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 November 30 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 December 3 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 December 3 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.

[EricWiberg]

The various scuppers are done... it's been an interesting several days learning abut scuppers, as the subject is a little more complex than I thought!

 

First, the small deck scuppers. Positioned at the lowest run of a deck to let gravity get the water out, and I have assumed that more deck scuppers would be needed on a weather deck. I decided to basically make them flush to the hull; sometimes they are portrayed as being a block that looked out past a wale. You can see 10 deck scuppers below; 5 on the top gun (weather) deck, 3 on the middle gun deck, and 2 on the lower gun deck ( do have a scupper hole for the manger at the bow). The holes are 0.030" (to simulate 3" at scale), and the scuppers are positioned below the level of the deck.

 

 

The pump scuppers were a bit more interesting. The St. Phillippe mongraph states that SP had 6 total elm pumps. 4 at the main mast and 2 at mizzen mast. Surely another large ship like Soleil Royal would require 6 elm tree pumps, and I assumed at the same locations. So my first attempt was making large scupper boxes that protruded from the hull.

 

 

But then I found a short video on YouTube that showed an elm pump being worked on the refurbished Hermione.... and the volume of water seemed rather small. One source said that HMS Victory elm pumps could do 25GPM, compared to the 1,000+GPM of a chain pump. So decided to downsize my pump scuppers... and I found another video by Animigraffs. This screen clip shows how the water is discharged from an elm pump, into what seems to be troughs that run the water through a scupper at deck.

 

 

This seemed confusing... until I corresponded with Marc LaGuardia (Hubac's Historian"). He mused that the wood troughs were very likely movable, and would be moved into place as needed. So, while the deck scuppers are positioned several feet below the run of a deck, the pump scuppers must be right at deck level. The pump scupper holes have been downsized to 0.041", or 4" in scale. Note the smaller deck scupper to the right. BTW, all of the six scuppers were at the lower gun deck level, as that is where the elm pumps were worked and the moveable troughs would be laid on the lower deck

 

 

So I learned more about scuppers than I thought was possible to know. I did mess around with 28 gauge copper wire rings that I gently tapped with a hammer, in order to make a thin ring that would suggest the lead that scuppers were lined with. Even 28 gauge is too thick; I really would want the ring to be super-thin so it could be flush with the hole; and tapping it to make it thin enough makes it too large in diameter - at least I think it appears out of scale. 

 

 

 

[Hubac's Historian]

The scale of the “lead” lining does not jump out at me.  I think they look good.

[EricWiberg]

Thank you for that observation, Marc. I will make a few more.. they wouldnt be applied until after hull painting

[Hubac's Historian]

One observation just dawned on me, and I don’t know whether you did this deliberately, Eric, but the slightly wider than stock separation between the three lower bands of wales, actually improves the scale perception of the height between decks.  This is one of those clever visual tricks that I recommend to anyone following in your foot steps. 

[EricWiberg]

Marc, I did it deliberately, but I can't claim I did it for the brainy reason you just offered. I believe my thinking was that IF the lower wales were beefier than the middle wales, and the middle wales were beefier than the top wales (now, is that even true?), then I might want to space the wales a bit further apart as I went up the hull as those lower wales would be so strong, the next wale didn't have to be as close.... again, not even sure if that is a correct way of thinking

[Hubac's Historian]

I don’t know either, but it works!

[EricWiberg]

The closer I get to painting the hull.. the more I discover things I want to correct. And I have discovered the beauty of plastic is that you can basically make - and correct! - anything.

 

For example, I naively made an assumption about gun port sizes. The gun ports below are on the upper gun deck; the port on the left is exposed to the elements, and won't receive a lid; whilst the gun port on the right is sheltered bvy the forecastle deck and will have a gun port lid. I assumed gun ports without lids would simply appear larger, as they didn't have rabbeting. 

 

 

Wrong. Well, that's a simple fix with Evergreen and some Tamiya putty. So all gun ports. lid or not, will appear to be the same size.

