Soleil Royal by KevinW - Heller 1:100

[KevinW]

28/9/26

Here goes – another Heller SR! Actually, there aren’t so many build logs of this kit so one more shouldn’t be too repetitive. I’m very familiar with Marc’s (hubacs historian) build and have bookmarked others on SoS for reading over the next week or two. Sadly John Ott’s log was lost in the MSW hack, along with Bills (Bill97) invaluable step-by-step. Such is life!

I don’t really have much idea where this build will take me. I’ve always been under the impression that this kit has some moulding issues, but on opening the box and looking at the quality of the pressings I’m scratching my head as to why I had that thought. Mine appears to be one of the earlier pressings from the partnership between Heller & Aurora in the late 1970's. A superficial once-over has me seeing virtually no flash and very crisp, well defined profiles. Nor does it seem overly brittle.

Anyway, I will certainly remake all the guns and rigging parts: the guns, because I can make their assembly so much more enjoyable and the rigging, because 3D printed blocks are miles better than kit parts. I expect there’ll be a fair few smaller parts that are worth a remake too, but I’m not so sure about the décor panels.

So, before I get going, what are the ‘de riguer’ (to get into character) modifications? I’ve seen fender strips and strips on the outer edges of the hull side steps; hull thickening; shifting the waterline up (but by how much?). Is there anything else?

 

[DARIVS ARCHITECTVS]

Looking forward to it! "De rigueur" modifications are those which are essential to the design of the hull or imposed by shipbuilding standards. One of those hull improvements is girdling. When a vessel was completed but found to be too narrow, unstable, or "tender" (meaning it leaned over too easily under the force of the wind), shipwrights would perform a girdling modification. This involved fastening a secondary layer of thick timber planks directly outboard onto the existing hull structure, specifically at and around the ship's waterline.

Below left: ship hull without girdling. Ship is "tender", which means when tipped to the side, the force that returns the hull to vertical is weaker than desired. Right: After girdling, the hull is wider, and the force which returns the hull to vertical is stronger, plus the ship is a bit more buoyant because the hull displaces more water. In addition to strengthening hull, girdling can often have the added benefit of making the ship more stable under heavy sail wind load.

Girdling was typically performed after a ship has been built, sailed, and found wanting in stability. I have no information on whether Soleil Royal ever needed girdling. Ships with a high center of gravity are good candidates for girdling.

 

[Hubac’s Historian]

Kevin - I’ve been waiting for this day! It is, of course, very exciting for me to see where you take all of this.

I will say that the early pressings of this kit are made with superior plastic. Mine is an original pressing, and it all remains as supple as the day it was moulded.

Generally, though, warpage is an issue. I found this, particularly, with the figurehead. You might get lucky, there, though. I didn’t use the kit QG’s, obviously, but when I made this model the first time, I found it advantageous to bind the QGs, through the middle gallery tier, with fishing line that I later disguised with paint. Also, the fit of the upper bulwarks to the lower hull requires quite a lot of massaging, in order to seat a solid joint. I heavily re-enforced all questionable joins with 1/16” styrene backing strips.

If I weren’t cutting the lower hull away, I would raise the waterline by at least 1/4”, and more likely 5/16”. Your anti-fouling paint line will certainly cross the lower wale, but as long as you are at least four scale feet (1/2” in 1:96) from the lowest sills of the lower deck ports, then you will not be stretching the bounds of credulity.

On the subject of SR’s sailing qualities, it was remarked upon that her initial sea trials were very favorable, however, there is much doubt that she was nearly fully armed. As a prestige ship, she and the Royal Louis were armed exclusively in bronze, and French foundries, of the day, could not match the pace of demand.

There is a nearly infinite degree of detailing that can be added, but I recommend that you think long and hard about which of those details really matter to you, as there is just so much repetition involved. I know that you hold yourself to a very high standard of workmanship, so this tendency towards more than less detail can become a bit of a bear.

For me, representing the iron work that holds the ship together was important, so I went all-in on that. I am sure there are more efficient ways to achieve the effects I did, but those were just the workable processes I arrived at. Tedious as it was, I did not mind the process. On the other hand, chain making and gun rigging were not enjoyable learning curves, but I think my guns going forward will be more-so. I’ve worked through the problems, at this point.

I suppose the first thing you have to ask yourself is this: do I want to try and represent SR at a particular epoch of her career (as launched 1670/refit 1689/new ship 1693), or am I okay with the composite ship that Tanneron’s model represents, and simply wish to upgrade the degree and quality of details?

