Xochimilco Trajinera by JacquesCousteau - FINISHED - Scale 1:32 - First Scratch Build

[JacquesCousteau]

Hi, this is my first scratch-build and my second build overall. I’m currently finishing up Model Shipways’ Lowell Grand Banks Dory (which is a great kit!) and I'm really enjoying the process. Ordinarily, it would not be a great idea to scratch-build something while still having so little modeling experience. But as will be seen, the vessel I’ve chosen to build, a trajinera, is in most ways a very straightforward, simple boat. No planking or even wood-bending is required. Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to learning a lot with this build, especially about planning out scratch builds and (as will be seen) about building scale deck furnishings and detail work. I'll undoubtedly be making a lot of mistakes, too--hopefully instructive ones that can help out other beginning modelers looking to see what NOT to do. Although this isn’t a typical boat to model, I think it’s a worthwhile build, and I'm looking to have fun with it. Which at times may require simplifying furnishings and builds by quite a bit: I've seen some of the amazing builds on this site and there is no way I'm at that level yet (or will ever be).

 

For this build, I'll be modeling a trajinera, a sort of colorfully-decorated canal barge often used for recreational excursions and tourism in Xochimilco, a part of Mexico City. I enjoyed riding one in 2018.

 

 

First, I’ll explain a bit about the history of these vessels and their development. Then I’ll get into the design and construction process of my model.

 

 

Historical Development: The Trajinera from Work to Leisure

 

As is well-known, what is today Mexico City was originally Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire, which came to exert power over much of what is today central Mexico. Tenochtitlan, founded in 1325, was located on a small island (soon expanded through the construction of new, artificial islands) in Lake Texcoco, one of several large lakes that dominated the Mexican Basin. Over the centuries following the Spanish conquest, the lakes were gradually drained. However, Mexico City remained strongly shaped by its lacustrine past. Into the second decade of the twentieth century, not only did the shrinking remnant Lake Texcoco border the city to the east, but the city’s southern and eastern zones were criss-crossed by a web of canals that extended from the city center out to distant towns, including Xochimilco far to the southeast. The Canal de la Viga and other canals were heavily trafficked, as can be seen in the image below from around 1910, carrying food and goods produced in outlying towns to the capital’s bustling markets.

 

 

Xochimilco in particular, which was originally an indigenous town located on the shores of Lake Xochimilco, was an important center of food and agricultural production. The town’s namesake lake had been reduced in size over the colonial period, and continued to shrink in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but an extensive network of canals reached through and around the town—often referred to by observers as Mexico’s Venice—and the marshes that dotted the landscape. There, town residents grew crops and flowers on highly-productive chinampas—often mistranslated as “floating gardens,” but actually a type of fertile artificial island developed for agricultural purposes.

 

Although there were a handful of steam-powered vessels by the late nineteenth century, most canal traffic and chinampa work was carried out on flat-bottomed, barge-like vessels, propelled by poling, called canoas or chalupas. According to the prominent geographer Antonio García Cubas (1835-1912), canoas were large and ponderous vessels that carried heavy cargos or large numbers of passengers, while chalupas were light, fast vessels that often focused on smaller cargos, such as flowers. (By the present day, trajineras are still sometimes referred to as canoas or chalupas). These were simple vessels, but they were well-suited for their work. The overhanging bow and stern (interchangeable, as they were effectively double-ended) allowed easy loading from shore, and they could carry a heavy load effectively. The flat bottom simplified construction and provided all the stability they would need for the calm waters of the canals and marshes. As can be seen from the photos, the basic hull design (as seen below in an image from around 1905) has gone practically unchanged from the workboats of the nineteenth century (and likely earlier) to the tourist vessels of the present.

 

 

At the same time, work along the canals and chinampas was important culturally, as well. Collections of “Tipos Mexicanos”—a popular genre of literature and art that sought to catalog popular cultural practices and hence bring them together to forge a coherent national identity—frequently included romanticized depictions of workboats and their workers, often portraying indigenous people using the workboats to bring flowers to sell in the capital city, as in the staged photo below from the 1870s. Commenters like Antonio García Cubas, who wrote with nostalgia of mid-nineteenth century Mexico City in his memoir El libro de mis recuerdos (1904), strongly associated canal boats with an indigenous past, describing the canoas of the nineteenth century as “primitive Aztec vessels”—an association that likely has less to do with similarities in boat design than with the racial identities ascribed by elites to the lower- and working-class men and women who worked the canal boats.

 

 

(A quick note: despite frequent claims that the trajinera is a holdover from the pre-Colombian past, this does not appear to be quite accurate. As Alexandra Biar notes, the traditional vessels of Tenochtitlan were dugout canoes. Many were constructed with flat bottoms and angled bows and sterns, giving them a similar appearance to a trajinera in side profile, but they were proportionally much longer and narrower than the trajinera, which was also constructed out of boards rather than carved from a single log. The trajinera seems to have evolved from such vessels--indeed, as will be seen, its construction is not unlike a dugout split in half and with extra boards added down the center to widen it--but is not quite the same as pre-Colombian boats.)

 

The canals were also important sites for leisure. As Antonio García Cubas notes in El libro de mis recuerdos, the Canal de la Viga was heavily trafficked with revelers on festival days, especially during Carnaval, when it was popular to travel by boat to the town of Santa Anita or further out among the chinampas. While wealthier families traveled in elegant rented canoas under an elegant, curved awning, the lower classes (according to García Cubas) crowded the bow, stern, and wales of the vessels, leaving the center open as a dance floor.

