Soleil Royal by Hubac's Historian - Heller - An Extensive Modification and Partial Scratch-Build

[Hubac's Historian]

A while back, Dan had brought to my attention the fact that the main deck ports, especially aft, run perpendicular with the sheer of the wales, but not plumb with the underlying framing, as they should be.  Here is a shot of my first SR, to illustrate the point:

The problem also exists in the bow, but oddly enough the middle and lower deck ports, in this forward part of the hull are also out of plumb.  I suspect that to fix the main deck ports, in the fore channel area, would actually end up looking more wrong because of what is going on underneath it:

So, with that in mind, I have decided to replace the port frames for the six gunports, aft of the waist ladder.  Once again, Henry has come to the rescue!  I am salvaging port frames from his spare upper bulwarks.  The essential process is to rough-cut them out with a scroll saw, and then use the drum sander attachment, in the Dremel, to get pretty close to the port edges first, and then waste away the backside until I am within a light 1/32” of being left with the frame alone.

 

Then I work the frames, back and forth on an 80-grit block until the background disappears.  At the very outset, I had rubbed away most of the gold paint (very efficiently) with a maroon ScotchBright pad.  With the frames extricated, I then used the tip of a #11 blade to scrape away most of the remaining paint from the frame edges and the delicate moulded crevices.  This is, by far, the most hateful step in the process.  That being said, I can do five frames in a night (a couple of hours) - start to finish.  In all, I cleaned 14, just to have two extra to choose from.  Here is an array of the process:

I started with the port side; each time I introduce a modification, I try to alternate the side I start on so that one side of the ship does not end up looking significantly or at least perceptibly better than the other.  My technique improves as I go 

 

What I spent the most time on, was getting the upper bulwark piece to sit snugly in it’s rabbet.  That has to be where it’s going to go before setting the frames.  The first time I built this model, I had to fill a significant gap all along the length of the upper bulwark.  This time around, the fills will be minimal.

 

Here are the port frames installed and as they appear next to the ports below:

 

It is a very slight adjustment, and it may seem that relative to the window above it, that I didn’t tilt them quite plumb enough.  I did, however, manipulate the first two before the glue set, and any further just didn’t look right with the other gunports.

 

For comparison’s sake, here is the starboard side:

 

 

I still have to fair the interior edges of the port frames with a file and putty.  On the finished model, this will be a detail that you will never notice.  But without it, astute eyes have noticed and will continue to do so.  

[Nek0]

Hello Marc !

To me it's a huge improvement. But beware of the last gunport, the bottom is too high, and not in line with the others. 

I wish you all the best for 2018, best regards,

Marc 

[Hubac's Historian]

As always, Marc, your perception is spot-on!  I have taken a closer look, and you are definitely right.  I will sit on this for a “minute.”  When I sight the run of the ports from aft, forward, or visa versa, this discrepancy is there, but not hugely apparent.  I may fix it, or I may not.

 

This is one of those things about the Heller kit; this particular port was incorporated into the stock quarter gallery, so that the port frame was a coved, moulded frame that overlaid the rough opening.  I have the extra frames, so I will see how I feel about it tomorrow.

 

I’m looking forward to seeing what progress you have made on your ship, Marc.  Hopefully, your work situation will settle sooner than later.

 

And a happy 2018 to you and your family!

Edited January 15, 2018 by Hubac'sHistorian

[Landlubber Mike]

Marc, just spent time going through your log.  Wow, so much work and research!  Very informative and your attention to detail is really impressive.  You should consider writing a book given all that you have compiled. 👍

[Hubac's Historian]

Thank you very much, Mike, for your kind words.  I really appreciate your taking the time to read through my log.  I am nothing, if not verbose!

 

As a matter of fact, I am drafting an intro to something.  Probably not a book, per se, but maybe a solid pre-amble to this entire build-log, which I will eventually edit more thoroughly.  This pre-amble is tentatively titled The Gilded Lilly: A Meditative Reconstruction of Laurent Hubac’s Post-Refit Soleil Royal of 1689.  Verbose .

