated with a small soldering iron to mushroom the end. It was then cleaned up and filed as flat as possible with a diamond-coated needle file :



Once the axles were all installed I made some "hubcaps" from scrap paper. In my opinion they look better than the bare axle, which is actually the "correct" way on the original :

The crank pins are also covered, I punched out some 0.5mm paper and glued them to the back of the printed parts to give them enough clearance :

Danny
 
 

Thank you all for the Likes and comments. These are one thing that is keeping me going with this build - another is that I'm thoroughly enjoying it  .
 
The two compressed air tanks. The ends are slightly domed. I cut some scrap paper roughly to shape to prevent any crushing later. The skin is only glued along it's edge :



I've fitted all the main wheels and finished the brake mechanism for them. The brake shoes needed a little sanding to bed them in properly :



To hold the wheels into the tube axles I mushroomed the ends of some tight fitting styrene rod with a small soldering iron and filed them as flat as possible :


The drive axle needs to be a solid fit as the two wheels have to turn in synchronisation. The crank pins are offset by 90 degrees from each other so that one wheel is vertical while the other is horizontal. This keeps the drive going without any stopping. To make sure they don't slip on the axle I made a keyway for each and also used CA glue to hold them to the axle :


Danny

Ken - fire up a paper model ????? I don't think that will end well  .
 
I'm going backwards in the following posts to show some of the construction involved in the earlier post of my progress.
 
Quite a bit of work in building the two steam cylinders. I had a few re-does with these, as I didn't understand the basic principles of how they actually worked. Thanks to a couple of other build logs, Stephan and Lothar on German Paper Modelling sites, I eventually got them together the right way up and also WORKING  . In these next pics I've cut apart one of my early failures. I actually managed to save every part and rebuilt the little section :

The shaft should have gone right through the piece. I had added a paper roll to glue the legs to - wrong :

Sometimes a single-edged razor blade works better than a scalpel for cutting parts off as it's about half the thickness :


Some of the parts for the end plates etc :

How I keep multiple pieces aligned on an otherwise difficult part :


These two little pieces were very difficult to roll due to the cutouts in the middle. They turned out quite well  :


Some finished sub-sections :


Lots of laser-cut bolt heads and how I cut them off the sheet :

These name plaques turned out really well. They are laser-engraved, the gold colour was applied with a Pitt Pen :

The finished cylinders. I'll put the name plaques on near the end of the build :

Danny

I'll post an answer to that in my next one later today Phil, I'm in a bit of a hurry at the moment and wanted to show an update on my loco.
 
Here's where I'm up to at the moment, details of how I got there will follow a bit later :





Danny

I've fitted the axles to the frame. At this stage they are all a tight fit except the Driving wheel one which can turn freely. The wheels will be glued to this axle so that both sides will turn together, and the others will freewheel on the axles - at least that's the plan so far, we'll see how things work out :
I've also fitted the crank pins to the wheels and filed out the centres with a small diamond-coated round file. These things work really well on paper :

I'm leaving the wheels aside for the time being - I've ordered some 2.5mm styrene rod which I'll use to "rivet" the wheels to the axles. Meanwhile I fitted all the brake suspension using the springs I made earlier. I had a drama with the swing-arm brackets, the clear coating on all of them let go when I started working on them so they needed a re-do which consisted of scraping off the coating and re-gluing them - much better :


The springs and swing-arms fitted :





Finally for this stage I made up the two main cranks :




Danny

Now I fitted the crank pins to all the larger wheels. I've glued them in with PVA, so I cut a groove in the pin with a Xacto knife. This stops the brass pin from slipping :


I fitted the six axles. They are all a nice tight "push-in" fit and shouldn't move again. However I filed out the hole for the Driving wheel axle so it COULD turn - once the cranks are installed both sides will then turn in unison :

Now it's on to the main brakes, quite a big job. Here are the parts for one of the 12 brake shoes. I've glued the inner pads on, but I may have to remove them again later (easily done with a single-edge razor blade) if there isn't enough clearance to the wheel flange. I had to do this on the bogie's brakes, and Stephan also found out that it was necessary on his model. We'll see :

I used a 1mm wire to keep everything aligned while gluing the pieces together :

All done. The contact surfaces will be cleaned up as I fit each assembly, they will need to be sanded to get clearance to the wheel rim :

On to the brake control arms. All the parts are prepared ready for fitting together :



Once again a simple jig made accurate assembly easier :
 

 


That's it for now. I'll move on to fitting the brake assemblies to the main frame next.
 