 

Despite their significance to the regional economy and culture, the growth of rail lines meant that the canals declined in importance in the early twentieth century, while drainage projects, pumping, and sedimentation shrank the lakes and marshes. Mexico City’s canals were fully drained in the early 1920s. Chinampa agriculture also declined in the face of dwindling water levels, authorities’ plans for drainage, and competition with dry land agriculture promoted by post-revolutionary land reform policies, as Matthew Vitz has discussed in his excellent book A City on a Lake (which I’m using as the source for much of this discussion of economic-environmental change). Nonetheless, Xochimilco held on to its canals, many of which survive to the present day, even as their surroundings have been swallowed by relentless urbanization. This survival is owed to the region’s shift to the tourism industry, of which the trajinera is a crucial component and symbol.

 

Xochimilco, like other outlying towns around Mexico City, had long been not only a center of agricultural production, but also for recreation—getting out of the city for a weekend or two was popular for those who could afford it. The expansion of rail lines and improved transportation technologies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as the growth of the middle class, led to a dramatic expansion in recreational visits to the countryside. Xochimilco became an exceptionally popular destination, especially from the 1920s onward, and many farmers moved away from agriculture and into the business of selling goods and services to tourists. This coincided with the wider promotion of Mexican national identity and the codification of cultural traditions by post-revolutionary governments, intellectuals, and artists—a process that went into overdrive compared with its nineteenth-century antecedents—and with growing international tourism. Foreign and national visitors to Xochimilco, by riding on trajineras down canals and through chinampa plots, sometimes while dressing in stylized, colorful, “traditional” clothing (as in the photos below from the 1920s and 1930s), sought what they saw as an authentically Mexican experience. (Undoubtedly, it was also simply fun to have a beer while relaxing on a boat!)

 

 

More than ever before, the trajinera became over the twentieth century a commercialized and recognizable symbol of Mexican traditions (such as the 1930s Christmas cards, below, or in paintings by the prominent muralist Diego Rivera). Indeed, a stylized trajinera is today the symbol of Metro Nativitas, a metro station in Mexico City named after a town in Xochimilco. The trajinera is so strongly associated with tourism and tradition that it has begun to appear in boating attractions for tourists in other parts of the country, as well—in the process perhaps displacing local vessels (although I know little to nothing about local nautical traditions elsewhere in the country).

 

 

While the hull design changed only little, other aspects of the trajinera developed over time. Many early tourist trajineras were indistinguishable from workboats—perhaps only being differentiated by having an awning and a few chairs. They became increasingly ornately decorated to better attract tourists over time. Many early vessels used real flowers for decoration, as in the photo below from the 1920s, although this was undoubtedly difficult to maintain.

 

 

By the midcentury at latest, and perhaps earlier, trajineras increasingly came to be decorated instead with pieces of wood cut into designs and brightly painted, with the vessel’s name and sometimes the excursion company’s name included, attached to the front of the awning (as seen in the unfortunately blurry photo below from the 1960s).

 

 

Trajineras also became increasingly differentiated by size. Large and medium-size vessels have awnings; they are usually used for excursions, or for carrying bands of musicians who travel the canals looking to serenade tourists. In contrast, smaller vessels are usually used by vendors who sell food, drink, and other goods to the larger vessels’ passengers. (Vessels of all sizes are also used by those who still work the chinampas, and it should be noted that, among the tourist vessels, there are also large vessels with curved sides and flat bottoms, apparently called colectivos, that more closely resemble typical tour boats elsewhere; I have not found much information about them, and they are far outnumbered by the more typical trajineras).  

 

As can be seen, the trajinera carries a lot of cultural, historical, and economic weight in its simple but sturdy hull. So how to model that hull? Next, I will turn to designing the model. But first, sources and further readings:

 

Selected readings:

On pre-Colombian boat design: Alexandra Biar, “Prehispanic Dugout Canoes in Mexico: A Typology Based on a Multidisciplinary Approach,” Journal of Maritime Archaeology (December 2017).

On economic-environmental change, including the shift from chinampas to tourism in Xochimilco: Matthew Vitz, A City on a Lake: Urban Political Ecology and the Growth of Mexico City (2018).

On changing ideas of Mexico’s indigenous past in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: Mauricio Tenorio, Mexico at the World’s Fairs: Crafting a Modern Nation (1996) and Rick Anthony López, Crafting Mexico: Intellectuals, Artisans, and the State After Revolution (2010).

For Primary Sources: The Mediateca website, where the old photos above come from, has a huge number of photos of trajineras from the last decades of the 1800s onward, which can be accessed by simply searching for “trajinera” at: https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/  See also: Antonio García Cubas, El libro de mis recuerdos (1904), which besides discussing festival excursions on the canals, also discusses a difficult lake voyage in 1865 from Mexico City to Texcoco.

 

Images (except the photo I took at the start) come from the following links, in order:

https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/islandora/object/fotografia%3A116865

https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/islandora/object/fotografia%3A140385

https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/islandora/object/fotografia%3A392506

https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/islandora/object/fotografia%3A395597

https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/islandora/object/fotografia%3A109496

https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/islandora/object/fotografia%3A491450

https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/islandora/object/fotografia%3A395336

https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/islandora/object/fotografia%3A110266

 

 

Design

 

Unfortunately, I was not able to find any plans online. However, a few sites—the most useful of which comes from Alberto Peralta Legarreta’s “Objetario de la Ciudad de México” (http://www.alberto-peralta.com/objetariocdmex/manual_trajineras.html)-- shed some light on how trajineras are built, a trade practiced by a shrinking number of boatbuilders. It usually takes seven to fifteen days to build a real trajinera—my model has thus far taken much longer!

