Santa Maria by Moonbug - FINISHED - Artesania Latina - Bashed

[Moonbug]

Thanks for the comments everyone!

 

No problem Sjors!  Must be for the Aggy right, I'm sure you've already got the indoor plumbing all laid out for Ildefonso Right? ;-) 

 

Marktime - Thanks for the comments and the information, that's fantastic. I only had a little information and made guesses from there based on some of the famous Russian models.  I had not heard of that book, I'm definitely going to go out and try to track it down.

 

- Bug

[egkb]

Hi Bug, I've just read this build through (just when I thought you couldn't improve on the fantastic work done on the Swift, well you proved me wrong!!) I love it, especially the aged look.

 

Bye for now

 

Eamonn

[Moonbug]

Thanks very much Eamonn!

 

- Bug

[Moonbug]

Today has become a research day in between "real" work. I've secure delivery of the "Vanguard of a Empire" book to which maritime referred to my local library. Now I'm trying to nail down what the cleats and belaying rails would have looked like. I can't imagine they would have been rails with pins, but it's a tough go finding reference that specific.

 

-Bug

[Dee_Dee]

Bug -   Researching the small details is half the fun!  If you need more time to research, let me know and I'll write you a 'note'

[Moonbug]

Time for cleats.  After a couple failed attempts at making wooden cleats for the bulwarks, I finally came across this entry from Floyd:

 

http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/1906-wooden-cleats/

 

which of course made me feel silly for not looking here in MSW first.  Doh.

 

At any rate, I used a very similar process starting with a 3mm X 2mm strip, measuring off every 10mm for the width of the cleat I needed. I used a 10mm dremel grinder for the bottom of the cleat and a 3mm to 7mm conical shaped grinder for the top.

 

I then sanded and rounded the edges with 400 grit sand paper. I did this BEFORE I cut them apart since sanding any kind of small piece is much easier for me if it's still on a stem.

 

 

After cutting the cleats apart I rounded the edges.

Edited January 10, 2014 by Moonbug

[gjdale]

Nice job on the cleats Bug. I've just been grappling with a similar issue for my Vic - Shroud Cleats to be exact. I've come up with a similar method, though slightly different. I'll post pics in my log tomorrow if successful. If not, I might just have to copy your method.

[jastrząb]

Very nice outcome. I like the final shape of the cleats.

[Moonbug]

Thanks guys. Can't wait to see your aporoach Grant.

 

-Bug

[Moonbug]

Awesome, the copy of "Vanguard of Empires: Ships of Exploration in the Age of Columbus" I requested showed up at the library already!  

My lovely wife couldn't help but make fun of me of course - noting that this was likely the first time the Librarian every needed to notify anyone of this book.  This was compounded by the fact that the last time it was checked out was apparently in November of 1998.

 

Nonetheless... let the research commence!  Thanks again for the tip Marktime!

 

- Bug

[marktime]

Happy Sleuthing! . :D

Edited January 10, 2014 by marktime

[NMBROOK]

Fabulous work Bug   I have read through your log and love your attention to detail and the weathered patina you have applied to everything.

 

Kind Regards Nigel

[Moonbug]

Thanks Nigel and Lawrence I appreciate the comments.

 

Today felt like a day where I did a lot of work but got very little accomplished. I did quite a bit of reading but still haven't discovered a solid infor on belaying to the bulwarks. No worries, I'll press on with my best instincts.

 

I applied a couple cleats and some rails to the poop deck. Which turned out to be a much bigger challenge than I thought - I had to make sure I mounted them while still having enough room left to "open" my poop deck so that the captain's cabin can be seen. Pretty narrow window there. We'll see if it holds up later when the rigging goes up. I'll post some photos when I get a little more done and get a chance.

 

-Bug

[Beef Wellington]

Very nice build you have here Bug - I think the research is always worth it.  Really like the technique you used for your cleats, thanks for sharing.

[Moonbug]

Thanks Jason!

 

-Bug

[mtaylor]

Bug,

 

I just had a nice time reading and catching up on your build,  It's great to see you back.   BTW, belaying pins really didn't exist until around the late 1600's or early 1700's.  Lines were tied off directly to the rails.

[Moonbug]

Hey Mark, thanks for stopping by. Following your scratch builds always provides great little tips for builds. Nice work on the Licorne.

 

Thanks for the info on the pins. The good news is, by the time I got my recent book and discovered the time frame of when pins came into play on caravels and naos (well after the SM obviously) I had only errantly built the mainmast rail with pins. So that's the only one I need to fix. However I still need to figure out HOW the ropes were tied to the rails at that time and how the excess rope may have been stowed against the line or on the the deck.