 

[Hubac’s Historian]

If you decide to use the kit QG’s, I would say they are much improved by opening them up, so that the trophy of war ornaments can either be mounted to the QG interiors (as on Tanneron), or dispensed with in favor of something more coherent.

Interestingly, on Tanneron’s model, the trophies are separated, along the upper bulwark walls, by support brackets that support the gallery floors above:



photos courtesy of Yoann Guillemenet

They’re a little hard to made out in these pictures, but they’re there. This is a detail that I have yet to see anyone model on the Heller kit.

 

[KevinW]

Hi Kurt, Marc, thanks for looking in and your advice

I'm going to start by assembling the major parts of the kit using dots of CA, just so that I can better see what problems lie ahead and how I might tackle them. I can't get a feel for the ideal build sequence from the Heller instructions and, as anyone who has built this kit will know, it doesn't lend itself so well to dry fitting. I guess a blessing of the separate upper bulwarks is that, if you do want to remake them, at least you don't have to cut them out of the hull!

I like the added depth of the opened up QG's and think these (the QG's) may not be overly difficult to remake. Let's hope those aren't famous last words! The same applies to the stern. Good as the mouldings are, the relief would be improved by a multipart approach.

Going back to your log now, Marc, can I ask, are the boltheads to scale? And what are these four small square additions in the centre of the middle wale? (And the 5 of the same in the lower wale)?

 

[Hubac’s Historian]

Hi Kevin

The wale through-bolts have been scaled by eye: the heads would be roughly 3” in diameter, based on what I’m representing here. Maybe that’s a tad large, but then - it looks in- line with what I see in contemporary drawings:





Puget, in my opinion, captures a sense of photo-realism that is on a par with the Van de Veldes:




Some modelers prefer to calculate scale dimensions to the thousandth, but I prefer to trust my sense of relative proportion - having spent so much time scrutinizing drawings like this.

As a matter of fact, I’ll tell you a little secret. When it comes to finally rigging my ship, I will not be doing any abstruse calculations of line diameter. I know that the line weights are graduated; heavier line on the lower sections of mast, and progressively lighter weights for each level, on up. The same is true for blocks. I will simply use the 1:96 drawing of the St. Philippe as a visual reference and I will go from there. The idea of turning the whole thing into an infinitely complex series of calculations is deeply unappealing to me, personally.

Everyone has their own approach, but sometimes the overall impression of the thing is more important than whether it is rigorously correct. When in doubt, it is generally better to err on the side of lighter rather than heavier.

What you are seeing between the wales of my model are the scuppers, which also show up on the battle damaged vessel, above. What I have omitted, for now, on the lower tier of scuppers are the canvas backflow socks that you actually can discern on the VDV drawing. If I include them, they will be made from tissue, most likely, and not installed until I’m actually setting the model in it’s sea.

The wider scuppers represent the outflow from the bilge pumps, fore and aft of the main mast.

These are not an essential detail to include, but I thought they were a good addition because they are so important to the weatherliness of the ship.

 

[KevinW]

I think I'm largely in the same camp - I am kind of viewing the SR as an art project, so for me it's the overall effect that matters. I mean this in the sense that, when I see very old machines, bridges, ships, cars, buildings etc, I am constantly attracted to the artistry as well as the engineering. This is why I like to remake so many parts of the kits, because the constraints of injection moulding sometimes means the artistry is lost. For instance the winches and pumps on the Cutty Sark are things of beauty; the Revell representations are crude lumps of plastic. I'm sure I'll find similar on the SR, once I open some of the bags.

 

[Hubac’s Historian]

Yes, a lot of the Heller parts are pretty generic. Although they follow the general scale and layout of the Tanneron model, the kit gratings have no camber and very shallow coamings. The cleats are too big for the areas intended, flanking the main and quarter deck gratings. The breast rails belong on a clipper ship. There is no apparent access to
the poop deck, nor the poop-royal deck. The kit eyebolts are necessarily too heavy because they’re made from plastic. It is far better to make them from annealed wire.

The gun carriages are pretty good, as long as you space the trucks properly. You can add a wealth of detail to them that makes them far more realistic. The big issue with the gun carriages is that the trunnion mounts are above the level of the carriage cheeks; they should be set into the cheeks, with cap squares locking them in.

