Soleil Royal by EricWiberg - Heller - 1/100 - started 45 years ago

[EricWiberg]

Another Heller Soleil Royal in 1/100 scale... but I started this 45 years ago as a freshman in high school. After 2 years, I had much of the hull assembled.. and then the model sat... I was too busy with sports and school, and then I went off to college in 1980. The hull sat as a "prison ship" in my parent's basement, and then my basement. Over the years, gun lids and other small parts fell off; I don't know why I never threw the model away. About a month ago, I somehow stumbled on this website and marveled at what people were doing with this kit! However, after not having done any modeling for 45 years, I decided that if I were to start with a new kit, I would start with the Heller HMS Victory. I told myself that HMS Victory would be my gift to me in the summer of 2024.... until one night last week, I took the Soleil Royal "hulk" down from storage. The thought occurred "what if??"... and I slowly manged to pull the poop deck free from the hull with no damage. Within two hours, I had broken the hull and the decks and - you name it - apart with basically no damage. Now what? I knew that I had to get the old enamal paint off, so a soft plastic brush and lengthy soakings in isopropyl alcohol got almost all of the paint off. In the last week, after studying what other people had done, I realized that I needed to create fenders, drill rope holes for gun port lids, etc. That's it... I devour the build logs of other people and realized the possibilties were practically endless. I am actually really excited - as if I feel like a kid again! The HMS Victory may have to wait a bit, as the Soleil Royal will help me develop some much needed skills.

[popeye2sea]

Eric,

 

Welcome to the Heller Soleil Royale family.  I also started mine sometime around that same time.

 

Looking forward to what you do with her.

 

Henry

[Ian_Grant]

Always happy to follow another SR build; the more tips I can collect before I pull mine from the stash, the better.

[kirill4]

Good day Eric,

Nice to see You decided to continue your SR building!

All The Best!

[EricWiberg]

Thank you for the welcome! I managed to get some time yesterday to do a few simple things, like thickening the gun port walls, adding anchoe linings, filling in the butt joints on the wales, etc. But two things are making me think before I start addiitonal work. I was an engineer for 35 years, and while I am not necessarily a stickler for precise historical accuracy, I think what often happens in life/history is that "the simplest solution"usually is the result

 

1) gun port lid rope holes. There seems to be a debate between 1 rope vs 2 ropes for the gun port lids. It's curious that the 1977 box art clearly shows 1 rope, and yet the gun port lids in the kit have two tiny little rings engraved, indicating 2 ropes! The box art also shows the single rope hole in the plank directly above the gun port, while there are other pictures/models that show the rope(s) coming out of the hull higher up, in the plank above the first wale over the gun port (which is much closer to the ceiling of the deck above). I also think that I should put a tiny tube in the rope hole(s), ala what I see in HMS Victory photos, as I can't imagine that the rope(s) would be allowed to run back/forth over wood?

 

2) ladder railings. I can't imagine how I would clamber up the wooden steps while gripping a wooden railing that is completely affixed to the side of the hull along its entire length. I could only grip the railing with my thumb and index finger. If the railing stood away from the hull several inches, I could at least wrap my fingers around the back of the railing, which seems a lot simpler to me. I did see a photo of a beautiful 74 gun Fench model ship that simply had a rope coming down through the center of every step with no railing... that seems to me the simplest solution, as you could simply wrap both hands around the rope and rapidly clamber up the wooden ladder. 

 

I don't want to overthink - too much! - but I am curious as to what others think. I like the rope running through the steps concept, as that is so simple (perhaps not as simple to create on this kit, but I would be game)!

[Ian_Grant]

One of the improvements you can make is to scrape off Heller's waterline marking and paint the "white stuff" much higher up, reaching or even partially overlapping the main wale. You've probably read about that....

[EricWiberg]

Ian, thank you for the observation! I just went downstairs and scraped/sanded that waterline off. I may have read that comment before, but there are so many blogs and so many observations that I need to start a detailed list of "what to do" before I go any further.

[Baker]

I built my Heller SR 40 years ago.
good luck

[EricWiberg]

Sigh.. time today to start installing scuppers. After looking at many illustrations/prints, I decided that I wanted the frames very slightly proud, as opposed to flush.  I also made an assumption that the holes were 6" in diameter, or 1.5MM on 1/100 scale. I have some 1.5MM brass tubes that I will blacken and install after painting, though I took a photo with an unblackened insert popped in. I now realize that very few people will ever see these dumb tubes, but as a woodworker friend told me once "I know it's there". And I know I really need those 2.5X magnifying lenses to come in from Amazon! And I have decided that the gun port lids will have one rope...