Cheers, Danny

Hi all, thanks to all those who have commented and "liked" my build so far. My eyesight has been deteriorating lately, hopefully it's just a result of the chemotherapy I've been on and it will return to "normal" after it's over. I can still see well enough with my 8x Optivisor so the build can continue.
 
The wheels. These took me a week to make. Some time ago I bought one of these Circle Cutters, but never had any success with it at the time I tried it. I decided to give it another go and see if I could work out how to actually use it, because there are a LOT of circles to cut - something like 8 or 10 for each of the 12 wheels 

I worked out the technique to make not only a success of it but to cut circles that were better than I could do by hand in MUCH less time. I'll put up a topic in "Tips and Tricks" a bit later to explain my method. Here's the result, and a pic of most of the parts needed :


To assemble a wheel I made this simple jig. It's probably THE most useful jig I've ever made, turning out excellent results consistently :


There are three different types of the main wheels - two Driving wheels (top), two middle wheels without flanges (left) and 8 of the rest (right) :

I'm using the laser cut reinforcements as you can see. These are a bit different to the two wheels I made earlier, so I decided to scrap them and start over. The rim is 1mm narrower than the centre, and the spokes need to be sloped for them to fit properly. I achieved this by carefully cutting the rim off one disc and shaving the spokes down to zero thickness at the outer end. The wheel in the pic is one of the smaller ones which I made last. The large wheels have 12 spokes on most of them :




Once all the discs were glued together I sanded the edge flat using a sanding stick with 150 grit paper :

Then I glued the main edging on, followed by the rear flange on those that had one. There was no edging for the thinner flange, so I printed up some matching grey colour, cut it into 1.5mm strips and glued them on. It looks better than just painting them :


All the large wheels completed :


I modified my jig for the smaller wheels, as they only had a centre hole :

Last job was to clean up the centre hole so that they turned freely on the axles. I used a small diamond coated round file :

All the wheels. Most of them still need a spacer and wire for the crank :

Danny

I've glued up the complete main frames. Very little trimming or adjusting was necessary, and I'm more than happy with the results. Especially considering all the dramas I had to get to this point  .
 
Now to make 16 more wheels, see you all again in a week or so  :





Danny

The laser-cut parts arrived just after I put up the previous post, so after sorting and filing the 10 sheets into my A3 folder I  took a look at them. The laser cutting is about the best I've seen so far - the edges on even the 1mm thick card pieces are perfectly square and the cut itself is VERY fine. All but the larger pieces needed no little "tags" to hold them in the sheets, so that saves a lot of cleaning up  .  Here are a couple of examples in the 0.5mm thick sheet of some diamond mesh cut precisely half-way through - there aren't even any burn marks on the back side :


Now that I have them I immediately got started on the right-side frame. I glued all the previously cut coloured pieces to the card and started gluing the sections together :


That's when I discovered I'd made a terrible mistake. In my haste to get on with it I'd actually glued BOTH left and right sides to each piece, making them all 1mm too thick  . This would have resulted in the side being 6mm thick instead of 3mm like the left side frame. What to do? I decided to toss the middle section altogether and trim the inner pieces down to 1mm thick. This took me about 3 hours to accomplish :

All good now, the right side is done. A check with my digital vernier shows that the completed side finished up within 0.05mm tolerance - I'll live with that  :

Danny

Actually Ken, until I glued the arm to the cylinder clevis it DID all work  .
 
