Heller Soleil Royal (WIP)

Modeling Subjects Ships
21

Glad to see that this thread has sparked some interest!

John, you mentioned about the Spars from your kit being okay…I guess I can see if mine are usable, it’s possible I dismissed them off-handedly…though you made another mention of how it’s possible that Heller’s plastic had gone downhill in recent times…you remember that mine is an Imai boxing…would it be wrong to assume that the plastic would fall into the level of quality usually found in typical Imai kits? Although the molds are from Heller? For the most part, everything seems good, except for the smallest of the yards…I’ll see how I feel about them once I’ve taken a closer look. There’s at least one that is warped on the sprue.

One of my concerns about starting this thread was the potential for people focusing on the problems with this kit…I feel I may already have to address the issue:

I know there are numerous discrepancies. I am fairly eager to approach a number of them for my own reasons. Topmasts being too long? I don’t care enough to acknowledge it. Same with the spar dimensions. What I do care about is feeling like I’m less of a modeler (Read: Chicken of the Sea) because of the things I choose to do or not do during a build.

Let’s please avoid any Standoffs on this thread, regarding what the correct way to build a kit is, shall we? It is a public forum, but I really think it’s best for those who respect each other to ALSO respect each others personal taste and style.

I have consulted the Ultimate Building Guide for the Heller Soleil Royal on this forum…I found it very informative! I also noticed a certain amount of meandering tangentry (another made-up word), as well as the above-mentioned “Standoff of Positions.”

Terry, your pics of the SR look very cool! I clicked on it and got to view your Photobucket album of it…I hope you don’t mind, I bookmarked it for future reference. :slight_smile:

Are you using the kit supplied deadeyes? If so, have you had any trouble (with this or your previous build) with the shrouds slipping off the edges of the deadeyes, since they have no real groove around them?

Also, thanks for the advice about the guns…there are a bunch! I remember with the Black Swan I took a lot of time making all the guns look great , and most of them ended up hidden in the lower deck! I have considered to leave the gunports closed on the SR, or at least on one side…I figure if the sails are furled (or off the yards entirely) then the gunports wouldn’t be open, right? But again, we’ll see how I feel when I get rolling on that stuff…

I agree that the Testors oil-based gold looks sweet, but my trouble is that I need to use acrylic-based paint for my basecoats, because my weathering/wash technique is pretty aggressive and is oil-based, so it will ruin any oil-based finish I apply it to…which is a bit of a drag, since acrylic metallics are generally not so great.

Lastly, I was planning to keep the cradle that comes with the kit to display it on…does that seem like a bad idea? I have been using pedestals through the keels of my recent models, but I want to make sure this one is super-stable and I thought a cradle would help keep things upright…

I’m glad to know that you’re building this kit, Terry, and that you already have one under your belt…I hope you won’t mind if I ask you for pointers during construction? I can tell this build will have me scratching my head many times!

Dave

P.S.- Sorry for all these long-winded replies…I seem to have a lot of things to say!

22

Listen, no offense meant with the CotS comment. It’s an insidish joke as they were the sponsors of the cafe in the pirate ship at Disneyland. That fine vessel was an imaginative creation of that studios creative geniuses. Thats all I meant, those guys were far more successful “imagineers” than I could ever hope to be. In fact my application was rejected.

Your taking it as a comment on “lesser” modelers is unfortunate, for which I accept blame for the perceived inference.

Leaving that particular issue of point of view aside though, I just read the thread you started back a while ago on “Whats with the BIG Heller…” or something to that effect.

It’s a good one, and there is a logistics issue here that many referred to.

Just be sure this thing doesn’t ruin your interest in ship models. In truth, I said EXACTLY the same thing there about the Victory, so this is not specific kit related. Many folks have started these beasts and set them aside in frustration. After putting together the guns from 900 parts, I was just about through with the thing. And now that I’m faced with rigging at least the several dozen visible ones, I’ve stopped working on it, probably for good. What happened? I don’t know.

Some tasks are just too much.

If you can beat that, I salute you.

