Spanish Galleon by Jeff T - Revell - 1:96 - PLASTIC - with modifications

[Louie da fly]

Beautiful job, Jeff. Not only the paint job under the waterline (which looks really good to me), but the rest of the hull as well. A seriously attractive model.

[Jeff T]

12 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

Beautiful job, Jeff. Not only the paint job under the waterline (which looks really good to me), but the rest of the hull as well. A seriously attractive model.

Thanks, Steven!

[Jeff T]

The kit includes parts for a windlass which would be assembled, painted black, and placed on the main deck:

 

 

I decided not to use it for my galleon.  At the Maritime Museum of San Diego, the replica of a mid-sixteenth century Spanish galleon, San Salvador, was well-researched and is supposed to be as authentic as possible for a galleon of its time period, so I oftentimes look to it for ideas.  It has a capstan instead of a windlass:

 

 

Here is the size of the capstan with respect to the size of a person:

 

 

I see that in Peter Kirsch's book The Galleon:  The Great Ships of the Armada Era (Naval Institute Press, 1990), in Figure 84 on page 140, there is a capstan with a similar shape on a cross-sectional drawing of a reconstruction of an early seventeenth century galleon from Stockholm, Sweden (see number 73):

 

 

So I wanted to have a capstan that looks like San Salvador's capstan.  It would need to be the right size when compared with the size of my sailor figures that were included with the kit.  Online, I found a capstan whose advertised picture has a similar appearance and whose height is approximately correct.  I ordered it:

 

 

 

What arrived, however, although it had the correct height, did not look like that picture:

 

 

 

Also, at least one of the whelps did not fit snugly:

 

 

 

It would have been costly and time-consuming to return the item, and I am not sure if I would have been able to find one with the shape I was looking for in the appropriate size.  Therefore, I decided to modify the capstan to get it to look more like San Salvador's.

[Jeff T]

I attached a temporary stand to the base of the capstan and set it up on my hand drill held in place with a vise:

 

 

When I had spun it with the drill, sanding it down with a makeshift "sanding block", it looked like this:

 

 

I also modified the whelps a bit:

 

 

After I marked and drilled the holes for the capstan bars (which I will not mount or include, since the ship will be at sail and the anchors will be up), I squared off the round holes the best that I could:

 

 

 

 

After the whelps were glued to the capstan, I sanded them some more to try to get the tops of the whelps closer to the drum as uniformly as I could:

 

 

I filled some of the open spaces with "molten" styrene (as described earlier in the log for fixing the hole on the main deck):

 

 

After puttying and sanding, the capstan was ready to paint:

 

[Jeff T]

Here it is after the base color and the holes for the capstan bars were painted:

 

 

I used the same type of paint (Testors enamel) that I often use for plastic parts in the kit, so in order to apply one of the same enamel "washes" that I have used previously for weathering, I first needed to apply an acrylic isolation coat (a clear gloss):

 

 

Here it is after the weathering:

 

 

Pictured next to one of the sailors (yet to be painted):

 

 

I think the scale is reasonably close.  I know that the proportions of the whelps and drum on this modified capstan are not exactly like those of San Salvador's capstan, but I think it covers the basic idea.  Also, it won't be so shiny after it is covered with a clear mat varnish.

[Baker]

Nice capstan.

Much more correct than that of the kit and that of Corel

[Louie da fly]

You've done a beautiful job of modifying the capstan Jeff.Looks really good - a bit shiny at the moment, but the matt varnish should take care of that.

[Jeff T]

8 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

You've done a beautiful job of modifying the capstan Jeff.Looks really good - a bit shiny at the moment, but the matt varnish should take care of that.

 

12 hours ago, Backer said:

Nice capstan.

Much more correct than that of the kit and that of Corel

 

Thank you for your kind comments.  Making these modifications takes extra time and fuss, but I think it is worth it.