 

Owing largely to the flawed nature of the Heller kit, my attempts to modify it have drawn the attention of many of the best scholars of the epoch, and of the ship, herself; J.C. Lemineur, Gerard Delacroix, Andrew Peters (I wrote to him, really, but he was very helpful), Michel Saunier, Marc Yeu (AKA Neko), Cedric LieGeois, Dan Pariser and a host of other MSW contributors who have been instrumental in helping me to understand my own assumptions and misconceptions about the ship.  Whether the model succeeds or fails, it has been so gratifying for me to see the ship debated, and to see the particularly excellent work of Michel Saunier, Marc Yeu and Cedric LieGeois find it’s way onto MSW.

 

As for my model, I stake no claim to be a serious scholar, myself, or to have any definitive conclusions about her appearance.  But I do spend quite a lot of time thinking, even in a meditative and subconscious sense, about how to reconcile all of this information - the Berain drawings, the VDV portraits of her contemporaries and the body of modern scholarship into one coherent picture of what might have been.  It is, I hope, a plausible theory that will spark continued debate and more efforts to model the ship.  In the end, though, what I am essentially attempting is to see how closely I can modify this flawed Heller kit into a plastic approximation of Marc Yeu’s excellent scratch-built model.

 

Speaking of Marc, I decided, after all, to grind away and re-position the aft-most main deck port, on the port side:

 

Here is the port re-positioned.  Because I haven’t faired the inner, lower sill yet, you can just see the heavy 1/32” difference from where the port was, originally.  I am pleased with the alteration, but I won’t bother to do the same on the starboard side because the discrepancy is so slight as to not warrant the change.  Here, though, it was noticeable, and I thank Marc for speaking up.

 

The second wave of detailing is well underway.  In the following pictures, you can see that I have been busy adding the gun carriage through bolts and the top sections  to the skids.  The latter presented some challenges in getting the upper bulwark pieces to properly align with my main reference point - the waist ladder.  One difficulty was leveling a clear path for the skid extension pieces, where they crossed the acanthus escutcheon ornaments.  Patience, and careful sighting of the line, with the upper bulwark in position, showed me what to cut away.

 

A little putty will be required at the joints (I was a little overzealous in fairing the second skid, in particular), but overall the fit and alignment are quite good.

 

The other thing that I thought was worth attempting was to scribe plank lines into the smooth plastic between the main deck ports:

 

For this, I simply made a styrene pattern of the lower edge of both the fore and aft upper bulwarks, and then working from the bottom edge up, I carefully scribed in plank seams from fore to aft.  I did not attempt to scribe one whole course, at a time, because my pattern had to rest upon the raised port frames and it was impossible to maintain position for a fair run.  Instead, I scribed a series of lines, between ports, from bottom to top, and then connected the dots from one port to the next, working aft.  This seemed to work well.

 

As I approached the top, though, the discrepancy that Heller moulded into the plastic became more apparent, and my plank scribes reflect this;  what I’m referring to is the available space between the top wale of the lower hull and the next sheer strake of the upper bulwark.  This space is slightly narrower at the extreme ends, and bellies in the waist.  As this discrepancy was consistent with the lower gun decks, and the way that the scribed plank lines were sometimes interrupted by the sheer of the wales, I decided to just continue with the same scribe pattern.  The area on the upper bulwarks, where this difference will be most apparent, will be mostly covered by the quarter galleries, anyway.  To my way of thinking about it, adding the plank seams makes the model seem a little less “plastic,” which is always my goal with this  build.

 

Going forward, I will complete all the through-bolting on the starboard side, thin and detail the plank edge of the beakhead bulkhead, and add the stern extension of the upper bulwark.  Following that, I’ll carve resin mould masters for my main deck port frame enhancements.  That first foray into casting will provide me the necessary experience for tackling the ornamental frieze elements.

Edited January 16, 2018 by Hubac'sHistorian

[donrobinson]

Wonderful work, your attention to detail is blowing me away!!

[Hubac's Historian]

Thanks, Don!  I really appreciate that you have stuck with this slow-moving monster from the beginning.  Your encouragement helps keep the lights on, down the long corridors of a project like this.

[EJ_L]

Marc, just incredible! What you are doing with this model is a whole new level of plastic ship building and one that in the end will reward with a great ship!

 

I do hope you compile all your information on S.R., even if it is just in the form of this build log. There is a wealth of information here and I'm certain that by the time you finish this will be one of those indispensable logs for anyone looking to build Soleil Royal in any medium. The research you do combined with the explanations of how and why you are modifying and building certain ways would make a great companion guide once combined and edited a little. It would be something I would love to get my hands on for when I do a full scratch build of her.... many years from now.  