[EricWiberg]

Whew! Actually got a lot done today, primarily because I got some nice Donegan "glasses" with 2.5X magnification... it has totally changed things for me. Am finally happy with the scuppers, and the fenders are done (well, the bottom ends need to be shaped) but not glued. And I drilled all of the gun port lid holes as I decided to go with ONE rope per gun port lid. You can see the 0.5mm brass tube (will be blackened and inserted after hull painting) that will stick out very slightly from the hull that the black rope runs out of; the black thread was the only 0.25mm thrad that I had on hand to take a photo of. My big "I hope this works out OK" was to trim the ladder steps molded into the hull, and add my own steps onto them with a hole bored for a rope to go down the middle of the steps. that just makes so much more sernse to me. I will also add some quarter rounds under the steps and use Apoxie to fill in any gaps.

[EricWiberg]

Well, after getting 2.5X magnification lenses 10 days ago... I ripped everything apart! But after redoing scuppers and anchor linings, I drilled one hole for each of the gunport lids - not two. I also remade the fenders. The biggest issue was the hull ladders. The rectangular little nubs just didn't look realistic to me. I first tried putting on a simple step on the existing nubs, but ended up cutting off all of the nubs and building my own steps from three pieces. I also drilled a hole in the center of each step to run a rope down. At this point, I am mulling over any possible work to the hull that I might be missing (drilling additionsal holes, etc). However, I think I am very close to scribing a new waterline and getting to work painting the hull.

[Ian_Grant]

Eric, nice work. If I may say so, the fend-offs look a bit too massive in projection from the hull. Just say if you don't want more comments like this. 🫢

[EricWiberg]

Thank you, Ian, and by all means... please keep any and all comments coming (any comment will help me learn)! I am not trying to make a museum piece for my first attempt, but I am trying to be very aware of scale. I had read that the fenders could stick out 12-15", so I used 2.5x2.0 Evergreen stock (i.e. 2mm wide, and 2.5mm sticking out from the hull). If my calculations were correct, 2.5mm is about 10" in real life on 1/100 scale. If they are too proud, I could easily sand them down. I am including another photo to see if that helps clarify. Is there an actual/official number on how far the fenders stock out? We hace fenders that hang from ropes on our pontoon boat, and they are 6" diameter... so I figured 10-12" on wooden fenders on Soleil Royal would be logical.

[Ian_Grant]

No, I don't have any figures. They just looked larger than I've seen on other models....

[EricWiberg]

Ian, you have a very good eye. I have a bunch of Soleil Royal builds bookmarked... I looked through some, and found a comment on John Ott's build. He started that "Goodwin" said the fenders stuck out 14-16" from the hull, and were 4-5" wide. So my fenders by scale are 10" proud from the wales, but are almost 8" wide by scale... NOT the aforementioned 4-5". So they are wide by about 1mm... and I really don't think I will replace them as they are puttied in with Apoxie Scuplt. And I think trying to sand them down will result in making it far worse, so I will chalk this up as a learning experience. 

[Hubac's Historian]

I just love a good reclamation project!  Hi Eric, you are off to a great start here, and I love what you are doing with the upgrades and modifications.  I do have to say that I tend to agree that the skids/fenders are a little too deep.  Heller markets the kit as 1:100, but for my purposes I build to 1:96, as 1/8" to the foot is just an easy dimension to translate to scale.  Personally, I would sand the skids a little closer to the hull tumblehome, and I would also round their bottom ends to a nice soft return on the lower main wale.  I look forward to watching your progress.

 

All the best,

 

Marc

Edited January 9 by Hubac's Historian

[EricWiberg]

Marc. thanks for the observations/recommendations! I started to gently sand the port side fenders down using a sanding block that straddled all 3 fenders. It may be hard to see in the photo comparing both hulls, but the fenders on the left (the port side) have been sanded down almost 1mm. I will now work on gently rounding the bottoms of the fenders. I just bought a used Paasche air brush/compressor, so I am getting close to being able to prime the hull and see what I have. In the meantime, I have been going off in several other directions. I will need 3 eye/eyebolt combinations for all 56 gun ports, and I finally figured out an "assembly line" process to my liking, where I can make the eyes and eye bolts and then blacken them.. the rope is a 0.012" rope from Syren that I will use as my gun port lid ropes. The last picture is a resin mold of a clam shell on the hull... I will need a clam shell or fleur de lis for the inside of every gun port lid... I am surprised at how easy the molding process was and am very happy with the resin pieces.