[Jeff T]

When following Backer's log on his scratch-built Golden Hind 1/45 scale,

 

I wondered how I would also solve the problem of the mainstay coming down to the beakhead, because the rigging instructions by Revell do not do it that way, and I wanted to follow a plan more like that outlined by Peter Kirsch in his Galleon book, referenced previously in this log.  So I did a crude preliminary test, but keep in mind, doing anything concrete with the rigging will still be a long way off for me:

 

 

 

 

 

Fortunately, it looks like I will likely be able to run the mainstay under the railing at the front of the forecastle and loop it around the the bowsprit at the stempost.  And, rather than making it go to one side or the other of the foremast, I will most likely have two limbs of the mainstay loop around either side of it. 

[Old Collingwood]

Great work  going on here  - and the paintwork is  really making a difference  - bringing her to life.

 

OC.

[Bill Morrison]

As John Tilley used to say, you are truly making a silk purse out of a sow's ear.  Well done!

 

Bill

[Jeff T]

I decided to take a break from painting for a while, and looked ahead to the masts and spars. 

 

The plastic in this kit is a bit pliable, with an almost "waxy" texture to it when handled.  (I remember styrene in kits that I built in my youth being more rigid, and maybe even brittle at times).  Since this plastic bends, the spars and upper masts may be a little difficult to manage when rigging is applied with a little tension.  Even the lower masts and bowsprit are thin and may bend.  Other members on this forum have used wood on the inside to strengthen them.  What I decided to do is make my own spars and upper masts from walnut dowels (I will do this later on in the build).   I will use the plastic lower masts (foremast, mainmast, mizzenmast) and bowsprit that were supplied with the kit, and I have already worked with them quite a bit to strengthen them and try to eliminate the seams as much as I could.  I could have also made these from wood, but I want a good styrene-to-styrene bond at the partners, and I want them to have the intended rake, which is already there in the plastic masts.

 

Here is how they looked on the sprues -- the halves have fairly thin walls:

 

 

 

I also am using interior supports, but I decided to go with aluminum rather than wood:

 

 

I sanded the aluminum rods down so that they fit in the masts and bowsprit, but also had to sand out any plastic fitting pins within them:

 

 

I used 30 minute epoxy to set the supports into the masts and bowsprit (the white stuff in the foremast is epoxy putty where I had made the rod too short):

 

 

I set the free halve over the ones with the rods with epoxy and later glued the seams with Tamiya Extra Thin Cement:

 

 

Unfortunately, the seams did not match up very well, because the walls are of varying thickness on the same mast, and the inner rods would not let me slide the masts halves slightly across each other to line them up (you can see where the seams mismatch below):

 

 

By the way, I also removed the "rings" around the masts and bowsprit that I think were supposed to be wooldings.  I want to make my own wooldings out of rigging line.  Also notice above that the cheeks on the mizzenmast (third from the left) are gone.  I removed them, because I do not want a "top" on my mizzenmast.  Rather, it will be something like this, without a topmast (although I may put a flagstaff on top):

 

 

 

 

Edited November 15, 2020 by Jeff T
picture posted twice

[Jeff T]

In addition to the problem where the seams did not line up correctly, there were a lot of variations in the contour or "roundness" of the masts and bowsprit (although they really are not completely round anyway -- more like "oval").  I wanted to make them as consistent as possible, so this required a lot of work.  I used a steel-filled epoxy (J-B Weld) and also Bondo Glazing & Spot Putty to smooth things out:

 

 

The brass rods that you see protruding from them (glued in place with steel-filled epoxy) will later be shortened and used to hold the spars up to the masts and bowsprit so that it will be easier to do the rigging.  The two squares on the bowsprit (far left) are to expose styrene under the putty in order to attach a couple of styrene pieces with solvent glue (more on that later).

[Jeff T]

I made some cleats to mount on the foremast, mainmast and bowsprit.  These will eventually be used to belay certain rigging lines.  Since the kit is plastic, I used polystyrene strips to make the cleats, since there would be a good, strong bond between the cleat and the mast, which could handle some tension.