23

Gentlemen,

I took no offense. In fact, I actually have enjoyed this model. I believe that it has been unfairly maligned, and I honestly see more positives than negatives. For example, I have compared the silhouette of the Soleil Royal to drawings of other late-16th-early 17th century French ships of the line and consider that once the waterline is raised to the lower wale, it seems accurate enough. The shapes and proportions of the guns is equally so. On the down-side, while it is true that Heller provided no means of attaching the yards to the masts, neither did they do so with the Victory. Yet, the Victory has been hailed as perhaps the best plastic model of its kind. The Victory kit can be criticized for having omitted the bolt heads on the lower hull to hold on the copper plates, yet I have found no reviews maligning Heller for that detail omission. All kits have some issues that we accept as being part of the hobby, and part of the fun is in correcting the discrepancies. This is true of the Le Soleil Royal.

When building this model, I see it as a challenge to overcome its most egregious problems. To solve t he missing deck furniture issue, I have added scratch-built galley pipes shaped for the period, and have also scratch-built a chicken coop. It was fun! I sincerely hope that David enjoys this kit as much as I.

Bill

24

Thanks, Bill…I also hope to enjoy it!

GM, it’s more than a little possible that I may be sensitive to perceived denigration (thanks Jtilley for the word of the week!)…I’ve never been to the Pirate Ship at Disneyland, though it does seem like it would be fun!..So the inside joke was lost on me.

Once again, I want to be clear that my main purpose for this thread is to document the journey as I build this kit, in the hopes that anyone building it in the future may find it as a source of info, and hopefully, it will be seen as a little bit of light in the sometimes dark tunnel of a long-term project commitment. To that end, keeping things positive is important. Perhaps this can add to the small number of SR build logs that actually reach completion! :slight_smile:

As an aside, I’d like to make a comment regarding the lack of any means to fasten the yards to the masts, for this and other kits.

In my limited experience building model ships (I think the number is 8 or 9 by now?), I’ve only had one kit that included any such means…I believe the Zvezda Thomas had a molded parrel for the main yard. Other than that, all the kits I’ve worked with have had only a locator pin on the yard, and a locator hole on the mast…though there have been rigging lines for halyards, jeers, etc… Is it common for model ship kits to include parrels?

25

Dave,

Parrels in plastic kits… I have only seen them in the Thomas/Kogge/Crusader kits. The Airfix Wasa has molded parrels but that is about it, although I can safely say that I have not seen every sailing ship kit.

However, ModelExpo used to have them but I haven’t seen them online for about a year or more. I have been buying parrels from Ages of Sail in California. The 10mm ones are three beads wide, the 6mm are two. Here is a link:

www.agesofsail.com/…/4384-10-mast-parrels-with-spacers-10mm.html

www.agesofsail.com/…/4384-06-mast-parrels-with-spacers-6mm.html

I would recommend ordering them well in advance as I have had to wait a month or two for them at times.

You can also make your own but I remember reading in one post on another forum that the modeler’s wife called putting together parrels was his “Tourette Project”…

Steve

26

Frankly I don’t understand the complaint about parcels.

The much beloved Revell kits had big ugly C shaped clips that snapped in between a pair of rings molded on the masts. OK for rotating and positioning the yards but horrible in every other way.

Look at my all time favorite sailing ship kit the CWM by Revell.

Stick a yard to a mast frankly is easier if the kit manufacturer doesn’t get it wrong to start.

A hidden pin.

Then dress it up with a non- load bearing parcel which could be anything from a painted little piece of some happy find at the hardware store to a scratch built little gem. Hey you only need a dozen.

27

GM, I think the Device on which you type your posts may be doing you dirt: changing “parrels” to “parcels.” That seems to be par for the course for some of these gadgets. They think they’re smarter than we are. My phone (which in most cases is smarter than I am) thinks I mean “it’s” when I type “its.” (At the moment I’m typing on my desktop Mac; otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been allowed to type the last sentence.)

Whether to worry about installing authentic-looking parrels or not is, of course, up to the individual modeler. Making them isn’t particularly difficult; the ribs can be made from either wood or styrene, and the rollers from glass beads. (The aftermarket companies sell such beads for that very purpose, and places like Michael’s have them as well.)

I do think a kit on 1/100 scale that sells for a couple of hundred dollars ought to provide some means of attaching yards to masts. As GM said, neither the Heller SR nor the Heller Victory does.