 

The trajinera has a few principle parts: the fondo (the rectangular base), the cabaceras (the angled “floors” at the bow and stern), and the brazos (the sides). The fondo and cabaceras are all made of boards joined end-to-end, in part with pine dowels that swell once in contact with water, and caulked with coconut fibers. The brazos, which on a large trajinera are about 7 cm thick, can be either a single board or multiple depending on wood availability. The cabaceras are capped by a slightly curved endpiece, and each of the four corners is bordered by a 90-degree angled metal support. Beyond that, each trajinera has a curved metal shade propped up by four pillars and supporting the decorations at the bow end, under which are a number of chairs and a central table. For now, I’ll be focusing just on the hull.

 

I had a hard time figuring out the exact dimensions of the hull, and it took me a few sketches to determine dimensions I was happy with. According to the website linked above, and other sources, the typical large excursion trajinera measures 7 meters long by 1.8 meters wide, with the height of the brazos 0.65 meters. After making a few sketches, I found that the depth appeared proportionally a bit too deep. After struggling a bit to figure out how to judge the depth, I noticed that, on most trajineras (see below or the photo at the start of the post), the seat height of the chairs is either level with or just below the tops of the brazos (or even just above them). After measuring some chairs in the house and looking around online, I found that most chairs—and trajinera chairs seem to be pretty normal in dimensions—have a seat height of about 45 centimeters (17.7 inches). Perhaps the trajinera’s fondo is 20 centimeters thick, but it seems much more likely to me that the height of the brazos is closer to 0.55 meters or a bit less. That looked a bit better on the sketch.

 

 

With the dimensions sorted out, it came time to decide on the scale. I’m making this model as a gift for my in-laws, which will require carrying it with me on a several-hour bus ride. This would be much easier with a small model, but I don’t want to go too small, as I don’t want to make it too difficult for me to construct small parts like the chairs. I decided on 1:32 scale. Moreover, to reduce the risk of travel damage, I’ll be constructing the hull, furnishings, decorations, and top awning all separately, keeping them apart during the trip, and putting everything together once I’m there.

 

With the scale set, I sketched out a hull plan. Rather than build the fondo and cabaceras from individual pieces, I decided to just make them a single piece each. Lines representing the joints between boards will be drawn on later.

 

 

A note on materials. Unfortunately, wood for modeling has not been very easy to get in Mexico City. In the future, I will have to see if a carpenter can mill pine or something down to a thin sheet. The only basswood I have found available is in 1/16th inch-thick sheets. In contrast, balsa wood is much easier to find in a variety of sizes. I don’t really want to work with balsa wood, as it’s spongy and doesn’t hold a cut well, and would really prefer another wood, but it will be the simplest solution for now, at least for the hull and some of the furnishings. (The columns supporting the awning will undoubtedly have to be made of a tougher material, but I’ll get to that later).

 

This post is already huge, so I’ll leave actually building and painting the hull for the next post.

 

Edited July 2, 2023 by JacquesCousteau
Corrected scale

[Roger Pellett]

An interesting project.  1/16in basswood scales 2in at your scale that might be about right.  If you need thicker you could laminate two pieces together.  If you can get basswood sheet, does your source also stock craft plywood?  This is handy stuff usually available in millimeter thicknesses that approximate fractional thicknesses 1/64in, 1/32in, 1/16in, 1/8in, 1/4in.  Either basswood or craft plywood would be preferable to balsa.  I assume that you plan to paint the model.

 

Roger

[JacquesCousteau]

5 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

An interesting project.  1/16in basswood scales 2in at your scale that might be about right.  If you need thicker you could laminate two pieces together.  If you can get basswood sheet, does your source also stock craft plywood?  This is handy stuff usually available in millimeter thicknesses that approximate fractional thicknesses 1/64in, 1/32in, 1/16in, 1/8in, 1/4in.  Either basswood or craft plywood would be preferable to balsa.  I assume that you plan to paint the model.

 

Roger

Thanks, that's helpful to know! Unfortunately craft plywood doesn't seem to be available here either. MDF is most commonly used for crafts, but I've heard it's not the easiest to work with. As I'll discuss below, if I build this again (which I might!), I might laminate basswood. I also found that the sealer I applied before painting did a good job of hardening the balsa, so I also might apply that at an earlier stage (although I'd need to test that it doesn't impact gluing).

 

 

Building the Hull

 

With the plans set, I got to work on the hull, cutting out all the pieces. Balsa wood, as noted, is a real pain in the neck to work with, and getting everything squared off and even was a challenge!

 

 

 

When it came time to connect the pieces, I made the mistake of just directly gluing them together at their edges instead of carving some sort of joint (beyond sanding an angle at the joint between the cabaceras and the fondo). I didn't carve out a joint because it was hard to carve out pieces of the balsa accurately and I was worried about ruining the pieces. This was an error because the getting everything square was a challenge and the joint wasn't great. I pushed through, and the results were ok, but in the future I would go about things a little differently in one of several ways. 1) If I were to make the parts from laminated 1/16th inch basswood, I could cut the inner layer slightly smaller, leaving a 1/16th inch border around the edges to be joined, which could lead to a much more secure joint. 2) If I were to continue to use balsa or unlaminated pieces, I could use a pin vice to drill a few small holes and could run sone thin dowels or toothpick pieces to connect the parts, again creating a more secure joint. 3) I could also simply sand the edges with a jig to a precise 45 degree angle, creating a more stable joint (which would, again, probably work better with non-balsa wood).

