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

[druxey]

Great progress. Love the fleur de lys.

 

Is it a photographic artifact, but in the overhead shots is the forward end of the port side main rail further forward than the starboard one?

[Hubac's Historian]

No, I think your eyes are seeing the reality, there.  I think I may have placed the port side a little too far forward.  I’ll have to pay more attention to that as I get closer to final assembly.  At this stage it is all dry-fit.

[FriedClams]

Just catching up Marc, and I'm sorry to hear of the Covid and the unprovoked attack.  Glad you are well now and recovering.

 

Excellent progress on the model and your attention to the smallest details is inspiring.  Very nice work!

 

Gary

[Hubac's Historian]

This is all very much appreciated, Gary.  Thank you!

[Hubac's Historian]

I’m a little stalled on the head construction, this past week; I just haven’t had much evening time to focus on it, unfortunately.

 

I have, though, been trying to carve the bow angels that sit right behind the headrails.  I had the hardest time carving this, considering the scale:

As before with the stern angels, the faces are not great, but I can live with them.

[72Nova]

She looks lovely Marc!👍 Curious as to what blades you use?

 

Michael D.

[Hubac's Historian]

Hi Michael! Thank you for the nice compliment.  For all of these carvings, I primarily use a curved chip-carving knife, a #11 EXACTO, a shallow 1/8” gouge, a 1/16” veiner, and an 1/8” straight chisel.  Here and there, I’ll use small Dremmel burrs to waste material and approximately define shapes.

[GrandpaPhil]

Marc,

  Soleil Royal is looking great!  Your carvings are fantastic!

 

[Nek0]

Wow, congrats for the face, smile, and toes at this scale !! 

[Hubac's Historian]

It turns out that coaching my son’s 5th grade CYO basketball team has been more involved than I anticipated; owing to the pandemic, we are essentially starting from scratch, so I have spent quite a lot of time finding good fundamentals drills, while I learn the broad-strokes of the Pack-Line defense.  It is all good fun, but it has cut into ship time.

 

I did manage to finish up my starboard bow angel:

I did a final/final fitting of the headrails and their supports.  Those have now been masked, primed and I’ve begun putting them into colors.

 

Per Nigel’s suggestion, I am filling-in the missing stair treads on the lower beakhead bulkhead, where the turret seats of ease used to be.

 

I made a cardboard pattern for the forward terminus of the head grating.  I’ve found that saturating this thin card with common CA (thin) makes it into a durable pattern:

I made a rub-tracing of the middle headrail profile, so that I could pattern the arcing slats of the grating.

 

I am also very happy with how this representation of scroll heads came out, in simulation of the headrail supports actually finishing beneath the lowest headrail:

As these are thoroughly impossible to carve at this scale, I make these from two diameters  of styrene rod.  It’s a little fiddly to mate the beveled end of the larger diam. rod to that of the smaller diam. rod, but I found that touching my knife point to a drop of liquid styrene cement enabled me to pick these tiny bits up and place them onto a glue spot where they belong.

 

I’ll be painting for some time, but soon the whole head structure will begin to come together.

 

Thank you for stopping by.

Edited November 18, 2022 by Hubac's Historian

[yancovitch]

where's your thumb...we need your thumb to show how tiny they are😁....super duper.....the lines flow so nicely

[druxey]

Impressive. Marc. Might I suggest thinning the angels' lower feet a bit, though? They ain't hobbits!

[72Nova]

Jaw dropping details as usual, very, very nice work Marc!👍

 

Michael D.

[Hubac's Historian]

As usual, David - you are right-on-point.  Yes, I was thinking the same thing.

 

Thank you, Michael!

[Nek0]

Very impressive for the shaping and sculpt of the "jambette" (don't know the proper word in english) I mean the last pic.

👏

[Hubac's Historian]

Thank you, Marc!  I think you are referring to the headrail support timbers.

 

I think that all of this effort to create reasonable clearance beneath the headrails will result in a nice upward sweep of these support timbers.  It has been a lot of fiddling and fussing about, but the effort seems to have been worthwhile.  I will reserve judgement until after it has all come together.

 

Painting of the headrails is a very slow business.  The yellow ocher, in particular, has to be cut-in by hand and maintaining fair lines around these curved parts has proved especially challenging.  It will get there, eventually.