I don’t know of any plastic kit that provides separate pieces for yard parrels. (I can’t speak for the Zvezda kits: I haven’t seen them in the flesh. Airfix did, as noted above, mold passable representations of them in with the masts on several of its kits.) It certainly would be possible - even easy - to render them in injection-molded plastic, but I don’t think any company has done it.

Incidentally - I did comment on that aspect of the Heller Victory in the reviews I wrote for two British magazines, Model Shipwright and Scale Models, back in 1978 when the kit was new. The criticisms of that kit that I raised at that time included (1) the lack of yard parrels, (2) the un-detailed ship’s boats, (3) the misnumbered “deck beams,” (4) the useless blocks and deadeyes, (5) the pointy belaying pins, (6) the lack of nail heads in the copper sheathing, (7) the awkward transition of the counter under the transom, (9) the lack of margin planks on the decks, and (9) the lack of camber in the poop skylight. I also defended Heller’s decision to omit the entry ports, and I raised the issue of the forecastle and poop bulwarks. My overall evaluation of the kit was extremely favorable. I said it was the best rendition of the Victory in kit form - plastic, wood, or otherwise; I even noted that in some respects (e.g., the stern lanterns) it was more realistic than Longridge’s famous model in the Science Museum. A couple of months later Heller quoted my review in one of its magazine ads, so the company must not have been too offended by what I’d said.

Personally, I think there’s a huge qualitative difference between the Heller Victory and SR kits. But I’ve sounded off on the latter enough elsewhere. There’s no need for any more arguments about this kit. I suggest we restrict this thread to Dave’s project, which I predict will produce one of the handsomest models anybody has ever built from that kit. I certainly admire Dave’s courage in tackling the problem of the quarter galleries, and I’ll be interested to see what he does with the knee of the head. (On mine, back in about 1977, I just filled the gap with a piece of styrene; Dave can do better.) As to the spar proportions - I’m pretty sure those of the kit are wrong, but whether to do anything about them is up to the individual modeler.

28

I am not trying to be negative, but I wasn’t complaining about parrels GM just passing on information. I have actually built parrels from beading finds at Michaels for the Nina which I’ll add when I get to that point. I am adding them because that is just the way my AMS affects me with sailing ships. Heck, if it needed jears I would probably try and come up with a way to add them, like I have been with the Revell CWM.

Anyway Dave, my mind is slipping more than usual, the Catalan Ship comes with parrel beads for the yard… Dang, I am getting old.

Steve

29

could some one please explain about parrels spacers ., and how to use them.as I nearly up to the stage of putting on my yards., any help will be greatly appreciated

30

Dave, I can get what info I have or whatever pics you’ll need, but know that I build for fun and not for competition or for that matter, perfect planking. Theres certainly a place for that and I guess it depends what i’m building and for what. With some of my builds I do quite a bit of research while others right OOB.

I did find some very tight tolerances with Heller, so I pretty much started to open up all the holes and slats, some of the times a little to late.

I’ve left open my Photobucket for others to see if they need anything. Feel free, as I said I do it for fun.

Terry

31

I don’t understand the reference to opening holes and slats in the last post - but maybe I’m missing something obvious.

steve5 - A parrel is a simple mechanical device that secures a yard (or gaff, or boom) to a mast in a way that lets the yard (or gaff, or boom) swing with the mast as a pivot, and slide up and down the mast.

In order to function properly, a yard has to be able to swing (so the sail attached to it can receive the wind from different directions) and slide up and down the mast (up when the sail on the yard is set, down when the sail is furled). In the days of the SR, if I’m not mistaken, all the yards had parrels. By the time of the Victory, the lower yards were being held to the masts by heavy rope trusses. But the topsail, topgallant, and royal yards in Nelson’s day used just about the same sort of parrels that had been in use a hundred years earlier.

A parrel consists of a bunch of rollers, or beads, a set of ribs with holes cut in them to act as spacers, and a pair of long pieces of rope. The rope gets passed alternately through the ribs and beads, forming a sort of roller bearing arrangement.

This sort of thing is much easier to show in a picture than to describe verbally. Here’s a drawing I found in a few minutes of googling: http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CAcQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fshipmodeling.net%2Fphotopost%2Fshowphoto9285.html&ei=8WitVJXtOcuiNua1gbgN&bvm=bv.83134100,d.eXY&psig=AFQjCNEUrfxjmjWCmDr0_RsYD9WzOO9Wkg&ust=1420737108850921 .