 

fil

 

I first filed down a strip with a round file so that the undersurface of the cleats would be concave.  This helps it conform to the "roundness" of the mast or bowsprit:

 

Here is how the undersurface appears after filing:

 

 

Then I made measurements on the strip for the cleats, marking with a pencil:

 

 

I wrapped a piece of 150 grit sandpaper, with double-sided tape on the back of it, around a remnant aluminum rod piece:

 

 

Using the markings on the strip as a guide, I sanded the strip against the sandpapered rod to make "arches" in between the attachment points of the soon-to-be cleats:

 

 

 

 

 

 

With each arch held over the aluminum rod for support, I separated the cleats with a knife:

 

 

 

Below is a sample of a cleat.  Each cleat is small -- only 6 mm long, 2 mm wide, and less than 2 mm high:

 

 

 

I know that these cleats do not have a stylized appearance with tapered "horns" as you may see on sailing ships, but to try doing that by carving these tiny plastic parts may cause them to look less symmetric and/or consistent.  It would also be rather difficult to hold them in place to carve them -- they move easily when whittled, even when grasped with tweezers.  Despite the shape, my version will be very functional for belaying rigging.

 

 

 

Edited November 21, 2020 by Jeff T
Last image was posted twice.

[Jeff T]

Here is how the bowsprit and masts look with the cleats attached (from left to right:  mizzenmast, bowsprit, mainmast, foremast):

 

 

 

The square areas of exposed plastic within the reddish putty on the bowsprit in the photograph in my second post from November 14th were made to allow the solvent cement to make strong bonds with the polystyrene cleats.

 

Eventually, after the topmasts are made and attached and after the spars are made, I will spray them all brown and then "weather" them.

 

For rigging, my plan will be to belay the spritsail lifts (port and starboard) to the fore cleats on the bowsprit, and the spritsail braces will be belayed to the aft cleats, like this:

 

(On the port side, the orange arrow points to the fore cleat, which would correspond to my model's fore cleat and you can see that the spritsail lift is belayed there.  The green arrow points to the aft cleat, to which the spritsail brace is belayed.  There are other cleats on the bowsprit of this replica galleon in the above photograph, but I will not place them on my model -- the rigging may differ a little, and I may instead use the pinrails in the beakhead.)

 

 

On the same replica galleon, the cleats on the mainmast appear in the photographs below (port view):

 

 

 

On my model's masts (mainmast and foremast), I have placed corresponding cleats port and starboard, and these will be used to belay buntlines, which is described in Peter Kirsch's book The Galleon:  The Great Ships of the Armada Era  (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 1990), p. 151.

 

(Starboard view, left to right:  mainmast, foremast.  Cleats are higher up on the foremast because of the forecastle will be right below them, and the mast will go down through the forecastle to the main deck.)

[Jeff T]

I made a couple more modifications:

 

1) On the kit's bowsprit, there are small stop cleats molded in place:

 

 

Ideally, I would want the gammoning to abut the stop cleats, like this:

 

 

However, as you can see with the (work in progress) bowsprit dry-fitted in place, the gammoning hole (goldenrod arrow) is a bit far forward in the knee of the head:

 

 

So, if I did the gammoning through that hole, bringing it vertically upward, it would look something like this:

 

The stop cleats are by themselves and further aft (blue arrow above).

 

I could push the gammoning back so that it abuts the stop cleats, but that looks awkward:

 

 

Or, I could move the whole gammoning aft (follow the green arrow below, and note that the aft gammoning would replace the forward gammoning in the picture):

 

 

I decided to move the whole gammoning, and to do this required that I move the gammoning hole further aft in the knee of the head.

 

The photo below shows the location of the new gammoning hole (indicated by the aquamarine arrow), which is closer to the stempost (goldenrod arrow):

 

 

Also note that the new gammoning hole is further up, closer to the floor of the beakhead, such as one may see in a model of the 16th century HMS Revenge.  I had to put the new gammoning hole right behind one of the transverse beams below the floor of the beakhead so that the gammoning could still go up through the grating of the floor.