 

 

 

In any case, I eventually got the hull pieced together. At this point, it looked a bit more like some sort of garden planter than a boat! (Seen below next to the dory I'm building). There were a few gaps I filled with a mix of glue and sawdust, which effectively closed them.

 

 

 

After sanding it a bit, I took stock. The results were ok, not great. Maybe owing to the issues with the joints, the sides curved in a tiny bit and were not perfectly vertical. I also thought that it still looked a little deeper than it should for the scale, and the sides, scaled to the 7cm thickness specified in the guide mentioned in my previous post, looked slightly too thick. Things to keep in mind for next time!

 

In any case, it was time to paint. First I sealed the hull. I noticed that this hardened up the balsa wood considerably, which was good as it was already a little dinged at some corners. If I work with balsa wood in the future, I may try sealing it before cutting and sanding. 

 

I painted an ochre layer first. In hindsight it should have been a slightly brighter yellow, but I didn't want to overdo it. In any case, there's a great deal of variety in trajinera color schemes, so I wasn't too worried about it and I think it worked well with the other colors added later. In between layers, I also used a pencil to scribe the lines between the boards--while I had scored the markings, this didn't show up at all through the paint.

 

Then I added the red, masking with scotch tape.

 

There was very little run-through, mostly where the wood grain forced a gap, and the touch-up was pretty easy.

 

Then I painted the exterior blue. Overall, I was happy with how the paint turned out. 

 

Finally, I added the metal brackets at the bow and stern and around the corners, made out of card stock and painted before attaching. I think the size I chose worked, but two issues. First, in hindsight I think a darker color would have worked better (at least for the external brackets, the interior ones need to be red. Second, I should have aligned them with the top of the endpieces rather than the bottoms--nothing that ruins the model, but a good lesson for me to always double-check before gluing!

 

Despite the issues, I feel that I'm learning a lot of useful lessons, and I'm having a fun time with the build!

 

Next up: the chairs (oh so many chairs) and deck furnishings.

Edited June 22, 2023 by JacquesCousteau

[JacquesCousteau]

Next up, the chairs. They're usually pretty straightforward wooden chairs with a wicker seat. They can be painted simply or given slightly more varied paint schemes. There are also slight variations between boats in how the chairs are constructed.

 

 

In order to finish the build on tine to give it as a gift, and to maintain whatever sanity I have, I decided that there were a few acceptable changes I could make to simplify things. First, given my limited access to materials, I could live with using the same material for the frame, the backrest, and the leg supports. Second, I would simplify the chair's frame to have a few less supports. Third, the seat would just be wood rather than something that more closely approximates wicker. Fourth, I would make eight chairs rather than the larger number typically carried.

 

With that decided, I planned out the first chair as a prototype. I'd never made something like this, so I wanted to make sure it would work. If it didn't, I planned on just making a couple benches for the trajinera instead of chairs--something I've read some trajineras use, but that I've never seen. I looked at a bunch of Ikea chairs for inspiration--they have detailed dimensional drawings of every chair online--and sizing, then got to work.

 

 

 

The prototype turned out pretty well, I thought. If it wasn't an exact replica of a typical trajinera chair, it at least was a convincing chair--I wouldn't have to make a bench!

 

Then, a problem. Although I scaled it correctly based on some Ikea chairs, it looked much too big on the trajinera itself.

 

Hmmmmm. I think a few things might be at play here. First, perhaps trajinera chairs are a bit on the smaller side (if still in the normal range, they're hardly child-sized). Second, I increasingly think that the trajinera dimensions I found online are not quite accurate--as mentioned above, they seemed too deep, and now I think they might be slightly too narrow as well. Perhaps the width given was for the fondo and cabacera only, and didn't count the thickness of the brazos. Or they might simply be off--as will be seen, even with a smaller chair, the trajinera hull proprtions still seem a little on the small side, almost closer to a midsize excursion vessel rather than one of the large ones. (Note the difference between the middle vessel and those to the left and right in the photo below).

 

In any case, I made a new prototype chair, this time basing my dimensions on a smaller one (compared with the first, see below).

 

It looked a bit better on the hull, although I still think the hull is too small.

 

With the chair dimensions figured out, I had to make seven more. Rather than measuring each cut individually with a ruler, I marked dimensions for the frame pieces on a card and used that to cut pieces to standardized sizes. Soon I had a real workshop going!

 

 

 

 

After I had five chairs completed, I decided that four chairs per side looked a little sparse. I was making good time, so I decided to make ten chairs in total instead of just eight.

 

 

Finally, I finished all of them. I still have to paint them and glue them in place, but that will come later. I'm happy with how the chairs turned out, although I still think the hull looks a little narrow. Things I'll keep in mind if I build this again!

 

 

At this point, I began planning out the large decoration that's placed qt the front of the awning. They're backed with a sort of grid, as can be seen on the right-most of the three trajineras in the photo about midway up this post. Thankfully, the backing grid isn't perfectly regular, so I had some flexibility with planning it. As for the decorations, there is a huge variety of examples from which to draw inspiration. As my in-laws live in a sugar-producing region in Veracruz, I decided to place a large V in the center, with shapes approximating sugarcane and cane leaves on either side (which will be more obvious once painted).

 

On with the build!

[robert952]

Interesting (and different) aspect of nautical history.  Thanks for sharing the research.  Great read.  

[JacquesCousteau]

3 hours ago, robert952 said:

Interesting (and different) aspect of nautical history.  Thanks for sharing the research.  Great read.  

Thanks! I think that Latin American maritime history (maybe outside of Chile and to some extent Argentina and Brazil) has been really underexplored. Eventually I'd like to learn more about the coastal fishing industry's history, but for now that will have to wait.