 

-Bug

[Moonbug]

So working on the cleats and rails has led to this...

First, I made a quick replacement / fix to the rail at the mainmast to remove the belaying pins that didn't exist for another hundred years or so...  That would have been a giant blemish to try as hard as I have to maintain some authenticity only to have a blunder thats off by a century.  Doh.  

 

 

But then, since the cleats and rails that I'm installing obviously don't match the giant metal cleats and fixtures that are illustrated in the AL diagrams, I needed to go through and do a comparison between Pastor's rigging plans and the AL rigging plans.  What I discovered, is that the AL rigging plans are actually pretty darn accurate!  The major difference is the lack of tacks and sheets, and of course the locations of where the rigging is tied off onto the deck. 

 

 

With that knowledge in hand, I began redrawing a mockup of the deck to include an accurate representation of where my deck fixtures (bombards, pumps, ladders, etc.) are located, then plug in all of my cleats and rails. I can then re-accomplish AL's version of rigging placement and have my own, more accurate version. 

 

Here's a problem that I can use help with if anyone knows - Nothing I an find in either Pastor's book, or Smiths "Vanguard of Empire" book tells me where the lines off the Knight and Halliard are rigged. My best guess is that it would have been to the rail at the base of the mizzen, but that would take the lines directly over the hatch - which seems unlikely.  Thoughts??

Edited January 13, 2014 by Moonbug

[marktime]

Whoa! there my friend- Look at p.112 of your Vanguard. You'll see references to belaying pins, cleats and kevels.

 

The Knight head was a a sturdy fixed block taken down to the keel and a tackle comprised of several parallel sheaves mounted within a single block that was used to raise and lower the main yard. Smith points out that foot ropes were not in use so that the yard was lowered to furl the mainsail.

 

Now to lift a rigged yard took a lot of effort so the main yard hoist comprised two ropes (falls) hauled by two teams at the same time: when the yard was level the order "marry the falls" brought the two ropes together and the crew hauled the yard as one team.  Been there, done it with ships boats.

 

Mechanical advantage gained with ropes and pulleys implies the larger the gain, the longer the rope. So there would have been a lot of rope around the knight head when the yard was hoisted and tied into place and I surmise that the likely place that would serve as storage was either lashed to the knight head itself or the rigging above it.

 

Not sure what you are referring to with the "Halliard"

[Moonbug]

Thanks Marktime!   Whoa indeed... I just got "Vanguard" a few days ago, and the info on page 112 was what made me realize my error in first creating the mainmast rail with belaying pins (which has since been corrected). Wish I had the book from the start to marry with Pastors!

 

I went back and looked at your SM, and saw how you lashed the rope to the knighthead.  

 

Oh, the halliard is the block between the knighthead at the yard that the rope ran through after it passed through the sheaves in the knighthead.

 

- Bug

Edited January 13, 2014 by Moonbug

[Jean-Pierre]

My congratulations for this excellent build, which is by far the best Santa Maria build I've seen so far.

 

I have myself since quite a bit of time been interested in the Colombus ships, and have been very impressed by the approach by Wolfram zu Mondfeld, which matches most of your own research by the way.  And I am pleased to see that you made her with a round "bum", a feature that has been omitted in all kits, with the exception of the plastic kits (Revell, Heller, Imaï) which are all based on the Guillen Y Tato reconstruction.  But this ship had a particularly small draught and indeed would have been a very bad sailing ship.  This reconstruction was moored for a long period of time in front of the Naval Museum of Barcelona, and when I last spotted her in the 1980's I think, she was being transformed to add a forecastle, which the original Guillen Y Tato model (and any of the plastic kits) did miss.

 

Now there is one point on which I still do not agree with most of the authors and that is the rake of the fore mast on carracks. Virtually ALL drawings or paintings of the peariod show 3 absolutely vertical masts.  Only on one painting from the early 1500's did I see a forward raking mast as shown on all models.  But the Santa Maria was built around 1450 if I remember well!  Now I know that even the best researchers tend to think that evidence should match their conclusions i.o. the contrary, but still...

As an example of this, take the Mataro ship, now in Rotterdam.  The large model show a very wide and comparatively short model.  I have inspected the original quite thoroughly, and noticed that the model is very well detailed indeed, so it must have been built with loving care.  But researchers claim that it was built out of proportion and would be unstearable with only one mast.  Now on the oldest photograph of this model that I saw, shsa had three masts.  Then on later pictures she had lost her fore mast, and now she has lost her mizzen as well.  Of course I do not pretend to know better than the people who made those statements or who made those changes, but I personally prefer to believe what I see than what people tell me I should see.