Still no laser-cut stuff, so I made up the main brake cylinder assembly :

I needed a few more red bolt heads, so I used this method to paint some primed (formerly black) laser-cut ones :

Danny

I am working on the cargo pods of the rear spine. Assembly of the A (long) and B (medium) types has been completed and installed: 

It is important to be very methodical with these Pods as parts can be easily mixed up.
 
Yves

Propulsion block more or less completed. The only things remaining to be done are the exhaust plates with the PE grills.
 
In the meantime, I have sprayed the sub-base using Tamiya German Grey: 


Hopefully, this color will provide some depth and delineate the various panels, when spraying the light gray and white on top.
 
Yves 
 

Moving along with the completion of the propulsion block. Lots of parts, but the fitting is exceptional. This kit is very well engineered.

 

This is the anchor which will be used to hold the model from the rear and to feed the negative side of 12 VDC. It is a 3 mm special nut. I will try to show a picture of the part, later on.

Yves

The yellow, along with being true to the movie, is such a nice change from the reflexive use of ion blue all too common in h'wood of late.
 
(Even if the physics of using a reactor to accelerate water as reaction mass suggest the result would be a neon magenta color high in the violet end of the visible spectrum--which would be a modeling nightmare.)

The thrusters are almost complete. Inside each one of them, there is a flickering yellow LED. After trying these LEDs on my bench, I realize that the current drawn by each one of them, varies constantly because of the flickering. Therefore, they cannot be serialized or daisy chained. They operate at around 3 volts, under 10 mA each. Since the whole enchilada will be powered with a source of 12 Volts DC, it is necessary to drop about 10 Volts in a resistor. 1 KOhms is perfect for that purpose.
 
First, the lower shell of the rockets are glued on the rear bulkhead: 

The main rod is being opened in three places: Ground wire, Plus wire and the two tiny wires leading to the central LED. The holes are done with a round file, then semi-round and finally a bit of 2 mm, to provide a less sharp opening for the wires.
 
The rear bulkhead has been reworked: pins on each side, have been shortened and drilled to allow wires to go through. The inside of the thrusters is painted black, to simulate the intense heat and combustion taking place in them.

Wiring is neatly arranged, as much as possible. None of the plastic parts are glued yet....the wires are holding everything together.

The lug on the top of the picture (right side of the engine block) will be the negative side of the holder. The green wire brings the - to the front module, through the rod. The yellow wire feeds the rear engine block with the + side, coming from the holder that will be located near the front sphere or living quarters of Discovery. Verification of the diodes: 

It flickers well and provides a sense of these atomic reactors being ignited by HAL 9000, to complete his precious mission....with or without anybody alive....

Yves
 
 

So, I’m almost finished with the rudder-head dolphin.
 
Earlier, last week, I tried to upload a video I made, once I had arrived at the cleaned-up outline of the thing.  The video resolution was, apparently, too high to upload from my mobile phone.  At 10+ minutes, the video was also on the long side.  Not even my attempts at breaking the video up into seven shorter segments seemed to work.  In any case, I couldn’t see a way, on my iphone to reduce the resolution, so I gave up on that.
 
The point of the video was to illustrate the importance of setting-in, deeply enough, certain key features of the figure, so that once my scribed lines disappeared, after the modeling process began, I’d always be able to reference these features in their correct location.
 
In the case of this dolphin carving, the eyes and “mane” would be difficult to continually pencil back-in, as I did the rough modeling, so I simply set them in as deeply as I possibly could.  With the way that the mane creates a sort of brow, above the eye, you almost can’t go wrong by setting deeply.
 
So, here are some process photos of the modeling:

Here is the last photo I took, just before setting in the eye sockets and the negative space between the mane and the transitional collar:

With all of the facial features fully defined, it was time to model the body.  Puget’s drawing, above, requires some effort at interpretation, IMO.  I could, simply have done a straight tapering of the body from head to tail, but I thought the carving would exhibit a greater sense of vitality, if I incorporated a serpentine curve:



After doing so, and also establishing a centerline along the side of the body, it was a simple matter of filing soft curves up and down, between each centerline; in cross-section, the body is almost diamond shaped.