There are all kinds of problems with the masting and spars. The lower main and fore mast resemble the built-up construction of the 18th Century. The proportions of the topmast and t’gallant sections are too long, relative to the lower section. The main and fore tops are too small in diameter. The topmast tops are comically oversize and from the next century.

The bowsprit. There are some significant problems, here. The steeve of the bowsprit is too shallow for a french ship, and as a result, the forward escutcheon of the kit headrails flanks each side of the sprit-mast. This is completely non-sensical. In order to get around this, I re-designed the headrails completely, but I had enough incentive to do so because the aft escutcheon of the headrails is markedly different for 1689, as drawn by Jean Berain.

The big question, is whether you want to tackle the kit over-simplification of the upper bulwark frieze, what with the crossed rope-tie things and the far too small shells and fleurs, and the abundance of drift rails.

 

[KevinW]

All that you mention, Marc, has me still cogitating. While I'm not a historical perfectionist, I hated that the deck on the Revell Cutty Sark was about 5mm too high, meaning the cabins were too high, it was impossible to do proper gammoning on the bowsprit, and equally impossible to make a nice job of the bulwarks.

The masts are not too much of a concern as I will probably remake them anyway, using the same methods I used for the CS - resin printed with a square carbon fibre rod for strength. The same applies to fittings - all are quick and easy to remake.

The bulwarks, QG's, stern and prow area are the bigger concerns. To answer your question, yes, I would want to improve on these areas because these are the essence of the ship for me. After looking at the bulwarks a lot, remaking is not especially hard but doing so in a way that makes for a strong bond to the hull is less easy, bearing in mind I'd lose the 'welded' benefit of styrene cement.

I'm very conscious that the path I've taken for the Victory (still WIP, all these years on) has made it heavy going. I have remained determined to keep it rooted in the Heller kit, principally by using the Heller hull, which means the parts I make, like the side entrance and QG's, need to conform to the hull. I'm thinking I might want to avoid the same trap for this one by perhaps just using Heller as a reference/dummy model, and making my own hull either in the same scale or bigger. Artesania Latina kindly publish POB frame profiles for their 1/72 kit and I'm wondering how good/true a hull this produces, shape-wise? Any opinions? I don't think I'd actually go POB, more likely is that I'd transpose the templates into CAD and use them to form a printable hull and I would then probably cut my own decks to suit, via laser. If I make my own 3D hull I can make QG's, a stern plate, head rails etc, that will fit perfectly. The fun part will be making the decorations, but with Meshy apparently being amazing now, that might be more interesting than frustrating.

 

[Hubac’s Historian]

The AL SR does three things very well; plausibly shaped bulkheads, great headrails, and nicely detailed QGs and stern ornamentation.

Nigel’s model perfectly illustrates the good lines that can be achieved, if those bulkheads are deployed along an accurate scale length for the hull; Nigel lengthened the keel, in order to space the guns properly:








There is quite a stark difference between Nigel’s efforts and what AL prototyped. Not only did he correct the dimensional aspect, but he incorporated the accurate sheer of the wales for a ship of this time period.

To this day, it remains one of my favorite builds.

 

[KevinW]

Do you have a link to that log?

 

[DARIVS ARCHITECTVS]

Do you have a link to that log?

Soleil Royal- Re-engineering Artesania Latina's New Kit by NMBROOK

 

[Hubac’s Historian]

Voila:

Soleil Royal- Re-engineering Artesania Latina's New Kit by NMBROOK

Hi All I was determined not to buy any more kits as I have enough projects and pastimes to keep me going beyond retirement. However this release changed all that, I simply HAD to build it. Not because it is an amazing model straight out of the box but more a case that I realised the potential...

shipsofscale.com

 

[KevinW]

Thanks gents. After a quick skim that feels like it’ll be an important reference for me.

 

[WojtasS]

All that you mention, Marc, has me still cogitating. While I'm not a historical perfectionist, I hated that the deck on the Revell Cutty Sark was about 5mm too high, meaning the cabins were too high, it was impossible to do proper gammoning on the bowsprit, and equally impossible to make a nice job of the bulwarks.

The masts are not too much of a concern as I will probably remake them anyway, using the same methods I used for the CS - resin printed with a square carbon fibre rod for strength. The same applies to fittings - all are quick and easy to remake.

The bulwarks, QG's, stern and prow area are the bigger concerns. To answer your question, yes, I would want to improve on these areas because these are the essence of the ship for me. After looking at the bulwarks a lot, remaking is not especially hard but doing so in a way that makes for a strong bond to the hull is less easy, bearing in mind I'd lose the 'welded' benefit of styrene cement.