Edited November 27, 2022 by Hubac's Historian

[Hubac's Historian]

Well, I’ve got the ocher cut-in on the port side, and I’m a third of the way through the ocher, starboard.  You can’t really tape these lines because of the limited access and curved shapes:

 

There is still much to paint here.  I have to grey-wash the horse and the cathead figure.  I still haven’t muted the colors of the red and yellow ocher, and of course none of the gilt work has been done.  Little by little, though, we are getting there.

[druxey]

Very chromatically impressive, Marc.

[Hubac's Historian]

Thank you, David.

[72Nova]

Very nice paint work Marc, I'm actually missing this type of detail painting on my build at the moment.

 

Michael D.

[t_corret]

Tamiya makes a thin flexible masking tape that might be more trouble than it's worth. As long as you continue to paint only one fine edge of color at a time, your results speak for themselves. Wonderful!

[Hubac's Historian]

Michael and T_C - thank you very much!  And, of course, thank you all for the likes and stopping by.

 

Painting on the headrails continues.  I’ve been through a round of re-touches and I’ve applied the distress wash.  If I may so so, they look pretty good.  The wash does a world of wonders.  Pics to follow after gilding and grey-washing of the horses.

 

I have also been busy drafting the third and final tier of stern lights.  This was interesting, for me, as I had to remind myself of a few important design considerations.

 

Firstly, I had increased the camber of the middle-tier of lights because the arc of the lower tier would have appeared too flat (in a shorter arc segment), if I had remained consistent.  It seemed like an additional increase in camber, for the top tier would not pay dividends, so I maintained the middle arc of camber.

 

I believe this will frame a nice upward sweep to the tafferal frieze for Apollo and his chariot.   What I am aiming for is best expressed by the magnificent work of Olivier Gatine on his magnificent La Belle.

There is an elegance of line, IMO, that really elevates this model above any other attempt I have seen of this subject - and there have been many really good ones.  He really captures something, here.

 

I can only dare to dream and attempt to emulate the finer points of his craft.  Here is where my upper tier stands for now.  I have to apply this drawing to a card template so that I can really see it on the model:

The drawing is a bit muddled from previous camber lines that were flatter, and subsequently fixed under hairspray.

 

As I have always said - this model is an amalgamation of compromises, and my process has yielded a few less desirable inconsistencies.  Because I have had to draw each level of the stern, as the model has become a concretely measurable thing, there is not always perfect continuity of line:

I missed my opportunity to make fine adjustments in that middle tier of drafting.  Here, it is readily apparent that the pilasters don’t line up very well from one level to the next.  Fortunately. the balcony rails help to soothe the visual dissonance.  The Four Seasons figures are also giving me a big assist, here, in obscuring these alignment problems.

 

Comme-ci, comme-ca.  It is all still a vast upgrade over the stock kit.

Edited December 10, 2022 by Hubac's Historian

[72Nova]

Regardless of any misalignment issues, this has been a well thought out and engineered project Marc and can't to see her set in the actual waterline base when the time comes.

Michael D

[Hubac's Historian]

Thanks again, Michael - much appreciated!

[aurelien wolff]

Hello, I'll use this thread for my research on SR and inspiration too (this thread's so much longer than the ships of scale one btw).

Edited December 12, 2022 by aurelien wolff

[Hubac's Historian]

Hi Aurelien - yes, this is where the log originated.  I posted an abbreviated version of it on SOS because it was too tedious to re-create in full.

[Hubac's Historian]

The yellow is so fragile, and it already needs re-touching.  I will wait for that, though, until after the installation.  As I have throughout the model, I use the darker gold Citadel Armor as a base coat, and then I highlight with the bright gold.  It creates a nice, if subtle sense of depth:

 

Next, I’ll do all the gilt work for the starboard side.  I’m also ready to begin making the third tier of stern lights.

 

Thank you for stopping by.  More to follow..

Edited December 14, 2022 by Hubac's Historian

[yancovitch]

ha...maybe you should start planning where, or in which famous museum this masterpiece will end up.....

[Hubac's Historian]

The case I make for it, eventually, will qualify it for the permanent installation known around here (my home) as the “heirloom furniture project” in Marc’s Museum of Decorative Wooden (and some plastic) Objects.

[yancovitch]

😄