After modeling the tail, as best I could (I don’t love it, but it is good enough) - here is what “Flipper,” as I’ve dubbed him, looks like on the rudder-head:



I will still need to come back, after he has been glued in-place, and apply his two flippers to the flats I left just below and to the back of the eye socket.  The flippers will be shaped to their outline, before gluing, and modeled afterwards.  I will also apply “pupils” to the eye sockets using the same technique that I discovered for representing the nail heads, along the wales.
 
Otherwise, work on the aft chase port enhancements continues.  These were particularly fiddly bits, but they are nearing completion.
 
More to come.

Decent day in the ol’ Beeldsnijderij:
 




A great deal of time was spent just getting a good fit between the blank and the rudder head.
 
Also, it turns out my right and left patterns were not in perfect alignment, so there will be a bit of a skew to the carving, but that may actually enhance the finished work.
 
The outline of the body is defined, but the head is complicated and will take more time than I have, today, to sharpen up its parameters.

Moving along...

Well, it has been very nearly a WHOLE week!  I was going to do one mega-post, in a few weeks, but then I realized that I had quite a lot to say about the transom wale and the motto banner.  I’ve been quite busy.  Anyone who may be bored by it all is, of course, free to pass this over in their email 😉
 
So, here is what I am trying to replicate with the transom wale:

For a somewhat clearer illustration of its profile, let’s zoom-in on this remarkable Puget (I am assuming this is his hand) portrait of Le Dauphin Royal:

As a side note, several people have expressed their opinion to me that this was not an ornamental program that was ever installed on the DR, anytime after her original appearance of 1668:

Their thinking is that this was merely a proposal for decor.  Personally, although I can’t yet say definitively, I think that this blue-tone drawing is an actual portrait of the DR, after her first refit.
 
There are several reasons why I think this.  First, while it is true that the Van de Veldes occasionally drew ships that were entirely fictional, the tradition for decor proposals, in France, was already pretty well established by the 1680’s:  proposals were minimally two-dimensional plan drawings of the stern and starboard quarter, with a third such drawing of the starboard bow.
 
As previously discussed, even among known sets from a particular time (signed and dated by the Intendant of the shipyard), there are often weird anomalies and discrepancies between what the quarter and stern drawings depict.
 
With this blue drawing of the DR, there are no such discrepancies.  It is a fully coherent, and three- dimensional drawing of photographic detail and clarity.  Even details that aren’t fully rendered, are clearly suggested - as with the faint representation of either carved or painted ornament on the stern counter, just beneath the lower false balcony.  Simply put, there is just too much specific detail for me to discount this portrait as anything other than a real representation of the ship as she was.  This drawing will soon prove invaluable to me as it so clearly  depicts the bombastic undulations of the quarter galleries, as well as what the amortisement’s likely composition may have been.
 
Continuing along, if we look more closely at the stern post, we can see the same shape for the transom wale more clearly:

As it is apparent that this is a moulding of some significant depth, and given that I am new to moulding profiling, I decided that it would be best to make up the transom wale as a series of layers.
 
My base layer is the widest piece - a shy 5/16” by 5/64” thick.  Fortified by Dan’s tutorial on moulding scrapers, I ground away the teeth and blacked a line on an old hacksaw blade, so that I could scratch in the first coved profile (on the left):

The scratched profile on the right was the second scraper I made for the middle layer of the stacked moulding.
 
So, first I scraped the bottom edge of the base layer with the first scraper, and lightly cleaned up any remaining chatter with the tip of a round needle file:

Then, I cut the second layer from thinner styrene, incorporating the camber, as before.  After scraping with the second scraper, the moulding looked like this:

So far, so good, but how exactly I was going to carve an ornamental profile into the third half-round layer - which is only 3/32” wide - became the subject of much trial and error.
 
As with any repetitive moulding, the essential aspect is a uniform layout.  Eventually, I arrived at spacing of a shy 1/8” for the eggs, and a shy 1/16” for the darts.  Using my steel rule, I ticked off the spacing and then came back with a simple coved tracing pattern to mark each half of the egg:

Adding a small dimple with the tip of a micro drill bit, gave some much needed dimension to the eggs - the edges of which were softened a bit by scraping with a short-sweeped gouge that I use for virtually all of my carved work;  just three knives, mostly.
 
