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

[EricWiberg]

Finishing the starboard skids. I had fabricated the skids to extend down to the "top" bottom wale... but if the "lower" bottom wale is dipping into the water amidships, then it made sense to me to lower the skid down to the "lower" bottom wale. I am also doubling/reinforcing the thickness of the skids at the bottom wales; I have seen that on a few drawings and models... not sure what that is called besides "reinforcement".

 

The next step will be the skids/hand rails at the ladder steps on the hull. However, I am a bit puzzled as... were all of the ladder steps jutting out the same amount from the hull.. let's say 6 inches? But if we have steps on a wale, they will stick out farther than a step not on a wale, if this makes sense. I am thinking that the ladder steps stuck out to to a fixed point, whether they were on a wale or not, that followed the tumblehome of the hull. So let's say we pick 12 inches out from the hull... on a 6 inch thick wale, the step would be 6 inches wide. but the next step - NOT on a wale - would this have to be 12 inches wide?!? Hope this makes sense

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 17 by EricWiberg

[Hubac's Historian]

So, the skids look really good - great scribe around the wales.

 

As for scale on the ladder steps - at 1:96 scale, the stock kit steps are a generous 1/32”, or 3” at full scale.  Personally, I would not go beyond 1/16”, or 6” at scale, and I would carry that uniformly across the wales.

[Hubac's Historian]

It’s a veeery fine line between “is right” and “looks right at scale.”

[Hubac's Historian]

Generally, I abide by under-scale, when in doubt.

[EricWiberg]

Back from a week of vacation in a warmer place than Wisconsin, and had a lot of time to relax and review other build logs. And I came to the conclusion that if I am really trying to model "Soleil Royal 1671", then I couldn't stop at simply bashing the wales/bulwarks to have much more aft sheer. I also had to make the bow more "Dutchy looking" (I think I first saw that term reading Marc's Hubacs Historian blog!). 

 

I want to: 1) change the bowsprit angle, 2) lower the catheads, 3) wrap the forward bulwark around past the beakhead bulkhead (not sure what this is called), and 4) lower/lengthen the beakhead

 

Below you can see my tracing of the Heller kit supplied parts. The Heller kit has 34 degrees angle (orange marker below). Mondfeld says in 1665 it was 40 degrees, then 35 degrees in 1675. The St Phillipe monograph is 40 degrees, and I found a Zeven Provincean plan which is also at 40 degrees. Sooooo, I am thinking I could do 39-40 degrees and be just fine; see the new black lines drawn in.

 

With a known bowsprit angle, the other items like cathead placement and headrail positioning will fall in place (yup, I am thinking I will scratch build the head rails..).

 

 

 

Where I am struggling now is is with the beakhead design... "lower and longer". By increasing the angle of the bowsprit from 34 degrees to 40 degrees, the figurehead APPEARS to be lower. Perhaps I just need to examine some prints like the VDV drawing below and take cues to "lengthen" the beakhead a bit from the Heller kit part?

 

Edited November 25 by EricWiberg

[popeye2sea]

If the stem sweeps up to meet the underside of the bowsprit won't you end up with a higher beak head?

 

Henry

[EricWiberg]

Henry, you are correct. Basically if I use the kit bowsprit fit as is,  I can have longer/lower for the beakhead... OR a slightly higher angle of the bowsprit.

 

There is one possibility though.... the Heller kit has the bowsprit going through the beakhead bulkhead. Cedric, in his La Reine build, stated that French ships before 1690 had the bowsprit go through the "first deck".... but I didn't know what he meant by that.

 

I happened to look at Micheal Saunier's build, and his bowsprit is pushed forward and enters through the bowsprit deck - ah ha! the "first deck" - and NOT through the bulkhead.

 

Marc (Hubacs Historian) agrees that this does seem a plausible design consideration for me.... so by pushing the bowsprit forward and have it enter the bowsprit deck, I does appear I can get the beakhead "longer/lower" AND maybe even tweak the bowsprit angle up (not sure how far yet).

 

Playing with paper templates suggests this is possible. 🤞 

Edited November 26 by EricWiberg

[Hubac's Historian]

While I agree with piercing the beakhead deck, the thing about Cedric’s comment that I’ve wrestled with is the possibility that the foot of the sprit-mast anchors between fore bit extensions at the lower battery level, as opposed to entering through the beakhead bulkhead and anchoring through bit extensions, at the middle deck level.  If I remember, that is precisely what Nigel has modeled on his AL Soleil Royal build.  This would account for the higher 40 degree angle that you tend to see on the early First-Marine ships.

 

As I’ve mentioned in our correspondence, though, I think it becomes a matter of prioritizing one thing over the other.  What has to be born in mind is the fact that the interspace between decks amounts to a very generous 7’ headroom.  This exaggeration, if applied literally to the geometry of the bowsprit angle would be correspondingly exaggerated.

 

I think you pattern your cutwater and headrails so that they are proportionally pleasing to the rest of the bow, and adjust your bowsprit angle accordingly.  It won’t be exactly correct, but a reasonable impression of what is more or less correct for the period.

[Hubac's Historian]

As a thought on plastic surgeries - one could remove an 1/8” band of “planking” all along the lower and middle batteries, in an effort to make the height of the Heller hull more reasonable.  You could maybe even do this above the main deck guns.  There are problems, though, with re-joining through the middle tier of guns where the tumblehome is a reverse curve.

 

I am not at all suggesting that you should try this.  There are multiple compounding issues, down the line, that make this very tricky and maybe impossible.  It’s just a thought that popped into my head.

 

One of the mitigating factors is that the Heller hull is a bit longer than it should be for the first ship, so that makes her height seem a little more proportional.

 

In the end, what you are doing amounts to creating a combination of optical illusions that gives a sense of correctness.