[Hubac's Historian]

Thank you, EJ!  Although, I have to say that the standard-bearer for plastic ship-modeling has to be Dafi, with his Heller Victory; he just takes it up several notches!  I appreciate the compliment, though.

 

As with you, my primary motivation for starting a build log, in the first place, was that I wanted a place to compile research and references for a future scratch-build for which I won’t have to make compromises.

 

I remain hopeful that this collaborative monograph of a 90-gun ship of the Second Marine will come to press sometime soon.  I believe that this work will shed additional light on many of the practicalities of French naval architecture from this time period, and just before.  It seems likely that much of what Mr. Lemineur and Mr. Tusset are laying forth in this model would certainly have been applicable, just a few years earlier in 1688/89.  Taken together with the monograph on L’Ambiteaux, and guided by the survey dimensions of 1688, I think that one could arrive at a very good hull form as the basis for a model of Soleil Royal.  Only time will tell, though.

Edited January 16, 2018 by Hubac'sHistorian

[Hubac's Historian]

While it is absolutely true that I haven’t even assembled a hull, yet, I am already beginning to work out the primary proportions of my main mast - from which the fore and mizzenmast will be derived, per R.C. Anderson.

 

To begin with, there are a number of scale issues with the kit-supplied masts and spars.  The issue most often cited by builders of this kit is what appears to be overly long main and fore topmasts.  Interestingly, the length of the Heller fore topmast is actually about one scale foot (or an 1/8”) longer than the main topmast.  However, when applying R.C. Anderson’s guidelines for French practice after 1670 (.66 of the lower mast), one arrives at a scale dimension that is just slightly longer than Heller’s main topmast - to the tune of 1 1/2’ in full size , or 3/16” in scale.

 

For fun, I converted the survey dimensions that Michel Saunier provided me (from the 1688 survey of SR before her refit), and I arrived at a main topmast dimension that is slightly shorter than the Heller dimension - by 1/4”, or two scale feet.  So, I don’t think the topmasts are really the biggest scale issue.  Also, my observation of all of the better contrmporary portraiture of French ships bears this out: topmasts were quite long.

 

What I find most out of proportion are the t’gallant masts.  Using Anderson’s metric, one arrives at a t’gallant of 4 3/4”, Saunier gives you 4 1/4”, the Heller kit, though, has a main t’gallant of 5 13/32”.  All of these dimensions, by the way, are from the heal of the top/t’gallant mast to just beneath their respective mastcap.

 

The other interesting consideration - especially considering the rather shallow draft of the Heller hull - is the scale length of the lower masts, from footing to beneath the cap.  Anderson’s mast comes in at 14 5/16”, Saunier at 14”, but Heller comes in at 15 1/8” scale!  This actually works to my advantage, and I will explain why in a moment.

 

The general sense of the thing that I am trying to acheive can be seen, here, in this portrait of the Royal Louis.  Previously, I had seen this drawing dated to 1668, but then, more recently I’ve seen the year 1688, attributed to the drawing - which because of the style of quarter gallery and headrails, actually makes more sense:

 

 

My plan for the main mast is, thus:

 

For the first step of the mast, I may actually increase the distance from the main deck to the top of the cheeks by 1/2”.  I will do so, if I see in my eventual mock-up that a fairlead for the main shrouds necessitates this increase; remember, I am lowering the channels to the main deck level, and also increasing the width across the beam by what amounts to 5 scale feet.  While this would be an alteration that makes my build work - and, perhaps, not wholly accurate to late 17th C. practice - I don’t think the appearance of the model will suffer from the added height.  In fact, doing so, would erase any doubt that the topmast could be lowered without hitting the main deck.

 

I will maintain the length of Heller’s main topmast (9 1/4”), as it falls very neatly between Anderson (9 7/16”) and Saunier (9”).

 

the biggest alteration will be to the t'gallant.  I will shorten this mast from 5 13/32” to Anderson’s length of 4 3/4”.  I will then take that lost height and add it back to the jackstaff, which on the Heller kit is simply too stubby.  Anderson allows for some leeway, here, but I may increase the jackstaff from Heller’s 2 11/32” up to something on the order of 3 5/8”.  In my line drawings, so far (which I will post, once I’ve darkened them with marker), the effect of these changes is pleasing to my eye.

