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

[shipman]

Time and again throughout history it is a sad fact that pain, injury and life is a commodity very low on the list of military costs.

[mtaylor]

13 hours ago, robdurant said:

Looking at those pictures it really is shocking how close the lower gunports were to the waterline. The idea of these ships heeling under sail is scary.

Well that Wasa/Vasa pointed that out very well.  

[wefalck]

It seems that some of the more precious decorations were actually removable at least on some types of ships. They took them off before putting to sea seriously or going into battle. The Musée de la Marine here in Paris has inter alia a collection of decorations from an 18th century chebec that survived, because they were kept in storage in the arsenal of Toulon. Sometimes such carved decorations were also recycled for new ships.

 

From a socio-economic perspective, battle- or storm-damage provided the shipyard and arsenal workers with their daily bread.

[kirill4]

Good day,

Thanks wefalck , it is interesting fact that "... precious decorations were actually removable at least on some types of ships." I knew that there were some troubles due to weights and sizes of the decorations... but didn't realise they could be removable in some cases...

All the Best!

Kirill

[John Ott]

A huge amount of appreciation goes to Marc's log and his knowledgeable commenters. I've learned so much in the last few months from going back and reading from the beginning. 

It might be that it wasn't just the figure carvings that were removed in preparation for war. I have a strong suspicion that the panels of the "bottle" quarter galleries may have been removable, too. There are several surviving line drawings and illustrations that show that some galleries on some ships were pierced with gunports. I have a feeling that the glass lights in the galleries wouldn't have gotten along well with cannon fire. All that flying glass must have made using the officer's heads exciting during battle. In all seriousness, maybe this is why Tanneron chose to "open up" the galleries on his model instead of making them the typical closed "bottle" galleries seen in the drawings of the Second Marine ships.

Is there any documentation that would confirm/deny my suspicion?

Everything best,

John O

Edited February 18, 2023 by John Ott

[Hubac's Historian]

Yes, John, I have been very lucky that this project has attracted the attention of such a diversely talented group.  I guess, at the end of the day, we all like our painted ladies 😏

 

I’m intrigued by your choice of avatar, John.  Le Fleuron by Jean Berain:

 

Are you planning a scratch-project of this ship?

 

As for the question of removable panels that conceal gun ports, you are spot-on.

 

The lowest tier of 3 lights, where the functional toilet resides, are all false lights.  The forward panel likely conceals an additional gun port.  The middle two lights, in the amortisement, are also false lights - the forward, of which, could also be an armed port.  As a side note, I kinda wished that I had done all of the stern lights in this stylized black.  The upper tier of balcony lights is giving me fits, at the moment, but I’ll address that more fully in the next post.

 

The only real light in the quarter gallery is that of the Captain’s cabin on the quarter deck.  Interesting side note: I had always assumed that this was the Admiral’s cabin, and that Tanneron had perhaps incorrectly placed the crenelated bulkhead on the wrong deck, when it should reside on the main deck below.  Well, as with so many of my early assumptions, that proved to be wrong.

 

The insight comes from the survey drawings of the cabins.  These drawings, which include pre-refit drawings of the three cabins, as well as post-refit drawings with the new 6-window layout, illustrate dimensionally that the Captain’s cabin must always have resided on the quarter deck.  I discovered these, dare I say, facts through a closer reading of Guy Maher’s research document.  I wish I could take credit for it, but that is all Guy Maher.

 

And, so, this is why Guy posits that Tanneron perhaps intended to build a model of SR as she first appeared upon launching; the framing of the stern that his model shows reflects the rather severe tumblehome that the pre-refit cabin drawings dictate.

 

Tanneron chose a 5-window layout, as opposed to the five window + 2 half-light layout of the pre-refit great cabin.  As discussed in earlier posts, Tanneron was not a stranger to simplifying window layouts on his other Musee models - see L’Agreable.

Another assumption of mine has been that Tanneron adapted Berain’s design to fit within the reduced area of this taller, more narrow stern.  Perhaps, though, at the time he made this model he had access to the mythical Puget drawing which was, itself, a reworking of the LeBrun conceptual drawing.  Guy suspects that this drawing may still exist somewhere in the archives, but he has not yet located it.