 

Repairing (filling in) the old gammoning hole, and "scribing" wood grain:

 

 

 

Here it is after some repainting:

 

 

Here is a picture with the camera flash:

 

 

Basically, it will be ready to go when I get to the rigging stage.  (The gloss of the paint will also be eliminated by that time with clear matt varnish.)

 

 

 

Edited December 4, 2020 by Jeff T
picture posted in the incorrect location

[Jeff T]

2) I also modified the stop cleats on the bowsprit.

 

The photo below shows me holding a straight piece of white paper inserted through the grating in the beakhead floor, right behind the new gammoning hole (with repainting in progress).  It means to demonstrate the trajectory of the gammoning, which will be right in front of where the strip is located.  The uncompleted bowsprit is dry-fitted in place.

 

 

The end of the lower stop cleat on this port side is marked black (follow green arrow):

 

 

If I were to do the gammoning around the bowsprit against the stop cleats as they are, it would be a little "kinked" rather than "straight up" (see the grey virtual gammoning):

 

 

So to avoid the "kinking", which seems to me might add additional strain on the lower cleats, I decided to trim the cleats back at an angle as they go from top to bottom (see the drawing below):

 

 

 

Here is how they look now (the bowsprit is angled in the photo as if it would be angled above the beakhead):

 

 

I drew a dotted line to show that the gammoning can be put straight against them:

 

 

On the galleon replica in San Diego, the gammoning is also mostly straight, with the forward ends of the stop cleats angling a little backward with respect to the axis of the bowsprit as they go from top to bottom:

 

(

 

 

[Jeff T]

My next project is working on the cannons.  It seems like it would be fairly straightforward:  the two halves of each cannon are cemented together and then the piece is mounted on the gun carriage.  Unfortunately, since the molds for this kit are old (1970s, I think), the pieces sometimes do not fit together very precisely.  So a lot of work is required to get rid of the mold lines.  In my kit, one of the cannon halves was missing, and I lost another one.  Fortunately, I remembered how Backer had used sprue to make cannons for his HMS Bounty, so I tried it out by making a couple of cannon halves.

The photo below shows that first, I painted the insides of the cannons black.  Red arrows point to the two cannon halves that I made from sprue.

 

 

Next, I glued the cannon halves together while most of them were still on the sprue.  The muzzle openings were rarely perfectly round, and often had a gap between the top half and the bottom half.  To try to fix this, I applied some "molten" styrene to the muzzle which, when it is totally dry and hard (need to wait a week or more), I can sand them and bore them out round.

 

 

I have been working on the carriages, too.  The molds were apparently offset by only a fraction of a millimeter in some cases, but when you trim them mold lines down, the wheels are not perfectly round.  I will just have to accept that as an artifact of the kit.  The drawing below shows what I am describing (I don't yet have a photo):

 

 

These end up being reasonably round enough so that it hopefully won't be too noticeable in the model when everything is done.  I will probably place the more contorted ones in the forecastle or beneath the half deck so that they aren't as visible.

[rkwz]

Excellent masterclass, Jeff! I can't believe it took me this long to discover your work. So much to learn from your techniques...thank you for sharing. 

 

I do wonder if styrene cleats will hold properly to the masts with solvent cement especially when belaying rope to the cleats later?

 

I found that drilling a hole into styrene parts and adding some kind of reinforcing material (copper or brass) would provide extra bite into the area it is being glued onto.

 

Cheers,

 

Ron

[Jeff T]

4 hours ago, rkwz said:

Excellent masterclass, Jeff! I can't believe it took me this long to discover your work. So much to learn from your techniques...thank you for sharing. 

 

I do wonder if styrene cleats will hold properly to the masts with solvent cement especially when belaying rope to the cleats later?

 

I found that drilling a hole into styrene parts and adding some kind of reinforcing material (copper or brass) would provide extra bite into the area it is being glued onto.

 

Cheers,

 

Ron

Thanks, Ron!

