French Line War Ship Soleil Royal Model Ship Kit 1:72

Model ship kit of the Soleil Royal by Artesania Latina made of wood in 1:72 scale

History of the model

The Soleil Royal was a French ship of the line with 104 guns, flagship of Admiral Tourville. In this sense, the Soleil Royal was built between 1668 and 1670 by the engineer Laurent Hubac in Brest and launched in 1669, but unfortunately it lay unused in the harbour of Brest for many years.

Later, at the outbreak of the Nine Years' War in 1688, the Soleil Royal was put back into service with 112 cannons and 1200 men on board. She played an important role as the flagship of the Escadre du Ponant (Western Force). She was considered a fine sailing ship and her decorations were among the most beautiful and elaborate of all baroque ships. The emblem of the "sun" (Soleil) was chosen by Louis XIV as his personal symbol.

The kit in detail:

The 1/72 scale kit of the French warship Soleil Royal contains one of the most detailed models on the market. This faithful replica of the ship in the line of the French King Louis XIV features a multitude of decorative details on both the stern and the bow as well as on the entire deck. The modellers at Artesania Latina have followed all available and accurate information in the design and manufacture of this marvel of ship modelling.

The kit of course includes hundreds of laser-cut plywood and solid wood parts, as well as all die-cast and photo-etched parts and a complete set of pre-sewn and hand-sewn sails ready to be attached. All this makes the ship a spectacular beauty without a doubt.

The professional modeller to whom this dazzling model of the Soleil Royal is aimed will find all premium quality wooden parts and wooden bases with a metal nameplate and a set of twelve figures of the crew of the Soleil Royal to be assembled and painted to give this naval jewel even more realism than it would have without them.

The kit is from the premium kit from the manufacturer Artesania Latina. The construction was created entirely in 3D, allowing the parts to be manufactured with absolute precision. All wooden parts are precisely prefabricated using the laser cut process. Planks must of course be customised. All fitting parts are made entirely of metal and some are particularly detailed using the etching process and are clearly laid out in a sorting box. The sails are already sewn.  A set of cast metal figures for an even more interesting representation of the model is included. A 400-page German instruction manual is only available as a PDF with thousands of photos and video documentation for particularly complicated construction stages. The instructions are available for download.

Who is the kit suitable for?

Building the model ship requires a lot of manual skills and experience in ship modelling. The kit is aimed at very experienced modellers.

What do the building instructions look like?

The following are available for download:
-parts list
-illustrated instructions with 390 pages, multilingual including German
-Instructions for painting the figures

What else is needed?

Colours, adhesives and tools are required and can be found in our range.
We recommend the 5 mm rivet roller at27320 for working on the copper hull panelling on the boat. The profile scraper at27304. There is a colour set under the number at277PACK30

Technical data:

Scale: M 1:72
Length: 935mm
Height: 875mm
Width: 285mm
Construction time: 1200 hours