 

So I think I would build a

[Jean-Pierre]

whoop I've sent without my permission

I said I would personally build my model with a foremast seated as forward as possible but quite vertical.

 

Happy modelling to you.

 

JP

[Moonbug]

Jean-Pierre,

 

   Thanks so much for stopping by my build, and I appreciate the insight!  It's always a pleasure to chat with a fellow enthusiast of this time period. As you know, it's quite a challenge weeding through the varying opinions and speculation regarding the Santa Maria. Particularly because Columbus himself has such disdain for her that he didn't write of her nearly at all, preferring the sleek caravels much more.

   I do in fact have Mondfeld's book, which I adore, as it is one of the most comprehensive sources of information regarding the differences in centuries. That probably explains much of the similarity! ;-)  

   When I was in the early stage of planning out the Santa Maria, it became clear to me that I would have to make some tough choices regarding which author to pay attention to, and which direction to go as a result. And you are absolutely correct, most of these gents present evidence solely to support their own opinion. While you are obviously correct regarding most carracks and their three masts, Xavier Pastor's version in his book "The Ships of Christopher Columbus" shows the SM as a Nao with the bowsprit and spritsail added.  In Mondfeld's book he does explain (p.226) that the bowsprit first started to appear as early as the 13th century, and later in the book he shows a Flemish carrack from about 1480 that shows a bowsprit, although it is not rigged with the spritsail itself. After going back and forth quite a bit, trying to find any documentation on ships built in the 1400's, and looking at every photo I could find of the Mataro, I decided to go with the extra mast. Particuarly because of the ambiguous nature of the Santa Maria's origins and even where she was built before she was purchased from Columbus.

 

Thanks again, input and viewpoints are always welcome and I hope you enjoy the build. Incidentally, I am supremely jealous that you've had a chance to inspect the Mataro in person, what a wonderful opportunity!

 

By the way marktime and Mark, had I remembered to pay attention to Mondfeld's book I wouldn't have had my little belaying pin gaff!

 

- Bug

[marktime]

Jean-Pierre, pleasure to see you here. Could the foremast be raked forward to facilitate dropping the foresail yard seeing that the foresail could only be furled with the yard brought down to the deck?

 

Bug, a quick look at Xavier Pastor p. 89 has brought me up to speed on the halliard. Ii is what I have called "falls".

[Moonbug]

Lawrence,

 

   Thanks very much for the visit and the kind words. Much appreciated.

 

- Bug

[Moonbug]

Marktime,

 

   When I started my build I spend a lot of time looking at your build, as I appreciated your research and accuracy.  However, since the MSW 1.0 crash, you only have the completed pictures in the gallery.  As I'm going over my rigging plans, I noticed on your build that you added some standing rigging - as I've annotated here - included this very cool rig that drops down and connects to the ring on the Windlass.

 

 

    I vaguely remember you explaining some of these things in your initial log. Can you please tell me why you added these lines and on what you based it?

 

Thanks!

Edited January 13, 2014 by Moonbug

[NAZGÛL]

Very nice! I like the dark colors you're using.

 

 

/Matti

[Moonbug]

Thanks Matti, I appreciate it!  I've been enjoying watching your Wasan come together!

 

- Bug

[Moonbug]

Awaiting some information, and always subject to adjustments - here is my new rigging plan compared to the AL plan. As I said, most of the actual rigging was actually pretty accurate, but the locations to where rigs were reeved and tethered were not.

 

I've color coordinated not only the type of fixture (cleat, rail, etc) but I also color coordinated rigging that is coming from the mizzen, main, and fore/bow.

 

I do realize I have quite a ways to go before I get started with rigging, however I quickly discovered that this step needed to be done prior to continuing to outfit the deck and hull with cleats, rails, and sheaves.  Obviously I can't add those items unless I know how they will be used.

It also makes me realize that this was one crowded little vessel and was likely pretty tricky to get around and get things done!  I still have a few deck fixtures I'd like to add (a second skiff, cooking area, etc) and I'm wondering where it'll all fit...

 

I also realize I'm going to have a Helluva time rigging the mizzen so that I can raise the false poop deck to make the captain's cabin visible. In all likelihood I'll need to fudge some things...

 

- Bug

Edited January 13, 2014 by Moonbug

[marktime]

The standing rigging is a mix of the Fernandez-Duro and Guillén replicas with an eye to creating a satisfying line.The additional rigging that is taken down to the windless is a hoist having seen this feature on other vessels and appreciating the need for a hoist to launch the boats and for loading into the main hatch.