 

I am hoping not to put too much tension on the cleats when the ship is rigged.  If they break off, I may need to go with reinforcements, but it may be very challenging to do them because the cleats are small.   The other problem is that the holes can only be drilled a short way into the styrene before resistance will be met due to the aluminum, which does not drill easily.  The solvent cements that I used are Tamiya Extra Thin Cement and Testors Liquid Cement for Plastic.  Both of these tend to do a reasonably good job of “melting” one plastic surface into another.

[Jeff T]

Just an update...

 

I am still working on the gun carriages and the cannons, spending a couple of hours at a time here and there.  The gun carriages are almost done.  I will post pictures once I have varnished them with the matt varnish.  The cannon barrels, however, have been frustrating.  As I indicated, two of the cannon halves were lost.  It is not possible to get replacements from Revell of Germany right now due to the pandemic.  I tried to make the missing halves with plastic sprue, but I also need to make reinforcement rings, and although they looked somewhat like cannons in the end, they did not match up in appearance to the 18 other cannons.

 

 

Also, it would have been nice if the cannons weren’t molded in two halves that had to be assembled.  It has taken a lot of work to try to scrape away and sand down the seam lines along the length of the barrels. Unfortunately, there were small gaps in the halves of the cannons where they were glued together at the muzzles.  I tried to fill the gaps with melted styrene, but it would take a lot more work trying to round out the openings again and shape the muzzles — it may be difficult to achieve a nice roundness of the muzzle by hand.  Since the cannons are high profile — readily visible externally — I decided to stop work in trying to clean up the kit cannons.  Instead, I have ordered twenty brass cannons from Radimir at HISmodel.  They won’t have any seam lines to clean up and they will be ready to paint (a bronze color, then patina over that).

[Jeff T]

The gun carriages still need to be sprayed with a matt varnish, but I can show you some photos of the preparation and painting process. 

 

I have seen that some old gun carriages have an iron "rim" or "tread" (not sure if there is a correct name for it) covering the circumference of each of the wooden wheels.  I decided that I would like to simulate that with my own carriages.  Illustrations by Tony Bryan in Angus Konstam's book on the Spanish galleon seem to show "rims" that were probably iron:

 

 

 

They also show that the carriages had two wheels rather than four, which in my research was typical in sixteenth and early seventeenth century Spanish galleons.

 

Following a lot of scraping and sanding the wheels and carriages, and filling ejector pin marks in the carriages with putty, sanding them flat, covering them with clear flat lacquer, then scribing wood grain, and taking care of other imperfections, the carriages were ready to paint:

 

 

First, I painted the wheel circumferences, with overlap, using Testor's Flat Black enamel.  This photograph shows the undersurfaces of some of the carriages:

 

 

Note that I have sanded the undersurfaces with a fairly coarse sandpaper so that they will stick to the deck better when I eventually use a methylmethacrylate adhesive or epoxy to secure them.

 

Next, I used 1mm wide masking tape around the circumference of each wheel:

 

 

I overpainted the edges of the tape with the black enamel so that bleeding under the tape would be black, and there would be less "touch up" needed after the tape was removed:

 

 

The frames of the carriages were painted with Testors Model Master Leather enamel:

 

 

I then painted the wheels with Testors Model Master Dark Tan:

 

 

 

 

Edited February 19, 2021 by Jeff T
one photo was out of place, so it was deleted

[Jeff T]

I weathered the frames and wheels of the carriages by using Testors Brown Enamel Stain (2179) and some dry-brushing of the Leather enamel over that (on the frames).  Here is a representative piece:

 

 

After the masking tape was removed from the wheels and "touch up" was done, here is how they looked:

 

 

I have since applied a rust-colored enamel pain to the black "rims" to create a rust effect, but I do not have a photo of that yet.  The next step will be the clear matt spray.

