I think it looks great.
2 Likes
Tim,
Another awesome job on an interesting subject. Really like the look of this piece, especially with the water base.
Looking forward to your next surprise build for us.
John
2 Likes
Ryan, Leo, Robert, and John - thanks!
Despite the mistakes on this build, I thought the completed corbita looked good enough⌠but there was one basic blunder that I realized I just couldnât live with:
The rigging was wrong!
Working too quickly trying to make fast progress, I had made a rookie mistake by attaching the standing rigging to the mast below the yard. The lines should have been attached above the yardarm if a sail attached to it were to unfurl properly. Mounting them below as I did meant that any sail would foul over the tops of the forestays and that the yard could never be lowered. Also, the shrouds were too far forward so that they too would have interfered with the sail. The rig may look ok as is to a casual observer, but it has been bothering me. So⌠
I bit the bullet and tore them out! Fixing the offending stays and shrouds seemed simple at first, but it got more complicated as it became evident that the shroud boards had to be replaced as well â they werenât mounted far enough aft for the forwardmost shroud to clear the sail.
10 Likes
1 Like
Yikes! What a bunch of landlubbers are we for not noticing that. Correction, I didnât notice - maybe others did but didnât have the heart 
Now I donât know which I admire more - the boat, or your courage. Does this mean youâll add furled sail(s)?
3 Likes
I feel no shame for not having seen the sunspots while looking into the brilliance of the sun. Still a beautiful little piece of work.
5 Likes
Being an old seafarer and am rather embarressed that I missed that. A bit blinded by all the rest of the excellent work you were doing on that timy ship. Looking forward to seeing her fixed.
Cheers, Si
4 Likes
This is really neat Tim, for something no bigger than a Hot Wheels car I think itâs pretty cool. I like the obscure models you choose to display. Excellent presentation!
Cajun 
2 Likes
I agree with Tim. Thatâs one tough call after the build is finished. It would have bugged me but I would have moved on.
2 Likes
Yikes! What a bunch of landlubbers are we for not noticing that. Correction, I didnât notice - maybe others did but didnât have the heart
I agree with Tim. Thatâs one tough call after the build is finished. It would have bugged me but I would have moved on.
Thanks Tim and Ryan; I didnât notice the mistake either until the rigging was completed⌠but once I did it was like a pebble in my shoe!
Does this mean youâll add furled sail(s)?
I originally made up some furled main and artemon sails but in the end decided not to add them as I donât really know if the Romans furled their sails or simply took them down when not in use. Centuries later, common practice when ships were in port for any but very brief periods was to have the sails temporarily âunbentâ (removed) and stowed, so I figured this might have been the case for the ancients as well.
2 Likes
I feel no shame for not having seen the sunspots while looking into the brilliance of the sun. Still a beautiful little piece of work.
Being an old seafarer and am rather embarrassed that I missed that. A bit blinded by all the rest of the excellent work you were doing on that tiny ship. Looking forward to seeing her fixed.
Cheers, Si
Cajun
Leo, Mark, Si, and Terry, LOL, and thank you!
What began as a simple repair has become a real mess as I ended up removing all six shrouds, the shroud boards, and the forestays. While doing all of this I accidently destroyed the backstays too. Ugh. Iâve made rather a mess of things, but Iâll attack it again when I get home from work tonight!
4 Likes
âOnce begun, a jobâs half doneâ; whoever coined that phrase certainly wasnât a modeler! 
2 Likes
Iâve been there and done that many times Tim. Modelers are perfectionists and definitely their worst critics. I know that youâll âpower throughâ the repairs and end up with a stunning model that meets your satisfaction.(At least temporarily)After you finish these repairs, whatâs your next âSmall,Simple Projectâ that you have in mind?
Tom S.
2 Likes
At least you had a relatively simple rig to correct; one of the things I cringe internally over is looking at a full maintop rig and imagining what it would take to get everything right:
1 Like
Good catch there Tim. Looking forward to seeing your corrections in place.
Btw, Iâve been doing some research on ancient ships and their sail plans on a website named www.academia.edu. It posts a lot of research papers and articles authored by educators, researchers and archaeologists from around the world. One in particular you and our other MS members might find useful is titled âThe Roman merchant ship sail plan: steering a windward passage,â The author is Christopher J. Davey, with the University of Melbourne. Heâs got a lot of accolades and titles listed in his bio. He just updated this paper this week with new information. The papers are available free on their website in pdf format. I havenât shared the actual paper here because I donât know the copyright laws. But you might want to check it out. Iâve downloaded probably 20 papers from them on galleys, long ships, middle eastern ship types, construction methods, ports, battles, etc. Iâm finding reading these papers is as entertaining to me as actually building a model.
Sorry for the commercial. Again, Iâm looking forward to seeing your progress.
John
2 Likes
Iâd just like to second the recommendation for that website for archaeological and historical academic papers.
Thatâs the one problem with it, you go looking for one thing and end up distracting oneself with all the related (and unrelated!) material availableâŚ
Regards,
M
1 Like
Wow, Sean, seeing that picture I guess I canât complain about my simple corbita!
John and Tom, thanks for the reference material - I look forward to going through it!
âOnce begun, a jobâs half doneâ; whoever coined that phrase certainly wasnât a modeler!
Iâve been there and done that many times Tim. Modelers are perfectionists and definitely their worst critics. I know that youâll âpower throughâ the repairs and end up with a stunning model that meets your satisfaction (At least temporarily) After you finish these repairs, whatâs your next âSmall, Simple Projectâ that you have in mind?
Tom S.
Leo and Tom, you have a point! As for whatâs next, well, maybe Johnâs references will provide some inspiration. For nowâŚ
Having calmed myself and cleared away the debris, I fit new shroud boards to the bulwarks. The new boards are identical to the ones first installed except that they are longer to enable the shrouds to be shifted aft.
With the new shroud boards painted, six shroud lines were re-rigged. They are set just a bit farther back than before, so a deployed sail would now clear them forward.
During all this I managed to snap off the little artemon yardarm at the bow as well⌠but eventually things were sorted again.
The last step was to re-rig new forestays â this time above the yard.
After all that effort, the end result still looks very much like the original version⌠but at least the reworked rigging makes better sense. And now I can truly put the corbita project to rest and call it done!
13 Likes
Flagship Models used to have a 1:35 kit of the USS Constitution fighting top (and two separate sets of figures â one of Marines and one of sailors â to populate it) that I was tempted by until I ran across that image, along with receiving a copy of The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War, 1625-1860 by James Lees; between them they convinced me that I would have to start with something a great deal less ambitious to build up my skill before putting a sizeable chunk of money into something I couldnât do justice to.