 

One thing to note:  using Anderson’s ratio’s for arriving at the main topmast head (1/10 of the lower mast) yeilds a dimension that just looks exagerated, whereas Saunier yields a much more reasonable 7/16”.

 

The other significant scale issue is that of the main and topmast tops.  The topmast tops are grossly too big and need to be reduced to something more in line with Anderson.  The style of the topmast tops also, as far as I can tell, reflects 18th century practice, and not 17th C.

 

To my eye, though, the scale of the main top is too small for the ship.  The spread of the topmast shrouds would be greatly improved by an increase in diameter.  As is, the Heller main top measures 2 3/16”, which translates to 17 1/2’ in full-size.  On the surface of things that seems fairly enormous!  It just so happens that, today, I was laying down metal track for a knee wall that measured exactly 17 1/2’.  Huge!  My 1/4” scale addition would increase my top diameter to what would be 19 1/2’ in full practice.  Seems improbable, I know, but remember that I am increasing the breadth of beam by 5’.  Whatever imbalance this top increase might introduce in the standard kit, will be more than absorbed by my increase in beam.

 

Now, take a closer look at the main top of the Royal Louis, above.  Though it’s a little fuzzy behind the shrouds, there appear to be 8-9 men standing across the diameter of the top, with a little room to spare between them.  If you figure that the average body occupies around 2’ of shoulder room, a top platform in the 18-20’ range of diameter may not be so unreasonable after all.  My conclusion from all of this is that the scale of these warships must have been truly enormous.

 

The sum total of all of these dimensional changes to my main mast will yeild a mast height above the main deck of 25 1/4”.  I will post the line drawing later, which will illustrate these differences more clearly.

Edited January 29, 2018 by Hubac'sHistorian

[dafi]

Nice thoughts, one thing still to consider is how the top masts were set: They have to pass through the opening in the top and need to be heaved through the cap. That is impossible with the "original" set-up of the kit as I saw on my model years ago. So there is a telescopic ratio in between the single masts. The drawing in the post above respects this ratio, the topgallant mast even could be higher technically seen.

 

 

Also funny to see my model of the Vic beside the one of the Soleil: The Vic has - with a bigger draught - much less high topmasts and looks much more healthy towards over all stability.

 

XXXDAn

Edited January 29, 2018 by dafi

[EJ_L]

When you start looking at the individual component's actual dimensions you really start to get an idea of just how huge these ships were. I've been reading "Six Frigates" about the start of the US Navy and in it they are talking about how the United States while still in the stocks and without masts, was the tallest structure in Philadelphia. I've read in other books how a harbor with the ships in dock would often have bowsprits overhanging the buildings on the wharf. These were ships with a foot print the size of a modern day U.S. Football field and the height of what today would be around a 15-20 story building. Even as late as the early 19th century, most structures were still under 100 feet in height and those that were were often associated with churches and included their spires more than actual structural floors. So with a ship, not only have you created something that could often match the tallest structures on land, but you made it float and survive the forces of wind and water tossing it about like a toy.

 

This is one of the reasons I am a fan of having figures included on the model. They more easily put into perspective just how massive even the smaller ships were and how almost overwhelming a 1st, 2nd or even 3rd rate would have been.

 

AS always Marc, your research and planning enriches all our builds. Thanks for sharing!

[Hubac's Historian]

Thank you Dafi and EJ, for your likes and especially for your thoughts and comments!

 

When I got home last night, I took out my copy of The Great Ships (referenced above) because, in the chapter dedicated to the French navy, there is a decent-sized re-print of this portrait of Royal Louis.  Just for fun - because this is how I amuse myself - I took out my steel ruler and measured the width of the main top, as printed on the page; 1/2”, exactly.  Then, I measured up the main topmast from heel to mastcap;  1 11/16” (as I remember, but I was doing this quickly as I waited for my daughter to get ready to leave the apartment) on the printed page.

 

Then, I divided the theoretical dimension of my topmast, full size (74’) by the diameter of my widened main top (19 1/2’) and the result was 3.79 - which very nearly corresponds with my measurement test of the Royal Louis on paper.  Granted - there are obvious perspective issues of the artist who drew the portrait of RL; distance from the subject, and a foreshortening of the mast height, depending upon his vantage point.  As a quick cross-check, though, this is a pretty decent guage.  To my eye - this looks right.