Finally, I cut back the arrow sides, a bit, to make the egg shapes a little more apparent:

After a little clean-up and refinement with a triangular needle file, I glued sections of the third layer to each half of the transom wale, after first fitting the transom wales and profiling their ends, at the ship sides:




Suffice it to say, this was quite a lot of work, but the results were worth the effort.  I got lucky in that  the depth of the transom wale does not exceed the beveled break of the stern post.  The visual weight of the wale, IMO, is a pretty good approximation of what is show in the portrait of the DR, above.
 
Next up, was the carving of the motto banner.  This was where I started:

The important thing when carving something like this is a basic understanding of how fabric really swags because that informs where you scallop in your troughs, as opposed to your convex billows.  It is a difficult thing to describe, however maybe this early picture (in the process) will make it more clear:

Once your troughs are defined, it is a simple matter of scraping-round your billowing transitions, and looking for opportunities to incorporate subtle highs and lows.  This work can only be achieved slowly, and in a raking light:
 

And now, to get a sense of what this will look like in place, beneath the transom wale:


The lettering for the motto was drawn onto parchment with graphite, using a darkened copy of the outline of the banner, as a guide beneath the parchment.
 
At first, I drew this, and I liked it, but something seemed wrong:

A couple of days later I realized that I had jumbled my Latin.  This is what I was going for:

With that settled, I sprayed the parchment with matte medium, in order to fix the graphite and stiffen the parchment for cutting.
 
I sharpened a #11 blade to a gleaming edge and very carefully extracted the letters.  Finally, using the tip of that blade to pick up each letter, I dragged the backside of each letter through liquid cyano and very carefully placed each letter on the banner:

Once each letter was fully conforming to the shape of the banner, I sealed the whole thing under a wash of liquid cyano.  I will probably spray prime these banner sections before glueing them in place.
 
Next up - the rudder head.  Using Frolich’s L’Ambiteaux as my main guide, I arrived at the following:

At first, I had exaggerated the outboard widening of the rudder, so I revised that taper a bit, and am now ready to profile the rudder head.  It is over-long in both directions, so that I can place it where I need to on the model.
 
Looking back at the DR, though, I wanted something ornamental for the rudder head and thought this ornament would be a sensible choice:

So, after I have shaped my rudder head and cut in the aft taper, I will make up a carving blank based on this drawing:

So that’s where we are at, for now.  Enjoy your Holidays, all, and thank you for looking in and following along.

Pret a sculpter

So, among other small projects - the bulkheads and the transom wale - I’ve made a start of the scrolling banner that I will carve for the area beneath the transom wale, and between the through-bolting of the transom knees.
 
The scrolling banner that I initially drew was always a sort of placeholder, but not one I really liked.  The motto shown, here, was my own bit of authorial license, before Dan brought something much better to my attention. It’s a little too cartoonish for the French Baroque period:

Eventually Drazen Caric got around to an amazing step-by-step of the carving for the name banner on his incredible Provincien.  The sense of movement that he conveys is much more the impression that I am after.  If anyone is not familiar with his impeccable work, you can find it here.  Posts concerning the name banner begin with post # 304:
The other guiding inspiration is the name banner for the Foudroyant of 1723, which I could finally see in all of its splendor in Floating Baroque:

What I have patterned, here, is not an exact drawing, but it captures the overall shape and sense of movement that I think will look very good in the available space.  Carving the three-dimensional undulations of the ribbon will be a fun little project.  Bear in mind that there will be a 1/4” separation between the two halves, for the sternpost.
 
I’m thinking that I will probably draw the letters for the latin motto,  NEC PLURIBUS IMPAR, onto parchment.  I can then stiffen them with dilute varnish and cut them out, individually, to be affixed to the banner.
 
