Le Soleil Royal by Bill97 - FINISHED - Heller - 1/100

[Hubac's Historian]

Hi Bill - What you see with your and Henry’s build is the way the kit is intended to go together.  Because I made the bow wider, it was necessary for me to extend the beakhead bulkhead on it’s outside edges by a tapering 5/16”.  I saw this as an opportunity to make a realistic plank joint.  In actual practice, the side bulwark planking overlays the beakhead planking.  Heller does the opposite, I can only presume, because it simplifies their manufacturing process in some way.  This is hardly a critical detail as it gets covered, mostly, by the headrails.

 

For all of the effort I took to cut neat rabbets into the fore and aft edges of these bulwark pieces, very little of my end-plank detailing will remain visible.  At the stern, below the counter, it remains, but above at each balcony level a pilaster ends up covering it:

Edited January 8, 2023 by Hubac's Historian

[Bill97]

Thanks Marc. You have gained another admirer of your work. I showed the photo of your beakhead bulkhead to my wife and asked her opinion of possible added ornamentation I might do to mine, showing her several things I could cast a mold of on the plastic pieces. She immediately said she liked the additional rail you added between the top and bottom rail land the seven ornaments you included under the middle rail.  Now I am studying your photograph to see how you did it. 

[Hubac's Historian]

Tell your wife I appreciate the compliment!  As for doing that, I created that ornamental space by reducing the beakhead railing by half.  I filled-in with styrene between the stanchions, and added mouldings and ornaments to the exterior face.

 

[Bill97]

Marc looking at your’s closely that is fairly close to what thought you did. Will add that to my list of fun things to tinker with. I have selected a few ornaments to cast a mold of to place between the gun ports. Will see how they come out. The first one I am experimenting with is the one on the UB between the gunports. Will see how it comes out. 

[Bill97]

Marc I went with your idea of the second rail. Wife’s recommendation😊!  Followed your process. My upper bulwarks and beakhead are going to be blue so I have started with a blue and ndercoat. Will do the reverse of your’s and paint the sections below the middle rail red and adorn each with a gold leafed fleur-de-lies. Also made a casting of the ornament (I know it has a name) and gold leafed it to go between the gun ports after painting is finished. 
 

I am curious about something. Did you guys make your own doors?  I checked and there is not a molded part included with the kit. 

[Hubac's Historian]

Nice work on the rail, Bill!  Yes, I made my own doors.  It’s kind of a puzzling omission from the kit, as the middle deck would be washed in a heavy seaway, without them.

[Bill97]

Still need to make the door hardware and then attach my doors. I have tiny fleur-de-lies made to go below the middle rail but am waiting to attach them. They are gold leafed and I don’t want to damage them during construction. My ornament is just setting between the hatches. Not glued in place yet. You may notice it is a bit crooked. 

Edited January 11, 2023 by Bill97

[Ian_Grant]

Bill, the SR is shaping up to be your masterpiece. Nicely done!

[Bill97]

Thanks my friend! Appreciate your kind words. 

[popeye2sea]

Bill, nice job on the casting.  I did not add the doors on mine. 

 

Regards,

Henry

[Bill97]

Thanks Henry. It is interesting about the casting. I made a cast of the same thing that you did for the area we filled in between the knees. Yours appears to be narrow enough that it nicely fits with a small bit of space on each side. My casting of the same ornament actually touches both knees. It looks way to crowded. I have the two knees mounted correctly so I am not sure why mine are slightly closer together than yours. Going to have to pick some other ornament to cast to go in that space. 

[Bill97]

Beakhead bulkhead finished and attached!  Made he doors and used some left over pieces from other builds to fabricate hinges and handles. Seems to be a pretty good fit. Added a second anchor rope for possible use later. If not needed it is easier to take out than put in later. The two gun decks are now closed at the bow. Debated long and hard about adding LED candle lighting to the two gun decks while I still had access, but ultimately decided not to. So I closed her up. 

[Bill97]

Do any of you understand what step #43 is instructing me to do?  After I completed step #42 I don’t have an area at the beakhead that looks anything like this or area to put the steps. 🤔

[Hubac's Historian]

These steps are from inside on the middle deck to outside on the beakhead deck.

[Bill97]

Marc do you have a photo of yours in place?  I am still scratching my head. I am thinking the step looks like it sets on the middle deck and up against the back of the beakhead bulkhead, but there is no opening that the steps lead to.  Then will this ultimately be covered by the forecastle deck?

[Hubac's Historian]

I didn’t take any pictures of this detail, Bill.  These little steps are directly behind and lead up to the beakhead bulkhead door openings, onto the beakhead deck.  Since you have installed doors, here, they really wouldn’t even be visible at all.  The difficulty you are having is that one really needs to install these before glueing in the beakhead bulkhead because, afterwards, you won’t have access to the middle deck, where they are installed.  I wouldn’t worry about it.  Even without beakhead doors they are barely visible.