 

So, without further delay, here is my line diagram of the three different mast layouts:

 

To the far left is R.C. Anderson.  Michel Saunier’s dimensions as taken from the survey of the ship in 1688 by Desclouzeaux.  NOTE:  for Michel’s mast I merely added a longer jackstaff because, if the dimension for this item exists in his table, I could not translate what that might be.  And to the right are the stock, Heller dimensions, with my alterations noted in red.  It’s all a little muddled, but it gives me a good enough idea so that I can mock up the main mast, eventually, to see what it really looks like.

 

Also...

 

Here is a nice Puget sketch of a French warship that shows the relative heights of the lower masts, and gives some sense for the slight rake of the main and mizzen masts:

 

https://pin.it/yr66kyqp4vzq5a

 

I try as much as I can, with this build, to respect the scale of known equipment and furniture of a ship from this time.  On the other hand, I find it useful to balance that with the artistic eye for the lesser known/recorded grey areas.  This is why I include so much contemporary portraiture and sketches.  Though they are often quick gesture sketches, these were masters of their craft and extremely familiar with their subject.  I have little doubt that they are capturing the feeling of the vessels they are portraying.

 

Here is a quick sketch of the disaster at La Hogue by the younger VDV.  There is no way of knowing whether the main subject is SR - probably isn’t for a few reasons, chiefly among them, that it looks more like a second rate, rather than a first - but I include the image because it shows relatively tall lower masts.

 

https://pin.it/fjx7zxwlbnxhzi

 

I don’t know why I can’t edit out this duplicate picture of my mast layouts, but this site is funny like that sometimes, so here it is again

Edited January 30, 2018 by Hubac'sHistorian

[Hubac's Historian]

Leafing through the Fox book, yet again, looking for exactly this kind of evidence of long lower masts:

 

 

Here’s another VDV, the Elder, drawing from the cover inset.  It shows a number of British First rates laid up, in ordinary on the Medway in 1685.  This is only one half of the portrait (the oher half is at the book end paper), but I think it is fairly illustrative of the point.

 

 

Edited January 31, 2018 by Hubac'sHistorian

[Beef Wellington]

I admire your passion for the subject, turning over every stone and sharing with us.  I wonder if its possible to reconcile some of the visual elements to other sources to get a sense for how these reconcile and the reliability of the artists eye portraying what was there - for example using sources for masting dimensions for the period (if any?) to get a gut check.  I always think of a classic painting by Turner - clearly impressionistic to highlight the majesty of the ships, containing a lot of detail that could arguably be relied upon based on his familiarity with ships of his day.  However, the proportions and scale of the figures, ports and small boats are incredibly misleading.  Looking at the masts, he has made them too short in proportion to he height of the hull which is greatly exaggerated, this seems to be a trend in all his works.  Just food for thought.

 

[Hubac's Historian]

Hey BW!  Thanks for stopping in and sharing your thoughts.

 

In fact, you have very much hit the nail on the head.  A reconcilliation of primary, secondary and tertiary sources is exactly what I am up to.  There are the primary sources that involve the ship, herself;  these are the Berain drawings, the VDV, Monamy, and Bakhuizen portraits of her.  The secondary sources include contemporary portraiture of other French ships that were contemporaries of SR - those by the VDVs are the best and most detailed.  Tertiary sources include portraits of other nation’s great ships that were contemporaries of SR, as well as other people’s modern models of her, and all that I can find that has been written of her history.  At best, and considering all of these fragments, looking at the first SR as she might have been after her re-fit, is sort of like trying to discern the shape and magnificence of her through a dense fog;  there’s something quite majestic there, glinting with gold and bristling with arttllery, but the picture is just so slightly out of focus.

 

This is why the painting of SR (port quarter view) facing off against Britannia, at Barfleur, is so captivating.  There is something truly meaningfull, there, to be gleaned - if I could only just find the current whereabouts of the painting for a better look:

The height of her rig; the breadth of her hull; the configuration of her stern and quarters with all of Berain’s allegorical intent; it’s all, there.  I can just make out the outline of it.  Almost...

 

But, as I said in an earlier post, it is an effort to strike a balance between artistic interpretation and what is actually known and recorded about this early period in pre-plans naval architecture.  And, to do all of that within, and to some degree to stretch, the apparent limitations of the Heller kit.  Opinions are just that, but in mine SR was a ship that was so far beyond any of her contemporaries, in terms of her grandeur, and the epic performance of Tourville and his crew at Barfleur.  The subject never bores me.