 

 

Of course, I then had to drag out the laser leveler and recheck all of the gun ports that I last checked two months ago. I don't think I have seen how other people check for vertical plumb on items like gun ports or fenders, but for me it is extremely fast and easy to use the laser level on a tripod and just move the model gun port by gun port. 

 

 

And of course, I found four gun ports that I didn't feel were true enough on the port side! I just check for vertical plumb, as it seems my eye is good enough to check for, and correct for if needed, horizontal level. The good news is that major surgery wasn't required, just some very light scraping and file work.

 

I would rather find these things that need corrections now then when I am painting the hull!

[EricWiberg]

I clipped the hull halves together and made sure that all of the decks and bulkheads fit nicely.... because I planked the inside of the bulwarks with 0.5mm thick planks, I "lost" 1 mm of width that I had to compensate for by trimming away the planking. The nice thing is I don;t have to be incredibly precise, as the weather decks will all have spirketting to cover up any subtle gaps.

 

 

I also panelled/filled in the last seven timberheads on the last and highest rail. I have seen this look on some drawings, and when I looked at Micheal Saunier's model, I realized that filling in those timberheads would allow me to have the poop royal deck as high as possible; if the timberheads were not filled in, you could see the edges of the poop royal deck halfway up the timberheads. Also, that extra flat surface allows me additional surface area to decorate... 

 

 

Finally, I got a better look at the beak. It looks like I will have to double the thickness of the stem to make it more substantial for the beak.

 

 

Finally, I am doing a last inspection of every gun port, every wale, every plank line, every copper bolt and bolt head, etc. Better to find and correct now than after the the hull painting. 

Edited December 14 by EricWiberg

[Hubac's Historian]

Superb, Eric!

[EricWiberg]

So in the last two weeks, I have been able to put a lot of work into the ship... but yet, if you look at the following pictures, it would seem that nothing has changed.

 

By way of explanation, I have found myself doing what Penelope (wife of Odysseus) did.... whereas she wove a burial shroud by day, she unraveled most of it every night. So in the last two weeks, I unraveled a lot of things on my ship! By way of explanation, I did a lot of detail items, like rabbeting the gun ports,  making through bolts for the wale scarf joints, etc. BEFORE I filled in the hull plank lines with Tamiya putty so I could rescribe plank lines to match the sweep of the wales. Also, I didn't know I would be attaching the bulwarks at such an early stage; Apoxie Sculpt did a wonderful job of filling any gaps between the hull and the bulwarks, but talk about dust!

 

And then I grew unhappy with the gun ports on the top deck - I felt that I hade made them too small (7mm x 6mm). So I cut out all of my prior rabbeting, and enlarged and then checked every gun port for level on the top gun deck, as well as the quarterdeck and poop deck. OK... I liked that a lot better and just finished rabbeting the gun ports. So.... I am back where I was two weeks ago! And that means glue in the cleats on the inside of the bulwarks, and I might be priming the hull this weekend.

 

I do have a general question on ship clean up... I find  myself creating lots of dust and small particles, from scribing plank lines, from drilling out the Tamiya putty that settled in gun port lid holes, sanding Apoxie Sculpt, etc. My only solution has been to bathe the hull pieces in a bath tub with a bit of dish soap. This does seem to get rid of the dust, and it doesn't seem to cause damage to the ship or cause tiny parts to break off. But is there a better way to clean this debris off?

[Hubac's Historian]

She looks fantastic, Eric!  As for cleanup, exactly what you are doing has always been my go to.  Just a little dish detergent in water and an old toothbrush to get into all the tight spots.  This is really the best method for degreasing the hull, without using anything harmful to the plastic.

[EricWiberg]

Ahh, the toothbrush will definitely help.. thank you!

[Hubac's Historian]

As I zoom-in, here, and really look - two things:

 

First, you have done a really excellent job of fine-tuning the wales.  Their run is impeccably consistent.

 

All of your effort to fill and re-scribe plank lines has been well worth it!  It is interesting to note the difference in sheer, between the kit and what you are representing; 1693 vs 1671.