[JacquesCousteau]

Sorry for the long break between posts! As seen above, the trajinera was nowhere near complete when it came time to visit my in-laws, so I prepared what I could before leaving, packed everything, and have been hard at work here.

 

First, I built the grating that supports the decorations on the fore end of the awning. Given the difficulty in finding basswood, and the unsuitability of balsa wood for this purpose, I tried out some other woods, nabbing a few coffee stir sticks at a cafe. Some were very stiff, splintery, and difficult to work with, but others were much better. I cut them lengthwise into three equal pieces and used that to build the grating. Later, I painted it black.

 

I also cut the awning posts to size. I was curious to see if I could stiffen balsa wood with sealer to make them, but this ended up not working so I ultimately went with basswood. (Original balsa posts seen below during a test-fitting).

 

Given the size of wood I had available, the posts are not completely accurate--they should be square--but laminating two pieces of 1/16th basswood and sanding it down to size would have taken too long under my time constraints. I decided it was an acceptable break from accuracy, and preferable to using flimsy balsa posts.

 

Next up was painting the chairs. As can be seen in earlier posts, they come in a wide variety of colors and patterns. I attempted to give mine an interesting pattern. Painting the chairs was a real pain in the neck--so many nooks and crannies! I should note that they're still not glued into place--I'm saving that for the final assembly.

 

Next, the table. Earlier I had made the surface by gluing some strips edgewise and sanding the edges until it was the right width (it can be seen painted ochre to the top right in the photo above). But there were a few extra steps. Photos of trajineras suggested there were three support beams running across the bottom of the table, so I added those. I also saw that the "legs" were a number of sawhorses. I tried to get these right--like the chairs, they were a pain in the neck to make!--but made a few deviations from reality. First, I used slightly thicker wood than would be to scale so that there would be a bit more surface area for the glue to work with, as I didn't want the table snapping off too easily. Second, while most photos of a large trajinera show three sawhorses, only two really fit well on mine. While this might be partly related to my having used larger pieces, I think it fundamentally comes down to the same issue I had with the chairs--the dimensions I am working with are a bit off. Oh well, two will work.

(Above: table with bottom cross-supports on left, awning poles on right, and first sawhorse under construction at center.)

The sawhorses are far from perfect, but they will be largely blocked from view by the table and the chairs. Thank goodness!!!

 

At this point, I also added a protective sealer coat on the hull. Once that dried, I took a look at how everything was coming together. Despite the many issues I've had, I'm having a great time making this.

 

Finally, I started work on the decorations. These will be handpainted. I'm telling myself that I'm going to have to live with imperfections here--the real vessels can certainly look a little rough up close!

 

So far I've done the uppermost piece, which is the most straightforward. It often is decorated with a town name in the center and flags on the sides. I decided to go with my in-laws' town name, and two Mexican flags (minus the eagle-on-a-cactus crest, which is usually left off on actual trajineras--see above).

 

Having never painted a name before, I was worried about getting the proportions wrong, so I started from the middle letter outwards. The first attempt looked terrible and I had to laugh.

 

Subsequent coats and touch-ups helped a lot, though. I also realized that the flag colors were hard to pick out against the black background, so I extended the yellow edge of the piece to also border the flags a bit. Despite the lettering being a bit off, I'm ok with how it turned out, although for the other pieces I'll probably start with a white base and go with black lettering. The black background made it take too many coats for lighter colors to be clear.

 

And here it is on the grating. I'm enjoying seeing things coming together!

 

 

[Bryan Woods]

I’m loving the parts of this build that you get to design and build from scratch. It’s really going to add to the one that’s on the receiving end of your gift. Everything looks great !

[wefalck]

A colourful project indeed and good research!

 

I am just wondering, whether these 'punts' wouldn't have had any internal structures, such as floor-timbers - or were the boards so thick that this was not needed?

 

Without time-constraints, I personally would taken up the challenge and simulate the wicker, perhaps with thread wound around  😉

[ccoyle]

Your model brings back fond memories. I've had the good fortune to visit the Central Highlands of Mexico on a couple of occasions after flying in to Mexico City. It's beautiful country, and the Mexican love of bright primary colors is evident everywhere. If you ever get the chance to visit Tlalpujahua, do it! My only prior travels in Mexico had been in Baja California, and I had assumed (silly me!) that all of Mexico was hot and semi-arid -- like Baja. Wrong! The Highlands have a wonderfully temperate climate.

 

Cheers!

[JacquesCousteau]

10 hours ago, Bryan Woods said:

I’m loving the parts of this build that you get to design and build from scratch. It’s really going to add to the one that’s on the receiving end of your gift. Everything looks great !

Thanks! It's a lot of fun to plan everything out, although also a real challenge to get things reasonably to scale (especially given the issues I can't stop mentioning that I've had with the dimensions). I'm definitely learning a lot, though--especially that, in the future, I should really paint parts separately before construction if they'll be a pain to paint once built. I'm thinking especially of the chairs here.

 

7 hours ago, wefalck said:

A colourful project indeed and good research!

 

I am just wondering, whether these 'punts' wouldn't have had any internal structures, such as floor-timbers - or were the boards so thick that this was not needed?