Edited February 1, 2018 by Hubac'sHistorian

[popeye2sea]

Of course, even though there may be evidence presented within the paintings, the rig of any ship was never static.  It could and often did change based upon the desires of the Captain/Sailing Master/Admiralty, etc.

 

You might at some point just have to go with your gut.

 

Regards,

Edited January 31, 2018 by popeye2sea

[Hubac's Historian]

My gut says to go as tall as I can within the accepted ranges of R.C. Anderson and the actual surveyed dimensions of SR, as tabulated by Michel Saunier.  There is some sense of plausibility in that, which also satisfies my aesthetic sense for what I want my model to look like.

Edited February 2, 2018 by Hubac'sHistorian

[Hubac's Historian]

My work on the upper bulwarks continues.  After thinning and detailing the beakhead bulkhead plank edge, I decided to tackle the 3/8” stern extension pieces for the upper bulwarks.  As is apparent, here, all of my fitting and adjusting so that the upper bulwarks would align neatly with the waist ladder, necessitated adding back a little extra material to the starboard upper bulwark.  The port side is the minimum 3/8”, but starboard is nearly 1/2”.

 

It may not be readily apparent in the pictures, but I had scraped away the thin sheer strakes from the extension pieces because, with the exception of the lowest strake, none of the others were going to align with those of the upper bulwark; this owes to the sharp rise in sheer, in the last half inch, or so.  While I was able to use the Dremel to waste away most of the sheer strake mouldings, I can now see that I have quite a job ahead of myself to remove the bulk of these sheer strakes from the upper bulwarks, in order to clear a field for my custom bulwark frieze lattice.  I use a fine, curved blade to manually scrape down what was left, until I get down to the grain-moulded planks.

 

As was the case with all of the other extension pieces, getting good mating joints that didn’t disrupt the fairness of the hull was a challenge.  This picture might not be the best; the extensions do appear to flair outwards, but in fact, they fall neatly in line with the extension pieces of the lower hull.

With that much settled, I decided to dispense with the upper-most sheer step, as that is one more sheer step than was ever typically constructed before 1693.  Here I am cutting it away, and the following series of pictures show me fairing the new line of the upper sheer.

 

I really like this slight reduction in the top-hamper, although it should be noted that I will be adding back a low sheer rail that runs the full length of this third sheer step.  Although, I will have to lower and shorten, somewhat, the poop royal deck, there is still ample room to do so.

 

Here are a few shots of the upper bulwark piece in place on the lower hull.

 

Little by little, we are getting there!

[EJ_L]

Shaping up nicely. Your work is really adding up now to create a whole new ship! Something I am really looking forward to is still a long way off but ta side by side comparison of the original model and yours with the modifications. I think that will be when all these subtle changes really show the differences in the designs. I know just on mine due to the changes I have made in layout that if I were to set it next to another that was built straight from the kit, those changes would be much more dramatic than just what I see while working. Looking forward to your next update!

[Hubac's Historian]

Fortunately, EJ, I do have the benefit of making those direct comparisons with my first SR sitting right on the dresser.  Just the simple attempt to represent as much of the iron fastenings as I can, changes the impression of the model tremendously.  Ultimately, though, it will be the lower waterline and broader beam that give the model a much better sense of stability as a gun platform.

 

Thank you, everyone, for stopping in and for your likes and comments 👍🏻👍🏻

[yancovitch]

yes yes yes

[Daniel Caramagno]

Enjoyed reading your build. I have the kit in my pile still in shrink wrap. Based on what you have uncovered, it likely represents the second Soleil Royale and needs a lot of modification to make the first one. I love the kit and, for a plastic kit, is well put together. However, after reading your build log I may ebay it as it is not worth the effort to me.

 

Good luck on yours.

[Hubac's Historian]

Hi Daniel - thanks for reading through the build.  Even without modification, this Heller kit is a fun build.  I suppose it depends upon what you are after.  If you want a model that represents SR1, it’s going to be a fair amount of work to make that happen.  With much more modest modification to the stern and QGs, I think that one  can arrive at a pretty reasonable approximation of SR2, using most of the stock parts.

 

I think you should take a stab at building it, Daniel, instead of selling it.  The crafting of the thing is the fun part, IMO.