Edited November 26 by Hubac's Historian

[EricWiberg]

Marc, I have been thinking about what you just mentioned for my next build.. is it possible to remove 1/8" of spacing between lower/middle gun decks and middle/upper gun decks.

 

I will have plenty of time to look at this... for example, if I do a Royal Louis 1668, or SR 1671, I would likely redo all of the wales again to get the aft sheer sweep... and maybe a cut could be made unobtrusively that would get covered 

 

 

[Hubac's Historian]

It may be possible, but you’d have to map it carefully where ever the tumblehome is least obtrusive; beneath the lower battery ports/along the upper main wale, and above the middle battery ports/along the lower top wale.

 

Even then, it may not work without introducing distortion, or ending up too short at the stern.

[EricWiberg]

I have settled on the idea that the beakhead should appear "longer/lower" than the Heller kit model, something like this VDV drawing of La Reyne. 

 

 

I made of a copy of the St Phillipe monograph bulkhead and shrank it from 1/48 to 1/96.. and that is more of the look that I am trying to achieve.

 

 

Compared the kit parts to the St Phillipe Evergreen cutout...

 

 

Obviously, there is going to be a lot of scratch building. The first thing that I had to do was to complete the bottom wales all of the way to the stem (I hadn't run them all of the way before as that area was going to be covered up by the kit parts). It looked to me on the St Phillipe monograph that the thickness of the bottom wales really thinned out as they wrapped around to the stem, so I sanded/shaved them down. I then added the hawser... "holes"?... back by using 4mm copper rings that I countersunk a bit into the original plastic holes (I didn't worry about them being perfect as the anchor ropes will obscure most of the hawser holes). I will also add the ... name?? ... of the rounded moulding just under the hawser holes.

 

I also started to make changes to the bowsprit deck by eliminating the round houses, and I wanted to see the layout as the  foward bulkead "cheeks"(?) wrap forward around the bowsprit deck. Of course that means scratch building the beakhead bulkhead, but I was going to have to do that anyways as I raised the height of the forward bulkead by 5mm. So I now have a long list of things that need to be done and be considered regarding the beakhead appearance, but the hulls have to be painted and glued together first for that to proceed! The fenders are finished on both sides, so now the side ladder steps/railing must be finished... getting me ever closer to where I can start painting the hull halves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited Saturday at 05:01 PM by EricWiberg

[EricWiberg]

Finished the ladders. It would have been easier to keep the kit steps, but... they vanished when I ground off the wales.

 

I made a simple template and placed them 3mm apart. It was actually very easy and took no more than 30 minutes to affix all of the steps (despite my dread months ago whem I ground the kit wales/steps off). Steps on a wale were only 0.5mm wide; while steps in between the wales were 1.0mm. Some clean up work needs to be done, and when I get several inches away with my magnifying headset, I see plenty that I don't like. However, when I back away a few inches, or look at the more distant perspective in photos, I can't see most of the flaws. I can live with that, and my technique will be better when I make my second ship. The boat fenders were 1.5mm wide (6.0 inches in actual size), while the ladder railings were only 1mm wide (4.0 inches in real size). 

 

On to scuppers. There seems to be a large range of latitude in scupper design and their numbers. Some models have scupper holes flush with the hull; some models have "boxes" that protrude a bit from the hull. Mondfeld (by the way, someone suggested a few months ago that I get Historic Ship Models... what a fantastic book!)  suggests that three-deckers had two or three pairs of scuppers on the middle deck and upper deck, so I think that is what I will try. And I have to bear in mind a set of larger scupper holes for the pump, and he says these are located "above the waterline" (lower gun deck?) and located between the main mast and mizzen mast... 

 

 

 

 

[Hubac's Historian]

Eric - this all looks fantastic.  You have gotten right, IMO, the thing that eludes most with the skids:  you have not over-scaled their projection from the hull.

 

I also really like your waist ladder cut-through at the timberhead level.  This is a very equitable solution to those particular problems of scale.

 

Scuppers are an interesting subject of debate - their number and location.  I concentrated my scuppers at the lowest point in the deck sheer - the waist.

 

However - this highly detailed drawing of the 1668 Dauphin Royal supports the notion of scuppers along the rising deck sheer, between the main and mizzen masts:

As far as I understand these drawings, there are very fine lines representing the relatively flat deck sheer (relative to the wale sheer), that are punctuated by dark dots that I believe represent the scuppers.

 

Now, as to whether scuppers should always project from the hull sides:  At the waist, in particular and below the lowest gun tier, projection from the hull and wales makes sense because these peculiar canvas back-flow sleeves, or socks, would be nailed to the end of the scupper pipes to prevent rolling seas from washing back into the lower decks:

Above, said socks run through the waist, beneath the lower main wales and are mostly submerged beneath the waterline.

 

So, maybe higher-sheer, aft-most scuppers were simply flush scuppers because any run-off that didn’t flow back out of them, would just work its way out at the waist?

Edited 16 hours ago by Hubac's Historian

[Hubac's Historian]

As a side-note, I think your waist J-hancing pieces should drop down to and overlap the light drift-rail that runs just beneath the waist fighting holes.  The fine “liston d’or” that adorns this rail would merely fair into these hancing Js.

Edited 16 hours ago by Hubac's Historian

[EricWiberg]

Interesting observations on the scuppers, Marc. It would be interesting to try and model a "sock" on several of the lowest scuppers...hmmm

 

And I agree completely on the J-shaped hancing pieces...

 

[Hubac's Historian]

I may yet do the socks.  I just haven’t yet devised a convincing method of representing them.  I suspect it can be done, off-model, with modelspan tissue and dilute white glue, formed around a dummy scupper.  I just haven’t played around with that material yet.