Santa Maria restoration

[OlivierF]

I have a friend that would like me to “restore” this model of the Santa Maria built by his grandfather. I have no idea if it was a kit build or scratch.
I does not appear to have any major structural damage just need to redo the rigging and dust/clean the sails. The sails appear to leather and I certainly don’t want to damage the sail decals.
I’m not sure about repainting the hull and will determine that once I have the model in hand.
Any words of wisdom from those more knowledgeable than me?

 

[AndyA]

Olivier:
These hardly rate as words of wisdom but here is my two-cents worth. This is an lovely, stylized model of a carrack (1st picture) but it does not pretend to be an accurate scale model. It is in the style of old votive models (2nd picture). I think your proper task is to gently clean and restore parts that can be without damage or change. Do not improve anything as that would change the character of the model. It's possible that it has some value and any "improvements" would decrease the value. Repainting would probably be a bad idea; as they say with antique furniture, leave the patina.

There are two aspects of your project that will likely require some research: restoring the leather sails and typical rigging for a carrack. While the mainsail and topsail look okay, the foresail and lateen mizzensail appear a bit crumpled. There should be quite a bit of information online about reshaping leather but proceed with caution. I would think that you would have to remove the sails from the spars to work on them. With rigging, I would try to stay with the existing as much as possible and where you have to guess at missing bits, check online sources for information on period rigging, but don't get into more detail than reflected in the existing. Try to find cordage that duplicates the size, color, and texture of the existing rigging.

Please keep us informed of your progress.
Fair winds!

 

[OlivierF]

Thanks Andy. Once I get the model into my shipyard and in dry dock I’ll take a very close look and photo/video everything before I start. It’ll be awhile as first we have figure how best to get it to me.

 

[seadeep]

You're a braver man than I to tackle that.

With regards to the leather sails, I think I've seen products by Tandy that can be used to soften and recondition leather. The challenge you face (well, you face numerous challenges with this one)... is that the leather is going to be extremely brittle, and in the softening and cleaning process, I'm wondering how well the images that are painted on it are going to hold up.

I might suggest a Google search using the following string "museum techniques for dry leather restoration". Using that, i found large amount of useful hits that provide video and textual information on how curators and restorers approach this type of work. Best wishes for success with your endeavour.