 

I have long believed the Tanneron model is a composite of the ship from 1670 and the second ship of 1693, as it shares distinct construction characteristics of both epochs.  The quarter galleries share the overall shape of the 1690’s and beyond (see Louis Quinze model), however, their fully open, terraced design is an artifact of the 1670’s.

 

That Guy is one sharp guy!  I can’t post a link to it directly, but if one were curious to see his particular vision of the ship, just Google: “Guy Maher, Soleil Royal 1671”

 

In my next post, I will detail my travails with my stern.  Oh, and my liquid bitumen finally completed it’s epic pilgrimage from the shores of England!  I’ll be able to resume work on the head soon. 

[shipman]

Can't remember where I read; that all stern glass panels were removed and stored below before an engagement?

[Hubac's Historian]

Sounds like it would be a good idea, Shipman, and another part of clearing away all of the interior bulkheads.

[Ian_Grant]

55 minutes ago, shipman said:

Can't remember where I read; that all stern glass panels were removed and stored below before an engagement?

Makes sense to me. Bad enough having flying wood splinters, never mind flying shards of glass.

[SJSoane]

Marc, I really appreciate how you are as interested in the history and rationale for various reconstruction decisions as you are in the exquisite model construction itself. The best of both worlds!

 

Mark

[Hubac's Historian]

Thank you, Mark.  My mother was a great lover of puzzles and I suppose I have that gene too because that is exactly what Soleil Royal represents for me - a fragmentary puzzle.  I’ll never find all of

the pieces that fell off the table and are now hiding in the interstices of the furniture and flooring.  I do enjoy looking, though.

Edited February 18, 2023 by Hubac's Historian

[John Ott]

Thank you much for your reply, Marc. To briefly answer your question—Le Fleuron attracted my attention because of the nice Bérain drawing I found and also because it was one of the blue-painted ships on Jérôme Hélyot's order of battle scroll for the 1704 Battle of Velez-Malaga, which might make a good topic of discussion one day. I'm waiting to see if my last flurry of emails to France can find me any better pictures of the scroll than the ones I can swipe off the internet.

As for Le Fleuron becoming a scratch-project, I feel like I'll be fortunate if I can get through the Heller kit successfully. My own build is very much in the just-out-of-the-box phase, moving around gunports and scrubbing unnecessary detail off the quarterdeck and forecastle pieces, etc.  I have modest goals, most of them based on things I've read in your log. I'm leaning toward making it the 1693 ship, because it looks easier to account for the gunports, because I think that's what Tanneron's model was based on (his other models in the Musée are Second Marine ships), and because it seems to be the only version of the ship reliably documented by an eyewitness with period colors, thanks again to Hélyot's Malaga scroll. 

 

Thanks once more,

John O

[Hubac's Historian]

John, if you post a build log I will happily follow along.  I am always interested to see what people do with this kit.

 

I really like that you filled-in the butt joints of the wales.  This is a simple upgrade and it makes a tremendous difference.

Edited February 19, 2023 by Hubac's Historian

[Hubac's Historian]

Given that this balcony doesn’t wrap to the quarters the way the middle balcony does, I thought it would be easier to first attach the corbels.  Fitting these is a little tricky because they toe-in toward the centerline, a little, and they have to match the raking angle of the quarter gallery, fore and aft, and they have to be beveled athwart-ships to match the camber of the balcony platform.

I thought I had done a pretty good job of matching all the angles, however the outside corbels looked a little droopy:

Especially the port side:

The solution was to add a piece of .030 styrene to the tops of the outside corbels and re-fair until the angle of the balcony platform matched that of the quarters.  The hardest part of this was paring away the glue squeeze-out and repairing the paint.

 

The window plate is probably the thing that gave me the most problems.  It is very fragile, and I broke both doors off at different times.  Then, when I CA’d the acetate in-place, I developed a little bit of CA frost on several of the window panes:

I probably could have avoided this problem if I had either used a quick-set CA, or used an accelerant.  I like the medium-set CA glues because they give you a small window to make sure the part is correctly positioned.

 

The frost blooms were not super noticeable, but they were nonetheless disappointing.  I kind of wanted to scrap the piece and start over, but that would also necessitate casting new pilasters in resin, as I did not have another scrap stern plate to pull from.

