Tim Reynaga

Thanks, and yes I am moving forward with this! Shot with primer and a wrecked Santa María hulk test fitted, the sea is ready for paint! This weekend, I think...

Setting about making the unusual seascape, I started with a chunk of hard craft foam with the basic shape roughed out using a kitchen steak knife (I’ve since been informed by my wife that this is NOT an approved use for said implement... ) Anyway, the sea was then sculpted over the foam with DAS modelling clay using the in-progress model to help form the contour under the ship’s hull. The result looked ok, but at the time I ended up abandoning the idea and simply completed Santa María as a full hull model using the kit provided stand.

A depiction of the end of the Santa María would be an interesting challenge, but I had some questions about the received version of these events. After doing a little more historical research, it became evident to me that the real story of Santa María’s end was somewhat different from the official version. The world, as we now recognize, and as sensible Europeans at the time knew very well, is flat. Nevertheless, there were then (as now) a small but vocal group of reality-deniers promoting the ludicrous notion that the Earth was actually round – like a ball! Christopher Columbus was among the loudest of these nutters, and his antics so amused Queen Isabella of Castille that she eventually agreed to lend the expendable foreigner three second-hand ships just to see where his dopey ideas might take him. Much to everyone’s surprise, the tiny fleet actually blundered into previously unknown (and, it turns out, clothing optional) lands. After they returned to Spain with such cool stuff as gold, tobacco, coca leaf, tomatoes, pineapples, the hammock (all well received) and syphilis (less popular), the Queen realized that her favorite loon had actually turned out to be a pretty good investment. Awkwardly, though, Columbus had returned without his flagship. Apparently, having heard about a magical island called California, he had sent the Santa María and Pinta to check it out. Staying ashore himself to cavort with the natives, he was not aboard when the flagship ventured a little too close to the Edge of the World (California has always been on the Edge)... – and over the Edge Santa María went! Fortunately the Pinta had wisely held back and so, picking up Niña and the Admiral, they made their way back to Spain. Embarrassed by the loss of his flagship and unwilling to acknowledge proof of the Flat Earth (Round-Earthers being notoriously unimpressed by actual evidence), Columbus concocted the story of the ship being steered onto reefs by a naughty boy. Now the Queen didn’t buy this absurd tale for a minute, but she also knew a good thing when she saw one... Realizing that news of ships falling off the Edge of the Earth would be bad for business, she went along with it. And so, until this very day, few people know the true story of the fate of the Santa María.

As every schoolchild knows, the Santa María was, along with the Niña and Pinta, Christopher Columbus’ ship for the expedition which led to the European rediscovery of the New World in 1492. For the next two months after the initial Discovery she continued to serve as the flagship as Columbus explored the Caribbean, but Santa María was destined never again to return to Spain. Late in the evening of Christmas Eve, 1492, as the ship stood in calm seas off Haiti and most of the crew slept, the negligent steersman decided to put the helm in the hands of the ship’s boy so he too could nap. Santa María’s inglorious end soon came as she ran up on a reef at Cap‑Haïtien, and the surf slowly pulled her seams apart. Her men were rescued by the Niña (in the background in this painting), and enough of her stores and timbers were salvaged to build a small fort ashore, but the ship herself was no more. A couple of years ago I built up Pyro’s venerable Santa María kit. Although it came out well enough, I had originally intended to place the model in a diorama setting. So now...

I keep trying to stop buying these extra enhancements... but yet another small addition will be these 3D printed boat booms. The kit booms molded to the hull sides really aren’t bad, but these resin replacements are noticeably finer and more three dimensional. The crispness of detail on these miniscule 3D printed parts continues to amaze... will the madness never stop?

The foremast: Tamiya’s rendition of the mast is excellent right out of the box – they even provided a temporary alignment jig base to make sure everything lines up correctly. I would have happily used the kit parts unaltered, but that outrageous Infini set will make it even better. Accordingly, I cut away the kit platforms and spars from the plastic kit parts. Infini provided an etched brass perforated platform with fold down support sides and some beautiful turned brass replacement spars. The Infini set also provides etched brass parts to replicate access ladders, spar support rigging, hoist blocks, even an anemometer... awesome! These parts are so delicate, though, I’m afraid to attach them until after the mast is installed on the assembled and painted model. 😬

Hi Graham, LOL, and thanks! I did really start off this Kagero intending it to be a simple quick build, but "mission creep" set in as usual and it has become rather more elaborate... but it is actually simpler than some others. For example, on my 1/200 scale Hatsuzuki a simple two-part kit motor boat has somehow turned into this: ...and it isn't even painted yet!

With the reload torpedo boxes done, I test fitted the trolley rails. The rails look great, and I was impressed that all those template-sited mounting holes drilled into the deck correspond exactly to the mounting tabs on each rail. Infini even designed the site specific rail parts so that the relief etched sides face outward. Really nice!