My other experiment was making a moulding scraper.  My first problem is that I want to cut very small coves into the edges of my transom wale - not much larger than 1/32”.  To my mind, at this scale, it is very difficult to shape that small cutting nub into a hardened steel scraper, while maintaining sharp corners.  I have little idea, really, how to do that convincingly.
 
My first thought was that I’m scraping styrene, so maybe the scrapers don’t need to be steel.  They also don’t have to last forever.  Maybe, I thought, I could make them from aluminum scraps, which I have in abundance.
 
My second thought was that maybe the cutting nub didn’t have to be shaped into the scraper body; maybe it could be an independent part that I cyano’d in place.
 
So, this is what I came up with:


I filed a chip relief into the corner, but I did not file all the way to the very back face if the scraper.  I left about a light 1/64”, and I think that even that small lip is enough to clog the action of the scraper.
 
It works pretty well for a few passes, and then not at all until you really clean it out.
 
Today, I’ll release the cuter, file back that lip, and introduce a very slight burr to the cutting edge, and we’ll see what that does.
 
If that doesn’t work, I’ll have to figure out how to make the one-piece, steel scrapers.
 

I wasn’t expecting to be in the city shop, these few days, but whenever the opportunity arises - I like to do whatever tedious pattern work that needs to get done.  Access to a band saw, disc and spindle sanders, simplifies the making of the series of bulkheads that will form the counter/false balcony.
 
Yesterday, in the shop, I made the first bulkhead that would ultimately serve as the pattern for the others.

First, though, it had to be proof-tested on the model to ensure that it mirrored the already established camber and round-up.
 
I used my quarter gallery drawing as the basis for my bulkhead profile.  What I discovered, though, was that there are two important notches or step-backs that needed to be cut into the bulkhead; my pattern was based on the exterior, or extreme outline, but I needed to make an allowance for the thickness of the planking.  
 
My first bulkhead did not, initially have a notch along the bottom.  Using a batten I found that it exaggerated the camber - which would then mess up the whole run of windows I just drew so carefully.
 
And then, after I cut back the vertical portion that supports the windows, as well as trimming back the counter profile, everything lined up properly, as it should.
 
Here is today’s workload:  cut out my bulkheads, and cut out the basis for what will be a stacked moulding for the transom wale.  The transom wale seems to be a hair on the heavy side, but I can fine-tune that, once I can offer it up to the model.

Also, now that I have a useable pattern, I could better see how the counter ornaments were going to resolve themselves.  It was really handy to have the bandsaw to waste out the middle (the head and crown) of my spare counter ornament.



Now, certainly, there is too much space between the head and the acanthus scrolls.  What I will do is a bit of visual trickery;  I’m going to let the base of the scrolls into the last of the upper transom planking, so that it glues to the transverse bulkhead beneath.  The  front edge of the acanthus base will also be let into and come out flush with the facia plank (not yet installed) that covers the edge of the transverse bulkhead.  Doing all of this will cut that gap in half.  A little gap is okay for me.
 
This letting into the planking is technically wrong, but if it all works out as well as I can see it in my imagination, then the wrongness won’t interfere with the perception of its rightness.  As with a number of other aspects of this build - perception of reality is more important than strict reality of construction.  You have to fudge things a little to make them work.

I’ve been going back and forth over whether to modify the appearance of my rudder opening.  When I framed the stern, I wasn’t thinking about the reality of how the stern post would end just above the framing of the ports, so that the tiller could pass over it, and into the hull.
 
I was primarily concerned with strength and tying my transverse round-up bulkheads into the sternpost.  It certainly isn’t worth the extra effort, to me, to cut down the stern post, so that I can model the entry of the tiller into the hull.
 
While I agree with Marc and Dan about what the opening probably should look like, at least there is some scholarly thought to support  what I chose to represent, at this later time in 1689.
 
Here is what Lemineur shows for the entry of the St. Philippe’s (1693) rudder head and tiller:

As I say, I will take this learning experience into the next model.
 
Here is my finished lower window drawing:

I think it is definitely an improvement over the Heller layout:

The drawing of the thing is usually harder than the making of the thing.
 