 

Well, fortunately there’s a simple solution to this problem, and it works like magic.  One approach would be to dissolve the CA with gasoline and re-paint/re-built.  Or, I could simply paint a little petroleum jelly over the blooms and let them sit for 5-10 minutes.  Then, I cover the head of a q-tip with a t-shirt scrap and wipe the PJ off the surface.  An un-covered Q-tip gets into the corners.  This simple trick worked perfectly!

 

The next hurdle of this window plate was that I had pretty radically underestimated how much needed to be trimmed from the window edges so that they would fit within the transom framing.  The only way to trim these, after they had been glued to the plate, was to grind the edges with a diamond-coated bur and sanding sticks.  This was tedious, and I managed to dislodge one pane, but I somehow avoided breaking the plate, so I kept going.

 

The next thing that had to happen was cutting back the center pilaster so that the Arms of France would not intrude into the space for the big tafferal carving:

Again this is difficult to achieve without breaking the window plate because the blue plastic of the kit window pilasters is, for lack of a better word, chewy.  

 

With all of that out of the way, I could finally glue-in the balcony platform, and plank-in the transom bulkhead:

There remain a pair of supporting balusters that I have to fit between the middle balcony rail and the upper balcony platform.

Now, I can paint the transom planking red and figure out whether I’ll be able to salvage the kit railing, or whether I will have to make one from scratch.

 

I’ll get all of that together, and then I’ll go back to the head to complete the headrail installation and head grating.  That may be all I manage to accomplish before the show, but that will be significant progress, since the last time I showed the model.

 

Thank you for looking in!

[72Nova]

Marc I recall you had the same marring issue with the window panes earlier but can't remember your fix back then?. The petroleum jelly worked like a charm though and your masterpiece is progressing nicely👍

 

Michael D.

[Ian_Grant]

Marc, simply clicking on "WOW" doesn't cut it for this magnificent work!!  We need a button for extravagant superlatives; maybe one for "supercalafragilisticexpialadocious"  😃.

 

Really enjoying watching your progress.

 

Ian

[yancovitch]

scarer and scarer 😲

[druxey]

Magnifique, Monsieur! 

 

Question: how exactly does petroleum jelly work on the frosted plastic?

[Hubac's Historian]

I’m not exactly sure, but given that gasoline will dissolve CA, and petroleum jelly is a petroleum product, I suppose that is sufficient to remove the fog/mist.

[archjofo]

Fantastic work !

[Hubac's Historian]

David and Johann - thank you very much!

[yancovitch]

gads....i suddenly realized, during the process of admiration, that yes, the sculpting is amazing, but just as amazing, is the paint job!!!.....maybe he's found a way to secrete paint through pen nibs 😃

Edited February 23, 2023 by yancovitch

[FriedClams]

On 2/21/2023 at 8:40 AM, Hubac's Historian said:

they toe-in toward the centerline, a little, and they have to match the raking angle of the quarter gallery, fore and aft, and they have to be beveled athwart-ships to match the camber of the balcony platform.

It’s true, very little is square, plumb or level on anything that floats. So many odd compound angles. It is certainly one of the challenges of this hobby, but I find it’s one aspect that makes modeling boats/ships so entertaining.  In a deranged sort of way of course.

 

I’ve not heard of the petroleum jelly trick - thanks for sharing that.  It’s going into my notes folder.

 

As always, beautiful work Marc.

 

Gary

[wefalck]

On the glass on ships, I always wondered, whether they kept the glazed windows at sea (and in battle, of course), or stored them below. Glass still was an expensive item in the 17th century.

 

In fact, often Muscovite was used instead, which is a natural mineral and can be split into very thin sheets. Muscovite is much more elastic than glass, but less clear. Today it is still used as high temperature-resistant looking glasses in furnaces and the likes.

[druxey]

Muscovite is also known as mica. Much easier than glass to cut as well! Sharp scissors will do it.

[Hubac's Historian]

Here is a decent back-lit shot that shows how well the CA fog disappeared:

I’ve modified the supporting pilasters for between the middle and upper balconies.  Owing to all of the modifications and scratch-work, the height between balconies is a little different.  This necessitated adding plastic, top and bottom, to make up the difference, but I also added a strip of .032 to the backs of these because I felt they were too spindly and slight looking to be doing the support work they represent:

The other little side project was to create a glue lip to make it easier to mount the upper balcony bulwarks; I did this with a bit of the smallest quarter-round strip that I had:

With that in place, it was much easier to make a cardboard template that followed the camber of the balcony, at the appropriate raking angle, fore and aft.  This also enabled me to lay out the 3/32” pilasters.  I should mention that my final attempt at heat-bending the stock balcony bulwark was a failure.