😁 With the glue-damaged decks repaired it was a simple matter to reattach the plastic reload torpedo box parts. The Infini etched brass supports fit perfectly underneath them. Although better than the Tamiya plastic parts, I opened up the bays even further by removing most of the solid portions of the Infini brass parts forward. These were replaced with thinner girders from bits of Fine Molds brass. Just visible inside are boxes from Five Star’s amazing 3D printed WWII IJN Sundry Box III set. Finally, I wanted to add inspection ports to the reload torpedo box front and sides. Since the Infini upgrade set didn’t come with these, I improvised. The small stainless steel ports forward were Gold Medal Models 1/700 scale hatches with the dogs sanded off. The three ports on the sides came from a 1/400 GMM doors and hatches set (hatch type E) with two of the four dogs sanded off. I left two dogs on top of each of these to suggest latches. The hatches on the aft ends were British Standard Doors from the 1/400 set cut in half – not perfect, but serviceable!

Thanks, but It would appear that my interpretation of these intakes may be too rounded, at least compared with Yukikaze. Kagero was the first unit of the class and was built at Maizuru Naval Arsenal, Yukikaze was the eighth and was laid down at Sasebo a year later... perhaps there was some variation among the Kagero class ships? Anyway, in the absence of direct photographic evidence showing Kagero's intakes, that's my story and I'm sticking with it! 😁

Prying off the previously cemented reload torpedo box parts created a real mess, but also an opportunity. There were two air intake vents on the funnel trunking which Tamiya had molded directly to the larger kit part. As a result, their outlines were a little simplified to enable the plastic sprue to be drawn from the molds. I’d originally left them as is thinking that the funnel and the reload torpedo boxes would mostly hide them, but this was never really satisfactory... With the boxes temporarily out of the way it wasn’t too much trouble to take the X-acto and shape the intakes into something a bit more realistic.

Before fitting those delicate rails this seems like a good time to address a discrepancy that I hadn’t noticed before with the reload torpedo stowage boxes mounted on each side of the forward funnel. Tamiya represented the long boxes as mounted over semi-enclosed support structures. They were also depicted this way on Nichimo’s excellent 1/200 scale Kagero kit, the beautiful large scale Yukikaze build in Gakken’s Pacific War Series Vol.19 Kagero-class Destroyers, as well as in the Profile Morskie monograph on the Yukikaze... so I had assembled the kit parts without questioning further. However, the Infini brass upgrade parts represent these structures as more open. Looking at my references again, the few pictures I could find, such as this one of Kagero-class destroyer Shiranui: ...or this one of Yukikaze: consistently show the structures to have had open frameworks forward. In fact, they are even more open than the Infini parts! As I looked further, the better references seemed to agree: Gakken’s photo history The Imperial Japanese Navy Volume 11 Destroyers Part II, Mori Tsunehide’s Kojinsha Maru Mechanic Mechanism of Japanese Destroyers, Model Art’s Ship Modeling Techniques Course Vol. 6 Japanese Naval Ship Drawings, Valdemar Góralski’s The Japanese Destroyer Kagero, and even the old Profile Publications IJN Yukikaze monograph – all document these open support frameworks under the forward reload torpedo boxes. There don’t appear to be any photos of Kagero showing this area, but the available evidence strongly suggests that she too must have had the more open arrangement. It looks like I’ll have to remove the already completed kit assemblies and do them again!

Ok, I haven’t played with the Kagero build for nearly a year – time to get back at it! I had reached the point of assembling the awesome Infini brass torpedo with its trolley but got bogged down when it came to the torpedo reload trolley rails. The etched brass rails are definitely MUCH better than those molded to the plastic kit deck, but removing the molded track without damaging the surrounding non-slip detail would be a challenge. I began by carefully trimming the rails with a new X-acto blade. Then they were gradually scraped and sanded down as far as the level of the raised nonslip surfaces. Though fairly straightforward, reducing the rails without damaging the adjacent molded detail required care – and the rails extend over quite a bit of the deck! Infini had thoughtfully provided a brass template to mark the locations of the etched rail attachment points. The template was super helpful in establishing the etched rail attachment points on the tracks; these were initially marked out with light pricks from an awl. Once I was satisfied that the awl marks were properly centered on the rails, I used a No. 80 (.34mm) bit chucked into my X-acto handle to drill out the 132 locator holes. This prep work wasn’t the most exciting of tasks, but the new etched brass torpedo trolley rails are incredibly fine and detailed – I can’t wait to get them aboard!

Outstanding work! Did the pilot have a seatbelt...? 😲

Simply awesome -I've never seen that ancient Aurora kit built up so well!