 

Without time-constraints, I personally would taken up the challenge and simulate the wicker, perhaps with thread wound around  😉

Thanks! Interestingly enough, nothing that I've seen, either in-person or through research, suggests that they have any real internal structure. In my own photos from 2018, this is clearest in the following image:

 

In any case, the boards are apparently about 7mm thick (according to a source, cited in my first post, whose claims about dimensions I've increasingly become a bit skeptical about), which seems like enough to do without framing. In my first post, I challenged the common claim that trajineras are "traditional Aztec boats" by emphasizing that their construction and proportions differed from actual pre-Hispanic vessels, which were dugout canoes. But, to speculate, this lack of framing is perhaps a design legacy from those early vessels. I haven't seen frames in photos from trajineras from c.1900, either.

 

Interestingly, the only trajinera with framing that I can find was one built by an arts group in 2011 in New York. (Some photos of the construction processat this link: https://theprojectdiary.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/building-“xochitl”-a-trajinera-at-the-gowanus-studio-space/ ). Oddly, their build not only has extensive framing, but also appears to have been built in three separate (and separately watertight?) sections, which is entirely different from those built in Mexico. I'm not really sure why. Maybe it can be taken apart for easier transport? Maybe the framing makes it easier to build compared to the traditional technique, which apparently uses a rather complex (I think, though I'm certainly not a carpenter) cross-nailing system to make a secure edge-to-edge joint? I don't really know.

 

4 hours ago, ccoyle said:

Your model brings back fond memories. I've had the good fortune to visit the Central Highlands of Mexico on a couple of occasions after flying in to Mexico City. It's beautiful country, and the Mexican love of bright primary colors is evident everywhere. If you ever get the chance to visit Tlalpujahua, do it! My only prior travels in Mexico had been in Baja California, and I had assumed (silly me!) that all of Mexico was hot and semi-arid -- like Baja. Wrong! The Highlands have a wonderfully temperate climate.

 

Cheers!

Thanks! Yes, Central Mexico is beautiful and has a great climate. I feel very lucky to get to spend so much time here. The major lakes also have what seems like a very interesting, if poorly documented, history of fishing vessels (more about which to come in a separate post.... maybe, if I can find more sources).

 

Brief build update while I wait for some things to dry: I've painted and installed the awning posts and their support beams. Not much in terms of techniques to write about, the pictures can do the talking.

 

I also put a sealer coat on the deck furnishings. Veracruz is very humid, so I don't want this to fall apart too soon. I also cut a card to size for the awning, which is made in real life of sheet metal. I lightly scored along the lengthwise edges to create a consistent small fold that will better attach to the support beams.

 

Test fitting:

 

Next steps: the awning is being painted green on the outside, grey on the inside, and will have a few bracings added. I also will be using card stock to make the metal brackets that often attach the awning posts to the sideboards (some just use a simple bolt instead, and some have an extra diagonal support, but I'm going with brackets for mine). Then I need to finish the decorations and fit everything together. Then a simple stand... if I have time.

[JacquesCousteau]

8 hours ago, wefalck said:

A colourful project indeed and good research!

 

I am just wondering, whether these 'punts' wouldn't have had any internal structures, such as floor-timbers - or were the boards so thick that this was not needed?

 

Without time-constraints, I personally would taken up the challenge and simulate the wicker, perhaps with thread wound around  😉

Forgot to mention above--using thread is a great idea! But definitely one that would require more time haha. I originally had vague hopes that, if I only did a single coat of paint on the chair seats, the wood grain would show through and make it look a bit, if one squinted and focused on other things, like a wicker weave. This of course didn't happen, it looked terrible so I just fully painted it. But in the future, thread could be very interesting.

[wefalck]

Edge-joined construction with dowels and mortices is a very old principle and was used over here in the Mediterranean area by the Phoenicians and the Egyptians for example. It was occassionally used also in Northern Europe for certain parts. The disadavantage is that like in clincher-planking it is virtually impossible to replace damaged planks.

 

Are you sure the planks were only 7 mm thick (which is tad over 1/4")? That seems too thin for edge-joining. I had the feeling earlier on, you mentioned 7 cm, which is pretty massive, but could explain the absence of internal structures.

 

For the wicker seats, you could have also glued together triangles of balsa to form a square, so that its grain runs towards the centre. Painted in some light beige, this may give a reasonable look of wicker?

 

As this is 1:32 scale, it would call for converting some commercial figures into some 'Mariachis' or whatever bands would have played on them 😉

[JacquesCousteau]

43 minutes ago, wefalck said:

Edge-joined construction with dowels and mortices is a very old principle and was used over here in the Mediterranean area by the Phoenicians and the Egyptians for example. It was occassionally used also in Northern Europe for certain parts. The disadavantage is that like in clincher-planking it is virtually impossible to replace damaged planks.

 

Are you sure the planks were only 7 mm thick (which is tad over 1/4")? That seems too thin for edge-joining. I had the feeling earlier on, you mentioned 7 cm, which is pretty massive, but could explain the absence of internal structures.

 

For the wicker seats, you could have also glued together triangles of balsa to form a square, so that its grain runs towards the centre. Painted in some light beige, this may give a reasonable look of wicker?

 

As this is 1:32 scale, it would call for converting some commercial figures into some 'Mariachis' or whatever bands would have played on them 😉

Good catch! That was a typo and should in fact be 7cm and not 7mm. Very interesting about the edge-joining techniques, thanks for sharing. I read somewhere that trajineras typically don't have very long service lives, the difficulty in repairing damaged planks likely contributes to that. That's a great idea for the chair, too! Next time I make one of these, I'll have to experiment a bit to find a good balance between what will look good and what won't drive me crazy to replicate ten or more times haha.

[Ras Ambrioso]

Jacques, I am enjoying reading about your journey through you first scratch built. Your story telling is great and told me about a few things I didn't know. I have have been in Mexico City in many occasions and had the pleasure of enjoying the rides at Xochimilco. The one thing that was notable in the "trajineras" at the park was how colorful they were. Flowers all over and brilliant colors. I will be following your build.