 

I keep reminding myself that this "rebuild" is a chance to hone and develop skills for my next model and not get too carried away on this one. I was thinking that would be HMS Victory, but maybe it would be another stab at Soleil Royal??

[EricWiberg]

And Marc... I would be remiss if I didn't say that your build is also one of the builds that I have bookmarked and constantly review. Your work is amazing, and is not only aspirational, but also quite insprirational!

[Hubac's Historian]

Thank you, Eric!  As you are discovering now, much of plastic scratch-building is not as difficult as it may initially seem.  When I started my project 7 years ago, I had done very little kit modification.  Before I knew it, it had taken on a life all its own.

[Hubac's Historian]

P.S. I have also found John Ott’s log to be a treasure-trove of accurate historic perspective, and modeling technique.

[EricWiberg]

argghhh... going through the laborious process of soaking the gun port lids in isopropyl alcohol and then scrubbing the old paint off. Then I can do an inventory as I know that I am missing some gun port lids (fortunately, I think I can get some Heller gun port lid trees on Amazon!).

 

Now I have some decisions to make. First, I need to add an inner square to the gun port lid (terminology?) so that the inner square would fit into the gun port lining when closed. The lids provided by Heller are 1mm thick...or about 4" thick if scaled up. It makes sense to me the inner square could be 1.5mm thick, or 6" thick at scale.... so the total gun port lid thickness would be 10" at scale. This seems reasonable to me, and since European oak has a typical density of 45 lbs/ft3, my gun port lid would weigh 277# (add in a few more pounds for iron fittings). I could make the inner lid 1mm thick instead of 1.5mm... but I just like the visual contrast better with a slightly fatter inner lid (note the white polystyrene square in the photo has NOT been cut to size yet... I just wanted to visulaize the thickness).

 

Next are the iron fittings. Heller provides 2 tiny molded rings on the inside and outside of the gun port lid. Both sets will be scraped away, The outside of the lid will have one eye/eye bolt for lifting... I used 0.4mm brass wire for the eye/eye bolts, as when scaled up that is 1.5" thick for the iron fittings. To be honest.. they look a tiny bit big to me, but the rope is 0.012" thick (or 1" if scaled up) and iff I used 0.3mm brass wire instead of 0,4mm... it looks like the rope fit would start to get very tight.

 

I see many pictures and models with two eyes on the inner part of the lid, and some have ropes attached to them. Attaching permanent ropes to help close the lid doesn't make sense to me.. the lid would be lowered by the same block and pulley system that lifted it up. I am guessing that ropes were tied to the eye when the gun port lid was closed to keep the lid tight to shut out the elements? If I believe that, then only one eye/eye bolt combination would also be needed on the inside?

 

Finally... the iron hinges and straps. I was going to sand/scrape the hinges and glue on some very simple black photo-etch straps (after cutting off the tiny rings). The Heller straps actually look much better, but... for any gun port lid in the raised position, no human being could ever peer around the gun port lid to see what the straps look like. And by sanding off the Heller straps and glueing on black metal straps... I don't have to meticulously paint the Heller straps (that no one will ever see any way in the raised position).

 

I do think I will use tiny 1.5mm ID brass tubes with a little piece of wire in them to simulate the hinges, by glueing them to the base of the straps, and then those little tubes can be glued to the hull of the ship... at least those tiny brass tubes/wires will be visible (blackened, of course).

 

I occasionally wonder if I am overthinking things, but I am trying to stay true to scale and also do what makes the most sense (meaning what would they have done 300+ years ago, which is often the simplest solution, no different than today).

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ian_Grant]

47 minutes ago, EricWiberg said:

I occasionally wonder if I am overthinking things, but I am trying to stay true to scale and also do what makes the most sense (meaning what would they have done 300+ years ago, which is often the simplest solution, no different than today).

