The ship model depicted on this page is based on a small 16th century Spanish Galleon, The San Francisco. My mother, Jeanne, gave me a model kit as a gift and when I opened the box I discovered a pile of tiny lumber, hundreds of brass parts and a set of blueprints with instructions loosely translated from Spanish to English. I had built buildings from scratch for a model railroad as a kid but nothing this involved.

The overall model is 25 inches long by 21 inches tall. It is built from wood and metals with no plastic anywhere.

 

I bought a book on building historic ship models and how to rig a ship and got into this project full force. It was very challenging because I had to fabricate almost everything by interpreting the plans. I upgraded many areas to add authentic details and went overboard on some. For example: the ships hull is constructed from two layers on individual planking and I additionally drilled thousands of tiny holes and filled them in with wood putty to simulate plank nails. I took dozens of extra hours to do this and most people that see the model don't even notice the effect until I point it out.

 My nephew used to visit when I was building the model and always wanted to know when I was going to float my pirate ship in the pool. Arrrr... if this thing gets wet, someone's going to walk the plank!

I even had to learn to use a sewing machine to fabricate the sails. I went thru several needles because the sail cloth was very heavy.

The rigging on the ship took many hours to complete using a needle and tiny pliers. I tied thousands of clove hitched knots.

This is a photo of the ship while under construction.

 The San Francisco is displayed in a case and supported by custom built brackets I designed to look like anchors and fabricated the with the help of my friend, Demo when he had his welding shop. The Wood planking was cut from a hundred year old beam from my sister-in-law's Grandparents farm.

The entire project took four years to complete and I dedicate it to the memory of my Mom.

Thanks Mom!

Back to Architectural Rendering Gallery