I’m finishing up with the last of the gun carriages.  Following that, I’ll make up the transom wale and my motto banner.  Then, I’ll get busy making this window tier.

I hope that everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving.  We certainly did.
 
My transom planking continues, and at this point, I am planking across the opening for the rudder head.  Before completing the last few strakes, leading into the stern counter, I wanted to pause and see whether I could modify one of the kit’s stock ornaments, in an attempt to present a more faithful representation of Berain’s stern.
 
What I am focused on, here, is the pendant ornament that drops from the lower false gallery and conceals the rudder head.  For all practical purposes, I suppose that this ornament’s intended purpose was to limit the intake of water, through the rudder head opening, in a following sea.  I’m not sure whether that is the truth, but it’s a theory, anyway.

What is interesting about Berain’s drawing is the way in which the Palladian shell backdrop recesses, up into the lower false balcony.
 
The stock Heller ornament is intended to mount beneath a walkable lower stern balcony, as seen here, on Tanneron’s model.
 
Heller reproduces this detail quite faithfully.  It’s nicely done, and would be difficult to carve from scratch, in a way that suits my purposes.  I do have two of these ornaments, though.
 
By separating the Louis head and its shell backdrop from the acanthus leaf cheeks, I should be able to set the head so that the counter planking of the false stern balcony abuts it, flush all around.  I would then remove the head and shell from my spare ornament and mount the acanthus cheeks just behind the head, once I’ve completed the counter planking up behind the head.
 
This is a difficult thing to describe, but hopefully the following few pics will make it clearer where I’m headed with this.


The head isn’t glued in, just yet.  I’m not sure whether the new angle that I’ve filed into the back of this piece, accurately follows the run of the counter planking.  That will become clearer when I make the bulkheads.  This new angle that I’ve ground into the back will tip the shell background and Louis’s cherubic face up into the visible portion of the counter.  I’m still not entirely sure this will work, but it’s worth the experiment.

This is where the stern window drawing is at.

It was a lot of re-drawing to get these cartouche ornaments equally scaled, but overall I like the size and shape of the windows.  No matter what, they are an improvement over the stock kit windows.
 
As ever, thank you all for your interest, your likes and your comments.

Thank you to everyone for your likes and comments, and thank you MD!
 
Yes, EJ, the process of making and fitting bulkheads seemed okay, theoretically, but I was a little skeptical about how my planking would ultimately resolve into the plank rebate, along the hull sides.
 
In the end, I will have to file the outer hull flush with the new transom planking and re-scribe the joints into the plank ends, but that’s a small price to pay.
 
The next big litmus test for this build will be - as Druxey notes - planking the stern counter, which is a subtle reverse curve.  And I will likely be modifying the profile of those false balcony extensions, once again, to match the profile I drew for the quarter galleries.  It is that shape I drew, after all, that will be used to pattern the upper bulkhead formers that are spaced between the stern windows.
 
After that, though, I get to see whether I can re-cycle the kit’s stern windows to make up the six-window span.  At the moment, I have no fewer than three stern plates to cut from, thanks to Henry and Guy.  That will give me enough spare stock to figure out how best to bend the windows to the round-up curvature.  As Daffy has done with his Victory, I will also be thinning the window mullions down so that they don’t appear so heavy.
 
Hopefully, if all goes well the new windows will look like this photo-copy cut and paste job:

In truth, a part of me would prefer to make the lowest tier from scratch, in order to achieve a closer fidelity to the size and shape of what Berain drew.  There is also the consideration that the windows of the QGs will all be made from scratch, and will be slightly different from Heller’s version.  I’m not sure that bothers me enough to ignore the time-savings of recycling.
 
The other variance with what was likely the reality of the ship would be the placement of the two stern balcony access doors on the middle and upper balcony.  The following survey drawings were made of the ship’s actual interior, in 1688, while the re-build was well underway:

Perhaps I can do a little surgical gymnastics to match this, or just bash the doors from scratch, into their proper locations.  I just haven’t put any real thought into it yet.