[Hubac's Historian]

So, just continuing to work through the small details of my modification, here.

 

Adding the stern extension pieces, as well as eventually moving the main and fore channels down to the main deck level, have necessitated a little bit of filling-in where the moulded sheer strakes are missing.

 

To accomplish this, at the stern upper moulding, I first layered a piece of flat strip stock (.010 x .060”) onto which I centered a piece of half-round (.040”) styrene moulding. The depth and profile of these profiled styrene strips perfectly matches the kit’s moulded detail.

 

The old mounting places for the fore and main channels had to first be reduced in thickness so that the flat, to either side of the domed center of the sheer strake, matched.  Then, I cut simple scarfs into the fore and aft edges of the kit moulding to accept the new half-round.

 

The next idea I have been playing with is to salvage chesstrees from the fantastic ornament of the kit’s stock quarter galleries, which I will not be using.  To my mind, there are two plausible possibilities.

 

I first extracted the “greenman” face from the quarter-deck window.  After cleaning away the waste, though, the figure looks too busy next to the acanthus escutcheon carving, which will have to be partially scraped away to accomodate the new chesstree.

 

 

My next thought was to take one of the caryatid pillars from the main deck level.  Although, I will likely remove the lower pillar section, surrounding the beard, this makes more sense to me.

 

For all practical purposes, the actual hole will probably be drilled just below the mouth, into the beard, because the overall alignment allows me to include the full beard this way.  It would be nice, structurally, to keep the lower pillar, however, it would interfere with the step-out of the main deck top wale.  Anyway, an elongated chesstree would not be consistent with what I understand to be French practice for the period - a simple face or lion.  The extended pillar is more Dutch.  I also think that the caryatid option may not interfere with the eventual scrolled port enhancement of the main deck ports, whereas, the greenman’s crown will definitely get in the way.

 

Is all of this exactly right?  No, but I think it’s a solid kit-bash solution to including a detail that should be there, instead of a simple hole through the upper bulwarks.

Edited February 17, 2018 by Hubac'sHistorian

[popeye2sea]

I think going with the full beard is the better option.  I would put the hole right through the mouth.  In my opinion, there would be another smaller hole further down to take the spritsail sheet.  This could pass through the beard.

 

Regards,

Henry

[Hubac's Historian]

I knew I could count on you, Henry, for sound rigging advice!   I like your suggestion for the spritsail sheet.  Definitely workable.

[Hubac's Historian]

Work on the upper bulwarks continues.  I’ve re-inforced the stern extension pieces:

 

I have trimmed the chesstree pieces and mounted, but not drilled them:

 

Following all of that, it was time to turn my attention to one of the more fun aspects of this build, which is to create upper and lower port enhancement carvings for the main deck guns.  This is a bit of a squirrely task, as the top sheer of the ports is not perfectly consistent in relation to the attenuated fronds of the acanthus escutcheon carvings.

 

Ultimately, my objective here is for the downward pointing tips of the acanthus fronds to be cupped by the upward sweep of the top port enhancement scrolls.  My idea is to make one upper and lower master, carved from white styrene, that I will then experiment with making simple castings - first in earthen clay medium with a release agent, if necessary - or then, in a conventional latex mold.  The first option, if it produces clean, mouldable impressions in the clay, allows me to cast the whole lot in one go. The second method necessitates making incrementally larger latex moulds to cast more and more pieces.  This experiment in methods is well worth it, when I consider the sheer number of fleur-de-lis (in several different sizes) that I will need for the frieze and gunport lids, not to mention shells and small leafy scrolls of the ornamental frieze.

 

My digital drawing is still a cumbersome puzzle that I obviously made some mistakes in my initial set-up of the workspace because the default tracing is about 1/5 the size of what it needs to be.  I’ve fiddled around with that a bit, but I still haven’t quite figured out how to make the drawing printable.  So, for the time being, it was back to pencil and vellum.