I'm very conscious that the path I've taken for the Victory (still WIP, all these years on) has made it heavy going. I have remained determined to keep it rooted in the Heller kit, principally by using the Heller hull, which means the parts I make, like the side entrance and QG's, need to conform to the hull. I'm thinking I might want to avoid the same trap for this one by perhaps just using Heller as a reference/dummy model, and making my own hull either in the same scale or bigger. Artesania Latina kindly publish POB frame profiles for their 1/72 kit and I'm wondering how good/true a hull this produces, shape-wise? Any opinions? I don't think I'd actually go POB, more likely is that I'd transpose the templates into CAD and use them to form a printable hull and I would then probably cut my own decks to suit, via laser. If I make my own 3D hull I can make QG's, a stern plate, head rails etc, that will fit perfectly. The fun part will be making the decorations, but with Meshy apparently being amazing now, that might be more interesting than frustrating.

Good luck with your project. It would be awesome to see 1/100 1669 SR in a 3d print similar to Heller model. In my opinion using heller's hull to make another one in the same scale is wasting time. It's a very good representation of Tanneron's SR. You can improve it effortlessly as id doesn't need any major changes besides opening boutelies and refining details of equipment

Artesania used data from research of Marc Yeu, but only partialy I don't know why. On the Arsenal forum you have all the data you need to make it from scrach.
There're already some 3d print files to buy for 1669 SR online you can find them her on SOS

Soleil Royal 1669 - échelle 1/72 - Page 21

Je préfère le choix Berain à Tanneron. La quête de l'étambot peut-être de 1/4, 1/5 ,1/6 ème de l'élancement de l'étrave sachant que celle-ci est de 18 à 20 lign

5500.forumactif.org

Soleil Royal 1692

J'ai utilisé cette dernière solution pour les affûts de 24 du 118, je ne voulais pas prendre le risque de voir des pointes dépasser au travers du bordage. Le pi

5500.forumactif.org

 

[KevinW]

Hi Wojtas
The rationale for remaking the heller hull is purely because it is such a pig to make 3d scratch built qg’s fit to a hull. I won’t even admit to St Peter, when I get there, how many hours I spent on the HMS Victory stern.

However…. I think I have probably already moved on from that idea and more towards just using Heller to visualise the way ahead. Thanks for the links, they will be very useful! I’ve seen the figurehead and decor that are advertised on this site, they look excellent but I think I’d rather see how I get on making my own.

 

[Hubac’s Historian]

Well, I’m not really clear how much hull re-design you have in-mind, but here is another useful log from this site, that fleshes out Laurent and Etienne Hubac’s proposal for a first-rate ship, from 1679.

The overall dimensions listed are not those of SR, and the lower transom conforms to the post-1672 reglement, which specified that the wing transom, which defines the greatest width of the stern, should be placed below the stern chase ports. This is also the case, by the way, for the Tanneron/Heller models. However, SR1 - even after her reconstruction in 1689 - maintained her wing transom above the stern chase ports. The primary evidence for this is that Berain’s stern drawing reflects this. This may also be reflected, dimensionally, in the 1685 Le Havre survey document, but I have not done a deep dimensional dive on that, as yet. In French, if I remember correctly, the wing transom is called the lisse d’ourdey.

I suppose the primary benefits of this new arrangement would be better buoyancy for the tall after-castle, and more room to maneuver chase guns when needed, at the expense of rudder steerage.

Waldemar does some really fascinating reconstructions and this one, in particular, hits home for me:

The French 1st Rate Ship by Laurent Hubac 1679 — procuring a fleet for the Sun

. This is a pioneering undertaking of sorts, as it concerns what is probably the oldest technical plan of a French ship (actually a battleship design submitted to the authorities) by the highly productive shipwright Laurent Hubac, who, of all the other shipwrights, built probably the most ships...

shipsofscale.com

 

[KevinW]

Well, I’m not really clear how much hull re-design you have in-mind

I'm not too clear myself yet. To a large extent, if I'm remodelling in CAD there is no real 'cost' to changing dimensions, details, whatever. There will be a point where I have a blank canvas hull that has no wales, ports, planks lines etc, with which I can do whatever I want. With that said, getting from zero to that will probably not be as straightforward as it sounds.

 

[Hubac’s Historian]

Well, I’ll certainly be here to watch it all take shape, Kevin.