Here’s another: http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CAcQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.duyfken.com%2Fimage-gallery-1%2Fduyfken-and-svanen-on-sydney-harbour&ei=PGmtVLmpB4KxggS5xYKQAQ&bvm=bv.83134100,d.eXY&psig=AFQjCNFw4FqxfllJnyP3gH0nUCO-AWw80w&ust=1420737189346460 .

It’s easy to make parrels on 1/100 scale. The ribs can be made of either wood or styrene, and the rollers from small glass beads.

As I’ve said several times before in this Forum, to build a model of a ship like the Victory with minimal stress and headaches you really need at least one good, basic book with drawings that show how the ship actually worked. The instructions in the Heller kit are awful; they apparently were written by somebody who knew mighty little about ships. (The English “translation” usually packed in kits for British and American distribution are worse. The person responsible for them, it seems, neither understood French nor had tried to build the model.) The old, standby source of information on this ship is C. Nepean Longridge’s The Anatomy of Nelson’s Ships. There are a number of other good books on the subject; we’ve covered them here in earlier Forum threads.

For a good, basic description of how sailing ships work, I highly recommend George Campbell’s Neophyte Shipmodeler’s Jackstay. It dates from the 1960s, and is primarily aimed at modelers working from solid-hull wood kits. But the basic information in it is valid for any sailing ship model. And I know of no better introduction to the fundamentals of sailing ship-era nautical terminology. Learn everything in that little book, and you’re well on your way to being a knowledgeable ship modeler.

The best news about Campbell’s Jackstay: it’s cheap! Here’s a link: http://www.modelexpo-online.com/product-p/msb110.htm . If you’re only going to keep one book on your workbench, that’s the one I’d recommend.

32

J, what I’m referring to is opening the holes slightly on deadeyes etc, I found some of the fits a little tight and like anything else it make assembly a bit easier.

33

So, I’m working on parts prep, which includes the drilling of holes for gunport rigging. I have a question about the height of the holes in the hull…is there a general rule for the distance between the top of a gunport and the hole where the line enters above it (on the hull) for opening the port? On the SR model, the gunports are not uniformly located below the wales…toward the bow, the gunports are within 1/8" below the wale, and near the stern they are from 1/4" to 3/8" below the wale…I’d like to keep the height of the hull holes uniformly spaced above the gunports, but then I would be making holes directly through the wales for the gunport door line…seems unlikely that the wales would have holes in them?

My alternative would be to make some holes higher/lower than others…but I don’t like the sound of that, either!

Any advice?

Thanks!

Dave

34

I don’t know much about French naval archtecture, but the varying distance between the gunports and the wales isn’t surprising. The port sills have to be the same distance above the deck, and decks frequently weren’t parallel to the wales. Take a look at HMS Victory. Some of her ports are cut through the wales; other ports on the same deck aren’t.

I don’t know of any standardized distance between the top of a gunport and the hole for the tackle. It stands to reason that it would be consistent on a given deck. The higher the hole, the easier the tackle would be to work. If I were designing such a ship, I’d drill the holes right under the beam shelf for the deck above - or maybe even through the beam shelf. But I’ve never designed one.

'Fraid that doesn’t help much. Sorry.

35

From the inside, the line gets belayed around a clear on one of the overhead beams which would usually be to either side of the port.

There can’t be any mechanical advantage when the port is closed. I figure that a couple of big gunners must push the thing open a ways while the rest of the crew haul on the rope.

So higher is better than lower as long as it’s below the next deck. I vote constant spacing.

36

I think GM’s device did him the favor of changing “cleat” to “clear.” Don’t ya love electronic brains?

A port lid of a ship-of-the-line was a heavy piece of timber and metal. GM’s right: it would have to get a big shove to start opening it. The port lid tackle typically would consist of two blocks. One would be fastened to the rope coming through the hole in the ship’s side, the other to an eyebolt in a carling inboard of the gunport. Even so, several guys would have to haul on it to open the lid.