Que viva Mexico

[Ras Ambrioso]

By the way Jacques, are you also a diver? I used to dive in Cuba with the aqualung just after Jacques Cousteau wrote his famous "The Silent World".

[Glen McGuire]

This is a very unique and interesting project.  I had not heard of the term "Trajinera" but I believe we have very similar vessels on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas just a little ways down the road from where I live in Austin.  I've only heard them called riverwalk barges and they are used for sightseeing and dinner/drink cruises through the middle of downtown (1st pic below).  The also have riverwalk parades (like for Día de Muertos) with elaborately decorated barges (2nd pic).  Next time I'm down there I'm going to ask if they are modeled after Trajineras.

 

The craftsmanship on your Tranjinera is superb.  And the lively colors you've chosen really bring it to life.  Well done (so far)! 

 

Edited July 1, 2023 by Glen McGuire

[ccoyle]

1 hour ago, Glen McGuire said:

Next time I'm down there I'm going to ask if they are modeled after Trajineras.

 

Based on the metal hulls and rubber bumpers, the Texas boats appear to be built to a different set of requirements. 🤔

[JacquesCousteau]

5 hours ago, Ras Ambrioso said:

Jacques, I am enjoying reading about your journey through you first scratch built. Your story telling is great and told me about a few things I didn't know. I have have been in Mexico City in many occasions and had the pleasure of enjoying the rides at Xochimilco. The one thing that was notable in the "trajineras" at the park was how colorful they were. Flowers all over and brilliant colors. I will be following your build.

Que viva Mexico

Thanks, glad to hear people are enjoying the posts! As for diving, I actually never have. I'm not much of a swimmer, sad to say. Using a diving bell sounds amazing, though.

 

2 hours ago, Glen McGuire said:

This is a very unique and interesting project.  I had not heard of the term "Trajinera" but I believe we have very similar vessels on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas just a little ways down the road from where I live in Austin.  I've only heard them called riverwalk barges and they are used for sightseeing and dinner/drink cruises through the middle of downtown (1st pic below).  The also have riverwalk parades (like for Día de Muertos) with elaborately decorated barges (2nd pic).  Next time I'm down there I'm going to ask if they are modeled after Trajineras.

 

The craftsmanship on your Tranjinera is superb.  And the lively colors you've chosen really bring it to life.  Well done (so far)! 

 

Thanks, I had no idea they did river tours in San Antonio! Sounds like a very relaxing way to pass an afternoon. Same concept as the trajinera rides, maybe a different hull design though.

 

I'm getting close to finishing the build. Which is good, as I really don't want to try to repack everything to bring back to Mexico City to give as a gift later.

 

A lot of trajineras use metal brackets to support the awning poles. I made mine out of card paper, scored at the angles, like the hull support brackets I mentioned in an earlier post. I wanted them to stand out slightly from the hull, so I painted them black and then did a single thin coat of red over them. I was pleased with how they turned out.

 

And here they are attached to the posts:

 

The "awning," made of sheet metal on the real thing, was painted green on the outside and grey inside. I used card to make the curved metal supports at the front and back of it, and used wood for the lengthwise supports, which slightly protrude at the aft edge. (The very edges at the sides were left unpainted so they would attach to the frame better).

 

Before attaching the awning, I had to glue the seats and table in. I drew reference marks on paper to make sure the chairs would be more or less evenly spaced.

 

With the deck furniture and awning attached, it looked pretty good, I thought! (Of course, a sharp eye will note that one chair leans a bit forward out of line with the rest. I decided against fixing it, as sanding the back legs down would result in a shorter chair. Oh well, it's not like the chairs on the real thing are nailed down or anything.)

 

The last thing is really just to attach the decorative nameplate (not sure if that's the right term?) to the fore end of the awning, which will have to wait until tomorrow. I've been hard at work on the decorations, starting with the central V for Veracruz, the lower curved name plate, and the heart I decided to place in the V (my wife's family, who will receive this as a gift, have been incredibly welcoming to me).

 

 

I've been having a much more fun time painting these than painting the chairs, even if my lines are a little wavy sometimes.

 

Next up, the sugarcane motif that will flank the V. (My wife's hometown is in a sugar-growing region). First I drew out what I wanted, then roughly matched it in wood. While the rest of the decorations have used 1/16th inch basswood, I wanted something easier to work with for the curves, so I brought some thinner basswood scraps leftover from the dory build. (The lower nameplate, I should note, is still not glued on--waiting to get the name written first in case I completely screw it up and need a substantial repaint).

 

Exciting (your reaction may vary) action shot! My wife wanted a shot if me using tweezers to test fit the cane pieces, so here it is!

 

Finally, I painted them light green. All that's left at the moment is to paint on the name, attach the remaining decorations to the grating, and attach it to the awning/posts.

[JacquesCousteau]

Finished!

 

After a lot of thought, I decided to name the trajinera after my wife's grandmother, who unexpectedly passed away a little over a year ago. Painting the name went ok. I was so happy that the first attempt wasn't a disaster that I only later noticed that the letters would look better if they were a little thicker, which wasn't hard to touch up (first attempt below, thicker letters in photo pf complete build). Ultimately I wasn't crazy about the black letters on a white background. If I had more time, I would probably try to do white letters on a blue background, and paint more of a curved line tracing along the top and bottom of the lettering. Also the lettering would look better if it were blockier, like the upper nameplate. Oh well, for next time! Also, the flower motif both fills in some blank space, and works as a reference to how earlier generations of canal boats in Mexico City were associated with transporting flowers for sale in the city's markets.