[Bill97]

Oh OK Marc. Now I understand. There would be two sets of steps. One for each door. I was misreading the picture as showing one step in the center behind the beakhead bulkhead. Now that I understand I see it is too late. Not sure how differently Heller could have shown this step step 😊.  I was reading it as if you did it after step 42, and that the steps were on the next deck up. Oh well. Live and learn. Thanks again. Hope all is going well for you in Manhattan. 

[Hubac's Historian]

Yeah - the instructions are a let-down for this particular step in the build.  It’s an easy thing to miss.  All is well, here.  My son’s basketball schedule will be fast and furious for the remainder of the month, but I continue to make progress on the project.  Life is good - can’t complain.

[Bill97]

Same here on sports schedules, but mine is grandsons. Four involved in basketball, indoor soccer, and archery. Schedule posted on refrigerator so I can keep up with it. So far none appear to conflict so I expect “papaw” will be there to support the each of them at whatever their sport is!  Life is good here as well. 

[Hubac's Historian]

Sentimental side-note: as you know, my Mom's family originates from Louisville.  Her Step-Father, and my Grand-Dad was nicknamed "PawPaw."  My mom gave me his middle name:  Russell.

[Bill97]

That is nice. Maybe your future grandkids will call you PawPaw. Looking at how mine spell my nick name and how they pronounce it, it should be spelled PapPaw!  Never noticed that until you wrote PawPaw. 😊

[Bill97]

With the beakhead bulkhead in place now, I am working on completing the steps that pertain to items on the deck. Once that is done I plan to set the ship aside on a shelf and spend quite a bit of time working on the upper bulwarks off the ship. The grates that cover the hatches in the deck is part of my next step. Marc and Henry, I of course looked through your build, as well as others, for inspiration. I was mainly looking for ideas for the color to paint my grates. The instructions designate a light brown color. Marc I see that you painted your’s red as well as the decking that runs the length. I like that. What was your thoughts in doing that? It also looks as if you may have raised the grates. Did you or am I just mistaking the picture?

[Hubac's Historian]

Hi Bill - I painted my hatches and hatch coamings red, based on what I can see of the Louis Quinz model, as well as that suggested by Jean Claude Lemineur’s St Philippe, where all bits and hatches and other deck furniture are painted red.

 

For the hatches, themselves, I did customize them so that they would be cambered, instead of flat.  Doing this required me to double the gratings, and fortunately friends were willing to donate spare parts they had from extra kits.

I made the coamings from scratch because the scale of my hatches was suddenly not wide enough because the main deck was now considerably wider.

 

By increasing the coaming width, I created the illusion that the gratings were still in-scale.

[Bill97]

Very interesting Marc.  I want to paint mine red as well and since your research verified its accuracy I will proceed happily. I will also make coamings from Evergreen to raise the grates and paint them red. Would you care to recommend the to scale height for my coamings?  My online research said they were about 4”high. Does that seem correct?  At 1/100 scale that would about 1mm or nearly the thickness of the grate. So double the thickness above the surface of the deck would be fairly accurate?  Or am I completely wrong on my height calculations?

[Hubac's Historian]

So you want to elevate the gratings, above the deck surface?  I’m not sure you need to make new coamings for that.  I’m sorry, but I’m a little unclear on what you would like to do here.  Are you also planning to make cambered gratings?

[Bill97]

Marc I guess I may be confused as well.  Looking at your picture I see that your grates are raised higher than the deck surface. I understood this meant the grates were cambered (raised higher than the deck surface). From the description of what you said you did to accomplish the height of the grate, I understood that you simply stacked two matching grates. Thereby making the grate cambered. It also appeared in your photo as if you made a basic frame that the grates set in since they are not even with the deck surface. I assumed the edges/sides of the grates would not have been exposed. So with that assumption as to how it should look I will as going to make a frame of Evergreen, maybe 2 mm high, to go around the hatch in the deck. Then mount the grates flush with the top of the Evergreen. This would make the grates 2 mm above the deck and framed in. Thereby making my grates cambered. Or Marc, as I expect from your confusion above, are you thinking “no no no Bill that is completely wrong and not what I meant!”😀

[Hubac's Historian]

Okay, I see where the confusion lies, but I’ll shelve this discussion until I have a little more time to explain it better.

[Ian_Grant]

Bill, I think there is some confusion about the term "cambered". Cambered does not mean "raised above deck level", it means "having a convex surface". After Marc glued two layers of gratings together, he sanded a side-to-side curve on the top as he showed in his photo with the sanding block in the background. The grey 2nd layer is tapered to zero thickness along the side edges.

[Bill97]

Oh OK Ian I did misunderstand what cambered meant. When I googled the term I got the attached picture and an explanation that the hatches were cambered to raise them above deck level so water on the deck would not run down through the hatch to the lower deck. That is the idea of what I thought I was trying to accomplish. 

[Hubac's Historian]

Yes, Ian explained that pretty succinctly - Thank you!

 

Bill, if you don’t plan to round over the top surface of the gratings, there really is no need to make new coamings.  The stock kit coamings are just proud enough of the decking, at scale.  You can simply paint them red, if you like.