That's what we do here at Model Ship World !!  😁

 

Eric, you can get free Heller replacement parts! The Heller parts replacement source is Glow2Be in Germany. Go to the "glow2be.de" website, click on "Service" then "Spare Part Form" , print the pdf file and fill it out. I tried scanning and emailing to the address given on the form but it would not go through as the "glow2be" server would not accept messages from my "domain", be that Canada, North America, or whatever. I then FAXed the form to the number given and was rewarded after two days with news that a free part had been shipped! Customer service!   Good luck, Mr. Phelps....

[EricWiberg]

Ian, this is great! I am going to look at this immediately

[EricWiberg]

Well, I did a test gun port lid for the lower gun deck. jut wanted to see the thickness of the lid and how the hardware looked. I decided that 24 gauge wire was too thick, so I tried 26 gauge wire. The hardware is not glued in, just fitted into the hole. I like the thickness of the gun port lid (which does fit neatly into a gun port in the hull) and I am glad I tried 26 gauge wire... I see no need to try 28 gauge wire, as I am satisfied with the scale of the hardware. I think that the single eye/eye  bolt combination on the outside could be moved a bit close to the edge of the gun port lid, but... I do like having a little plank line available on the lid as an aiming port for my drill... and in the raised position, the exact hardward placement will be invisible anyways.

[Ian_Grant]

Eric, IMHO those are too large.  I recommend Caldercraft #83505 brass etch eyes seen below. I used many on my 1/100 Victory; two on the outside and two on the inside of each gunport lid (and various other locations).

 

https://www.cornwallmodelboats.co.uk/acatalog/caldercraft83505.html#SID=3190

 

While I'm on this topic, you can also replace the Heller plastic eyes with copper equivalents if you so choose. They give you confidence that no eye will break as you rig it.

 

https://www.cornwallmodelboats.co.uk/acatalog/caldercraft83500.html

 

Here are the #83505 eyes on the lids.

 

 

[popeye2sea]

I agree with Ian. I wouldn't use anything thicker than 28 ga.  Also, wouldn't it make more sense to have two rings on the outside and only one inside given that all of the heavy lifting is done on the outside?

 

Regards,

Henry

[Hubac's Historian]

I agree with what Ian is saying here.  Generally, I find that it is better to go a little under scale than over scale - especially when it comes to hugely repetitive elements like the gunport lids and their hardware.  It is useful to consider, not just how one lid looks in isolation, but how an entire broadside will look.

[EricWiberg]

Ian and Henry.. thank you for the comments! I was making my own eyes and eye bolts from 26 gauge copper wire, as the local crafts store did not have 28 gauge copper wire! If I can find 28 gauge copper wire, I would make my own as I sort of enjoy the process. However, I will look at the links you sent Ian as if they can make my life easier.. thanks!

 

Henry, I went back and forth between the number of  gun port lid lift ropes.. one or two? I have seen models and pictures of ships using either one or two ropes (including the Soleil Royal and other ships, including Britsh, etc). I ended up deciding to go with ONE rope as that is what was on the cover art of the Heller Soleil Royal that I bought in 1977. I know that in real life, my 32# gun port lids would weight close to 300#, but then I have seen pictures that show an internal pulley system in use that would cut the required effort to lift the lids to 1/3... still a lot of weight to pull. With some putty, I could feel the old holes and drill two holes for each gun port... just a question of time. But based on the picture/models that both one rope and two ropes in use... I still am not sure on which is the right system to use!

[EricWiberg]

Ian, Henry, and Marc (any anyone else out there!), I value your opinions and observations - thank you! And Ian, that HMS Victory looks beautiful...

 

I clearly need smaller eyes/bolts... I like the links that you sent me, Ian, but I wonder if I might a source in the US? Or I find 28 gauge copper wire..

 

Finally - one gun port lid rope or... two gun port lid ropes? Which direction do you guys lean? When I read the the build blogs, there are certain things that are clearly 100% the unadulterated truth... "the Soleil Royal had three masts and not four, etc"....  whereas there doesn't seem to be anything absolutely unequivacal that.. TWO gun port lid ropes were ALWAYS used... or was it one? So in some areas that there doesn't seem to be clear supporting evidemce, then more or less that means the builder can formulate a picture in their mind on that subject and go from there? 

[EricWiberg]

Well, I tried another crafts store and found some 28 gauge that I could try right away to compare... pretty amazing! from top to bottom in the photo, 24 gauge, 26 gauge, and 28 gauge. Quite a difference, as you guys said!