 

it turned out to be very handy that I still had a spare port frame that I could then trace and draw in the ornamentals around it.  My initial drawing of the domed port, it turns out, is significantly more exaggerated than reality:

 

 

Once I had a shape I was reasonably happy with, I glued the vellum (with craft glue sticks) to styrene blanks, and then scribed through the lines with an Exacto #11.  Following that, I cleared the waste paper and scribbled across the scribe lines with soft pencil and then erased away the surface graphite:

 

What you are looking at is the lower port enhancement.  Next, I used the Dremel to waste away, reasonably close to my lines, while leaving myself a handle with which to manipulate the piece:

 

Then I used a series of needle files and fine blades to fair to the lines and get into all the tricky corners:

 

This looked like a good shape until I held it in several locations along the upper main wale, when I realized that the aft sheer of the wale is such that the ports dip into the wale, leaving not enough space for this ornament to reasonably sit:

 

And, so, I decided to shorten the two spurs and flatten the outward extending scrolls a bit:

 

 

This seemed like a reasonable accommodation that still resulted in a nicely shaped ornament.  Next, I repeated the process for the upper port enhancement:

 

Here is what I thought, at first, to be two very complementary port enhancements around the spare frame:

 

But, then, I began to try the upper enhancement in different locations along the upper bulwarks.  And there were problems:

 

The positioning, here, is mid-ships where the available space for the top port enhancement is most narrow.  I expect, in a few places here, to let the pointed center of the ornament into the sheer strake moulding directly above it.  This isn’t ideal, but a compromise I can live with as there are only 3 or 4 instances per side.

 

It is apparent to me in this picture, though, that the top port scrolls extend outward too far, and negatively cross over too many and too much of the acanthus frond tips. So, I shortened the scrolls and thinned them:

 

Having done this, the upper enhancement now nestled neatly along most locations of the upper bulwarks.  In only a few instances will it be necessary for me to tweak either the acanthus fronds or the port scrolls.  This is good, and workable.  I then realized that the scrolls of the lower enhancement seemed too heavy, in relation to those of the top, so I reduced their thickness:

 

Reasonably satisfied with all of this, I tried the combo in a number of different locations:

 

I can see now that the proportions of these ornaments will work as originally intended.  Next, I will sculpt their surfaces a bit before mounting them on sticks to make casting impressions in the clay.

 

When it comes time to finally mount these ornaments, there will be several instances where other added details interfere, such as the skids and the newly added chesstrees.  Although it is not ideal, I will prioritize these instances into a game of ornamental rock/scissors/paper, where the dominant ornament wins and remains fully intact.  For example, chesstree is paper; upper port enhancement, which abuts chesstree, is rock; paper covers rock, so the port enhancement will be coped to the chesstree.

 

This is, once again, the difficulty of reverse-engineering a kit to fit a very different vision of the ship, but on the whole, I think the addition of these details enhances the impression of the model far more than these small compromises detract or distract.  

 

There are ears that drop down from the upper port enhancement, and surround the upper sides of the port, but I will add these separately from strip styrene.  Placing them so that they don’t interfere with the gun carriage tackle bolts is not a one-size-fits-all proposition, so they will have to be dealt with individually.

 

In my next update, I will have carved port enhancements and the results of my first casting experiments.

 

Thank you all, once again, for looking in, your likes, and your thoughts!

 

Edited February 26, 2018 by Hubac'sHistorian

[EJ_L]

Great start to your molds. Speaking from experience of already having to carved several of the Fleur-de-lys, having a mold of them will greatly expedite the decorations as well as any others that you can get to mass produce from a mold.

 

When looking at the various carvings and their positions on the hull, I constantly wonder about how consistent they would have been in size, shape and location? Each one would have been hand carved which due to human error, almost certainly means there would have been some variance in appearance if only on a minor scale. Then there is the placement of which function would have forced them to be adjusted to not impede or hamper the ships operations. This likely would have caused some variance of design to fit in smaller or larger spaces due to gun port alignments, wales, chain plates, ladders, sheaves, etc.. While aesthetics were an important part of the ship and therefore an important part of the model, it makes me think that we may spend more time worrying about the perfect alignment than the original builders did!

 

Just my thoughts as I fret and worry the same about how I am going to make everything fit and what it looks like. In any case, I'm looking forward to seeing how yours turn out. Can't use the same process myself on my current build as I want them all to be wood but, I am curious for future projects.

[Hubac's Historian]

Thanks, EJ.  You are definitely right that form always follows function on a sailing ship, and on this sailing ship which is so encrusted with ornamentation it is a distinct possibility that similar accomodations were made in full practice.  Clearly, though, if you are designing the build from scratch you have complete discretion as to the way those additions and subtractions take shape.