Santa Leocadia – A Kit for Detail Oriented Modelers on a Budget

Do you love working in fine details? Do you love sailing ships? Are you limited in your workspace and tool collection? Is making a lot of dust a problem? No place to operate power tools? Do you have a very limited budget? If so, you might want to consider a modeling art form that’s been very popular in Eastern Europe for decades: Paper Modeling. Paper ship modeling offers a lot of benefits and flexibility that most ship modelers aren’t even aware of, and we have many paper model kits from one of the most renown kit manufacturers of Poland, that most people know of as Shipyard.

Here is a 1/96-scale paper model kit of the Spanish Frigate Santa Leocadia. The original ship was a 34-gun fifth rate ship, launched in 1777 at Ferrol , Spain, and measured 144’ 10” on her gun deck. She was considered a fast ship and a good sailer. Late in 1780, her bottom was coppered, making her the first Spanish warship to be so treated. The completed model will measure just about 28″ long and 21″ tall.

The kit includes all the paper parts you need to build your model, including all the laser-cut card stock parts for building up the internal framework, that will form the core of your model. And, while the kit provides all the paper parts necessary, the models aren’t intended to be 100% paper. So, you will have to provide your own rigging line, wire, sail cloth, and wooden dowels, though many of these are available as optional, inexpensive accessory kits. You may also prefer to use third party fittings to outfit your model, rather than build them up out of paper. But, that choice is completely left to you.

Cannon barrels on paper models are traditionally made from rolled paper, but many modelers use third-party fittings for them, often brass, but more commonly now using cast or 3D printed plastic or resin. Shipyard is also making 3D printed cannon barrel sets that we will begin carrying shortly.

Note that the model shown in these images, is an expertly built paper model from the Shipyard kit. The modeler has sculpted his own figurehead and scrollwork. This can be accomplished using readily available polymer clay, or the modeler can choose to simply use the printed paper parts. We recommend trying your hand at sculpting the figurehead for the most satisfactory results. This is, after all, one of the most complicated of the paper ship model kits available.

As we mentioned earlier, we have several optional accessory sets that you might want to consider with your Santa Leocadia kit, such as the sail set we mentioned earlier, the masting and accessories set, and a laser-cut detail set. This multi-sheet set of pre-cut parts will simplify your build greatly, providing things like realistic gratings, cannon carriage parts (each made up of more than a dozen parts), ship’s wheel, capstans, and more. Of course, you can begin your model without these accessory sets, and only purchase them if you feel you need them.

The Santa Leocadia kit is just one of the many Shipyard paper shipmodel kits we carry. You can start your model for only around $40, plus tax and shipping here: https://www.agesofsail.com/product/santa-leocadia-1777-shipyard-196/

If you’ve never built a paper model before, we recommend you visit the online forum papermodelers.com, where many paper modelers document their work. Another good resource is the paper models section of the online forum ModelShipWorld.com.