Dave, I hope you don’t have any screwy ideas of putting the rigging on the guns that are below decks. Only their muzzles will be visible.

One tip based on hard experience. Be sure the gun carriages are fastened to the decks firmly. Those protruding barrels have an amazing ability to snag rigging lines, which can easily yank the barrels off the carriages.

37

As a rule, wales were simply thicker strakes and were primarily placed to deal w/ the extra abrasions caused by docking. Clinker straked ships and boats usually had the wale(s) added on top of the strakes, again, to prevent wear and tear. So, from a structural standpoint, cutting through a wale is really no different than cutting through the regular strakes for the ports.

And I agree w/ Jtilley about gluing down those guns. I’ve popped several from the gun deck of my Connie and now wish I had epoxied them in as it is going to be a pain getting them reseated and glued down.

38

Thanks, guys!

I’ll be careful to secure the carriages to the decks. I 'm actually thinking of leaving some (or even all) of the gunports closed…if I go that way, I won’t even be building many of the guns…seems like the gunports would be closed if a ship were showing furled sails or bare poles, am I right? On the other hand, it looks more dramatic to have all the ports open and the guns run out…I’m still on the fence about it. Also, as far as rigging the guns on the upper deck…all the photos I’ve seen of rigged guns for a Soleil Royal model look really wonky, out of scale, and cluttered…giant blocks, tons of line everywhere…they just seem too busy. If I can find a way to get it looking right, I’ll rig them to a certain degree, but I may also just rig breeching lines or some other, less clumsy, amount of rigging for the guns.

I basically decided on two different heights for the gunport tackle: all the ports forward of the “entry ladder” (or whatever it’s called!) will be above the wale, and the ports aft of the ladder will be below that wale, OR 5mm above the port, depending on how low the ports go below the wale (at the furthest aft, they get as low as 3/8" below it. So there’s that.

With all the holes to drill (about 250, including 2 for each port lid, and 2 for each area above the lids) I was hoping to be able to use a Dremel-type tool and a tiny bit…but my rotary tool is single-speed, and it goes so fast that it melts the plastic a bit, which causes the shavings to stick to the bit…so I would have to clean the bit after every hole…instead, I just decided to go the ol’ fashioned way…pin vise, by hand. I’ve made a few little jigs that are the same width as each different size of port lid, with notches to indicate the spacing of the tackle holes…lay the jig on the porthole, make a couple marks with a sharpened punch, then drill them out with the pin vise. After about 28 holes, got a little bit of finger cramps! But I’m almost 1/8th of the way done, so I guess I can break it down into short sessions and have them all done by next week or so. Won’t be too long before I’m spraying basecoats.

Dave

39

I’ve been ranting for years about my big beef with Dremel Moto-Tools: the danged things turn too fast. Even the lowest speed on the variable-speed versions is faster than it ought to be for most modeling jobs.

I did a post on Dremel’s web forum about this several years ago. Apparently I’m in a minority; nobody replied to my post.

Dremel used to make two stand-alone speed controls, one foot-operated, the other a little benchtop box with a knob on the front. I had the latter. It was great. I could, for instance, set a non-spinning drill bit exactly where I wanted it, then turn the knob till the bit was turning as fast as I wanted. And the control was useful for all sorts of other things. I plugged my Unimat lathe into it (no more belt changes to change speeds), and used it to control the heat of my soldering iron. The thing could also be used to change the size of a picture on a black-and-white tv set. Don’t ask how I found that out.

Nowadays I use a much smaller rotary tool, made by a German company called We-Cheer and formerly available through Woodcraft. It’s slightly fatter than a fiber-tipped marker, and uses Dremel collets. I cobbled up a speed control for it out of a three-prong Duplex outlet, a dimmer switch, a plastic electrical box, and some wire. (Total cost at Lowe’s: less than 10 bucks.) Works fine. Unfortunately, of course We-Cheer has discontinued the tool and replaced it with one that has a built-in speed control, which, of course, turns too fast on its slowest speed.

I do have a Dremel 100 single-speed Moto-Tool. It works fine with my primitive speed control.

40

I totally agree with you. Last year I briefly attempted to use my Dremel to drill out the portholes on my Titanic hull but only tried one and gave up. I didn’t do any damage but that was pure luck only. It needs to go much slower.