 

Attaching the nameplate to the awning/posts was more complex than I anticipated. As can be seen below, the nameplates are actually collapsible, connected permanently with a rope to the middle support beam of the awning, which serves as a pivot point, and held upright with tied ropes around the posts at the bottom of each end of the arch. Untying these allows the nameplate to fold back over the awning.

 

I decided that it would not be possible to make the model's nameplate collapsible, as it would be hard if not impossible to tie and untie such small knots. But I did want to represent these parts, even if inexactly. I tied bits of thread around the nameplate grid at the three points, then tied the bottom two off around the posts. So far, so good, although I cut one of these slightly too short and it was very frustrating to tie. For the center, replicating actual practice would require tying off the thread around the middle awning support beam, which was not possible as it was glued down. Maybe something I can do next time, but not this build--it would require planning ahead and adding in the rope prior to attaching the beam to the awning. Instead, looking for something that would represent this rather than accurately model it, I tied a big ugly knot, as can be seen on the middle thread below. All knots were secured with a bit of glue. 

 

I then raised the nameplate up to the correct height and stuck the big knot on the bottom of the beam. Not accurate, I'm aware, but it's pretty hard to see in any case. I used a few dabs of super glue to hold the nameplate in place. I then rubbed glue into the thread and held it in place downwards to try to get a natural hang before cutting it to size, although, as can be seen, this was not fully successful.

 

Finally, I made a simple stand of basswood. Lacking sufficient time to paint it, I penciled in some details on the interior where they are only visible by taking off the model--maybe it can be painted later on the outside or something. This was then sealed.

 

I also made the pole that they use to push the boat through the canals. When not in use, they're often propped at the stern against the projecting beams at the aft end of the awning.

 

With that, the model was finished! (I'm not sure how to edit the title to reflect this). I'll probably make an album or something with more photos later. 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes from reflecting on this build:

 

- Balsa wood: not even once.

 

- Painting parts separately before construction, when possible, is the way to go.

 

- When rigging, make sure to leave a lot of extra line to tie things off.

 

- When making a lot of furnishings with repeated parts, it's more efficient to make all the pieces first to equal measurements before constructing the parts.

 

- Plan ahead! Lack of doing so is why I was not able to properly attach the middle rope for the nameplate.

 

- Relatedly, there are a lot of small details that got ignored in this build, like the wicker seats mentioned above, or the docking rope at the bow (I considered giving it a try, but lacking even pliers, I couldn't make a convincing docking ring or find something similar to purchase, and decided not to include it, as I didn't want to just glue the rope to the deck). In the future, I'd like to include more details. I also wish I had made some beer bottles to place on the table!

 

- I wish I had done more to weather this model--as the photos show, a lot of trajineras are rather banged up, which makes sense given how many tourists there are and how crowded the canals are--but I still don't feel like I really know how to do convincing weathering.

 

- I'm still not fully happy with the final hull dimensions, but as noted above, I didn't realize the issue with the hull being too narrow until I built the chairs. In the future, when scratch-building something for which the dimensions are a bit uncertain, it may be helpful to draw not just the hull, but a furnishing or something at scale, to try to get a sense of whether or not the dimensions are correct.

 

Overall, though, this was a really fun build and a good experience. I'm pleased with how it turned out (although I would adjust the dimensions a bit in the future), and I had a great time designing and building everything. My wife's family is very happy with the model and have put it above the TV; her aunt is talking about getting a glass or clear plastic case to protect it from dust. Now for me to finish the dory, wait for the lobster smack to arrive, and perhaps make something small and simple (without a bunch of chairs!) in the meantime.

 

 

Edited July 2, 2023 by JacquesCousteau
Typo correction

[mtaylor]

Beautiful work and believe the in-laws will love it.  

 

I did change your title to "Finished" for you.   There is a posted topic on this here:  

 

[Glen McGuire]

Enchanting is the first word that comes to mind when I look at your trajinera.  Congratulations on a superb build! 

[gsdpic]

Thanks for sharing this, I really enjoyed following this brief build.  The joy you had in making it and the joy that I am sure the recipients felt really came through in your log, in part due to the bright colors of these happy little boats.  Congrats on this fine build and on...I assume...earning massive brownie points with your wife and her family. 

 

[ccoyle]

Great job on a very unusual subject! I think the lettering looks appropriately in character, since precision masking and painting does not seem to be normative for these colorful craft.

 

Cheers!

[JacquesCousteau]

Thanks for your kind words, and also for editing the title and pointing me toward how to do it myself. I was concerned at the start that this would be too simple a build for anyone to be interested in seeing it, but I'm glad that people found it interesting.

 

Also, a note I forgot to include above: after I got everything assembled, I decided that the awning posts are a little longer than they should be. In the future when I'm scratch-building, I suppose I should actually use a drawing program to measure and scale things, rather than my current low-tech method of holding a ruler up to the computer screen!

[rcmdrvr]

A very pretty, little model.  You can be proud of your efforts.

[Ras Ambrioso]

Great job. The only thing missing are the flowers. Maybe you could get some miniature flowers. You may try the net for places that sell material for doll houses. Here, in the USA, we have Hobby Lobby and Michael's that carry such stuff.

Pero, en todo caso tu trajinera es bella.

[yvesvidal]

Beautiful and enchanting little boat. Not many chances to see this kind of boat built in scale models, as such thank you for sharing your passion and allowing to discover this part of the South American culture.

 

Yves