Ragusian Carrack, 15-16th century, Restoration / reconstruction

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Jul 11, 2018
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Location
Belgrade, Serbia
Before starting a new model, I decided to make a complete remake of my very first model which I have built as 13y old kid. After 47 years on the shelf several apartment moving, weathering, dust, and years of service heavily damaged the precious old model of Ragusian Nave (15th century Ragusian carrack) in 1:100 scale
Pieces are broken and lost, all the rigging started to falling apart due to the thread and ropes rotting, paint here and there falls off etc etc.
The old beauty is worn - torn retired ship.
Now I am going to completely restore and re-make it to bring him an old glory.
What is interesting for this model- built almost half a century ago, when I was a kid, there were no sophisticated tools to make it, no kit completes, no shops where you could buy materials, parts, specific tools, there were nothing available.
I built it as a 12-13y. old kid from the piece of solid wood, cut of out of the log, using knife, ax, a few chisels, hand saw, razor blades, hand operated manual drill, and a hand scroll saw. out the plans: - I got a few photocopies from one old fashioned seaman and amazing ships modeler of hand-drawn sketches with very partial measures and not much details... and of course no descriptions nor instructions. Here is what she looks like now and I shall post the process of restoration and reconstruction.
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Looking forward to your updates progress with interest. ;) We have an awesome build log by Jack Aubrey (aka @jack.aubrey). Please take a look , it may help you :)

 
The process of reconstruction - restoring of the almost half a century old solid hull model continues. All decks except forecastle ( will be added later) are done, bulwarks in place, stern castle grid-like bulwarks started, all masts built new instead of old, cracking ones, Started planking the hull with walnut strips ( old model was not planked, but just hull painted.

IN order to make true "see-trough" windows and doors, instead of fake ones, I cut out large chunks of the forecastle and quarterdeck solid wood creating false forecastle and rear decks and making real windows which could briefly show interior.

Using walnut for planking is a good choice since old Ragusian ships at that time were mostly build from walnut, oak and beech wood - therefore their "doomed"dark look come from. In 15th - 16th century hulls of these ships were tarred below the waterline, and impregnated dark walnut planking above the waterline, thus giving them specific dark tone.
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I decided not to paint the wood at all, but to do weathering by chemical treatment of the wood. I use two methods- walnut pigment powder solution in water for these "greenish walnut" tone of wet, aged walnut wood and special chemical solution prepared by the chemical reaction of steel wool, alcohol vinegar and catalyzed with hydrogen peroxide. That solution gives amazing results when treating various types of wood: light colored wood get various tones of grayish weathered wood while highly pigmented wood become very intense colored. I have to say that it is even not the "painting" at all, but it's a chemical reaction between the organic matter in the selected wood and vinegar prepared stain. Additional effects on some types of wood could be achieved by adding the black tea into the vinegaer/ steel wood solution.

Such prepared planking and other wooden details on the ship could be later on treated and protected by linseed or Tung oil. Effects would be very realistic and within minutes you can achieve years of weathering on sun, rain or seawater.IMG_20200304_012905897.jpgIMG_20200304_012753084.jpgIMG_20200304_012724968.jpgIMG_20200304_012927783.jpgIMG_20200304_012804110.jpgIMG_20200304_012831813.jpg
 
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The restoration is progressing... Rigging and sails.... Being a bit tired of tinny details, I moved to rigging and sails. Some stern carvings, coat of the arms, hull decorations and some decks details will be added later.... Hopefully before the end of this year the 16th century Ragusian Carrack wil be finished.

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