 

[Jeff T]

In the description of the steps involved in painting the gun carriages, above, I forgot to mention that before I weathered them with the brown enamel stain and then the dry brushed leather enamel, I applied an isolation coat of gloss acrylic medium.  This was done so that when I used the brown stain and then brushed over it with enamel paint thinner to subtract the stain in streaks over the surface to make it appear more like weathered wood grain, the enamel coats beneath it hopefully wouldn’t have gotten dissolved.  Unfortunately, some of the acrylic isolation coat also dissolved with the thinner, so I found it better to stop using the thinner and just dry brush the leather enamel over the stain.  I could still preserve the stain, which was darker, in the recesses of the textured wood grain that way, because the dry brushing would not reach it.

[Jeff T]

The brass cannons arrived!

 

 

They came with trunnions (in the plastic bag), which appear to be of high quality, but it may be a bit difficult to get a strong bond between the brass trunnions and the styrene gun carriages.  Since I will be painting the cannons anyway, I decided that I will make trunnions out of styrene.  The styrene trunnion will fit through the barrel and be cemented on either site to the styrene carriage using liquid cement, making a molten bond rather than a surface bond. 

 

I am also still working on the gun carriages -- some difficulty with getting an "even" appearance in the matte varnish.

[Jeff T]

The gun carriages have been varnished and they are basically finished (except that after the cannons are mounted in them, I will add capsquares over the trunnions).

 

 

 

 

[Jeff T]

I made the styrene trunnions for the brass cannons.

 

I could find round styrene rods in diameters of 1.2 mm and 1.6 mm, but the 1.2 mm diameter was too small, and the 1.6 mm diameter was too big.  I purchased the 1.6 mm diameter rods, with the intent of reducing the diameter to the correct size.

 

 

I do not have a lathe, so I shortened the rod and secured it into my hand drill, which was held in place in my vise. 

 

 

I spun the rod in the drill while holding it against sandpaper, applying pressure with my thumb, moving the thumb and paper up and down along the rod:

 

 

I periodically checked to see if the diameter was reduced enough to fit through the trunnion hole in one of the cannon barrels, and when the barrel could slide all the way down the rod, I stopped:

 

 

"Divots" were made using a hobby knife, spaced along the lengths of the reduced rods, and then I cut the rods into pieces which were each slightly longer than length needed for the trunnion, with the divot close to the center.  A paper cutter was used to cut strips of some spare clear styrene that I had, making the width of the strips equal to the length for the trunnions.  Masking tape was affixed to the strips with double-sided tape so that the "sticky side" of the masking tape faced outward.  I lined the trunnions up along one of the strips, sticking them in place together at a right angle to the long edge of the strip:

 

 

I placed another strip over the rods, "sandwiching" them in between the strips:

 

 

To make the trunnions have equal lengths, I sanded them down to the edges of the clear styrene strips using a flat sanding block that I had made:

 

 

 

 

Opening up the sandwich:

 

 

After some cleaning up, here are the trunnions ready for the cannons:

 

 

They are not perfect -- some of the trunnions are thinner than others, and some are uneven -- but they are acceptable for the purpose, and small variations may not be that noticeable.   In fact, I noticed that the brass trunnions that had been included with the cannons are not all exactly the same diameter, either:

 

 

 

 

[Jeff T]

I figured that 30 minute epoxy would make a reasonable bond to keep each trunnion in place within the cannon barrel.  I applied epoxy within the divot, with a little of it welling up above the surface, and then slid the trunnion through the hole in the barrel, cleaned up a little epoxy that may have extruded, and then flipped the cannon over to let the epoxy cure.  The purpose of the divot was to allow enough epoxy to be placed to hopefully make a stronger bond.

 

 

And this is the result:

 

 

[72Nova]

Nice work👍, love that model. I toured the San Salvador when it was about 2 thirds completed, I was in awe then when it was just in the construction stage and now since it's completion the rigging can provide a wealth of information. Looking forward on your progress Jeff.

Michael D.

 

[Jeff T]

Thanks, Michael!  I will post when I have the cannons painted.  My pace is slow, but my interest is kept up when I complete steps along the way as well as when I think about how I can tackle future steps.