 

I filled a large pasta pot with water and heated to a near boil.  I rubbed some olive oil on the side of the pot, and attempted to gently induce a curve.  Unfortunately, there’s no getting around the fact that the ornamental spindles of the railing are much thinner than the caprail.  As such, they flash malleable much sooner and then become irreversibly distorted.  Given that, I realized there was no way to get around making the balcony bulwarks from scratch.

 

For whatever reason, this is a detail that was very difficult to draw.  Irrespective of what exactly is happening with the pilasters below, the only way to draw a repeating element like this is to ensure that the panels for the spindles are all the same uniform size.

 

After much re-drawing, I got the port half down to an acceptable draft, which could be improved upon with the making of the thing:

For some reason, I just could not get the spacing right for the first panel, starboard of center.  So, I made a mirror photocopy of the port side and this seemed to work perfectly.  The guaranteed symmetry between sides also helps smooth over some of the hand-drawn imperfection of the thing:

As I say, I’ve found that, if I can get the drawing layout reasonably close, then I can bring it home with the tools.  My drawing is no worse than the stock rendering of this detail, so that’s a go for me.

[Kevin-the-lubber]

That vaseline tip is going to come in handy. As the accolades and plaudits reflect, your painting is simply jaw-dropping. As a side project I've just built a WW2 bomber straight out of the box and my pilots face STILL, despite all the wisdom and advice on forums like this, looks like a pink blob. I'm sure everyone reading knows exactly what I mean. Meanwhile, you're doing flesh tones and shading on a piece this small? It's like looking at the sistine chapel!

 

[Hubac's Historian]

Thank you, Kevin.  I appreciate the compliment.  With regard to the figures, though, my approach is very simple.  I apply a coat of Model Master Random Tan acrylic, as a base-coat, and then I usually apply thinned coats of this Citadel red wash, which gets into all the creases and folds.  For the Autumn figure, I used a brown enamel wash that I applied quickly and then wiped off the excess before the solvent softened the base coat.  I just got lucky with that one because he turned out better than I thought possible.

 

It’s been a pretty active modeling week.  I’ve been alternating between the bow and stern. Now that the Bitumen of Judea had arrived, I could finally stain my new cables.  It was a test of patience to feed these through one hawse hole and fish it through the next with an improvised hook.  Eventually, I got them:

The bow assembly has to happen in a very specific sequence.  Above, you can see that I installed the aft, starboard headrail support timber.  Before moving on, it’s essential to scrape away any glue squeeze out and re-touch the black paint, because you won’t have access to that area later.

 

Also above, I am making a card template for the first section of grating slats that lead out onto the head.  I just thought it would be much easier to make this piece as a unit, rather than as individual slats:

 

The outboard end (above right) of this is the mount for the new seats of ease that I will make a little later in the process.

 

I spent a lot of extra time fine-tuning the fit of the starboard headrail so that the glue blocks make good contact with the hull.  Before I can glue that part on, though, I have to paint and glue-in the starboard grating piece.  Once the headrail is in, I can glue in the middle and forward headrail supports.

 

Simultaneously, I’ve been making the upper balcony bulwark.  A montage:

The two panels on the right haven’t been sanded down yet, but you can see what a difference it makes to clean up the face of these balusters.  Having learned from prior experience, I find it much easier to frame in all of the borders and pilasters with styrene strip:

Up to this point, the balusters look pretty good.  Not perfect, but decent.  However, once I start adding the accent bits, the whole thing homogenizes and begins to look a little more uniform:

I still have to make the side panels and the railing, but I am satisfied that I have made a part that is at least as good as the kit version.

 

Thank you all for your interest and support.  More to follow.

[72Nova]

Nothing really compares to the satisfaction of actually creating something with your hands, this is just excellent stuff Marc!👍

 

Michael D.

[Hubac's Historian]

Thanks, Michael!  Yes, you are so right about that.  When I finally get the head together, it will feel like a massive accomplishment - even  if it isn’t exactly correct in all respects.  It will be far closer to the truth than the kit allows for.