1/300 Santa Maria build

[Don Boose]

Sorry I missed the take off for this fascinating thread, Flyboy!

This is a terrific adventure. I look forward to learning a lot from your experimentation with these techniques (as well as about ship building of the Age of Reconnaissance.

Don

[Texman]

Jim, Don, thanks for your comments and support.

@ Jim, I doubt I will reproduce all of the running rigging. I will probably only
use enough to give the impression of it, as there is not much room to work.
With that said, I will have to wait until I am closer to rigging it to see how it
goes. I am also not sure how far I will go with the block and tackles of the
running rigging, as they are not included in the kit. Still a ways to cross that ocean!

[Cami]

While most modelers upscale their models, you downscale yours!!! Next thing you will tell us is that you are assembling it in a bottle or would that be too easy to be of any interest? LOL. Just kidding, seriously you get all my admiration. I can not wait to see it finished.

Cami

[Michael Mash]

Your shroud/ratlines and deadeyes are going nicely.
That one in the image next to the ruler is a beauty.
Mike

[Texman]

However small (no pun intended). All four sets of shrouds/ratlines are done. So I decided to start on
some larger parts for now. I laminated pieces of a copy of the deck to some .5mm board
for strength. The hull sides were cut out and glued up.

I have the deck cut out, and have started removing the windows and ladders to the lower
deck to be replaced with more accurate pieces. In this work, I also have cut out the framing
for the ladder holes and windows out of a second copy of the kit. Some other minor bit work done, but moving along.

[marco1971]

Hallo Ray, looking very nice!

Marco

[Texman]

Thanks Marco, glad you stopped by.

The last couple of days have been busy, so work is sporadic.
Got some of the parts glued on the deck for depth, next there
will be the ladder wells.

On the outer hull pieces, I have punched out the hole forward
where the anchor rope will go, and added an extra outer ring
punched the same way. The inner part was done with a 1 mm
punch, then the outer ring was punched with a 1.5 mm punch.

In the first picture, you see I have cut out some pieces that on
the real Santa Maria are are part of what, I assume, holds the hull
together. Using a second copy of the kit, again, I cut these out
to add to the hull to give some depth to the parts. In the second
picture I have just layed these parts on the hull to show what they
should look like when glued up.

The last picture is just the deck with some of the parts glued on.

[Texman]

Looking through my references, it seems the Santa Maria was nominally armed, having a couple of
basic bombardes forward, and a couple of smaller, railing mounted cannons aft. Before placing the
main deck in position, I needed to know how high these cannons would sit on the deck in order to
punch the holes in the hull for them to stick out.

As the kit does not include these, I started a search. I found a cannon from a Dutch site, but it
was about 200 years to modern. Needing a more period appropriate cannon, I beseeched my
nautical guru, Jim Krauzlis. He came through for me with a rough template. Going into
ye olde photoshop, I redrew the outlines and gave it a wood texture, all but lost in this scale :( .

After finding a barrel length, I rescaled the parts down to 1/300. With eleven parts, here is the
finished main deck cannon. Its overall length is just over .25 inches.

They will look acceptable on deck at this scale!

[Cami]

It is more than acceptable, it looks great!

Cami

[rockpaperscissor]

Incredible! The layering on the decksides is going to be beautiful, and the cannon is over the top. 11 seperate pieces in a quarter of an inch is just above and beyond. Well done!