usedtosail

Well I am back from a week's vacation in St. Lucia. What a beautiful island. The trip was a Christmas present to our two kids, as one last vacation together before they start their own families. It was great! But, now it's time to get back to work. I finished up the main shrouds and have added the mizzen shrouds. Here is how the main shrouds and deadeyes came out: And the mizzen so far. I still have to add the sheer poles and tie everything off. And here is some overall shots so far. The masts are in good alignment so far. As always, thanks for the interest, comments and the likes.

Not at all Rob. i went into this project feeling like I have not done enough research, so any information from more knowledgeable folks like yourself really is appreciated.

Thanks Rob. I really appreciate your help and suggestions.

I am not sure how the vinyl works, but if you want to stay with wood I have found that a coat of primer on the wood helps the copper tape stick much better than bare wood.

Your welcome Captain. I think we all benefit by those who have come before us.

The Model Shipways Constitution comes with dummy guns (just barrels) for the gun deck. You can buy a separate kit that is all the guns for the gun deck, but then you have to build the gun deck to hold them. I went half way and added a partial gun deck.

Wow, Dave. The eagle looks great.

OK guys, you convinced me. I tried a couple of different stains last night and did not like the look of the lighter ones, so I went all in and used Dark Walnut. They are a nice rich dark brown now, and as a bonus the deadeyes are darker too which look more like the real ones. Here is how it looked right after I stained the lines. And here is how they looked after they dried overnight. I was a little worried that the lines would get stiff, but if they did it was not very much. I am very happy with the result. Thank you for getting me to change this. Keep those suggestions coming....

Thanks guys. This is useful information. I remember reading or hearing that when the Connie went to all nylon ropes as it is now the colors changed to a darker color for the running rigging. I don't remember where I read/heard that, but that is why I am a little skeptical to use the existing rigging colors as gospel. But if it only a matter to stain them a bit darker, I will give that a try.

Thanks Dan. The lanyards are actually tan, not grey. I have always done these as running rigging. I have been following the discussion in Ed Tosci's Young America build on this subject and can maybe be convinced to use darker line for these. How dark would they be do you think? Not black but maybe a dark brown? At this point I am not sure i want to go back and replace them all though. Yes, you are right about shear/sheer. I was not sure and picked the wrong one to use.

Thanks for all the likes. I really appreciate them. In spite of some gorgeous weather this weekend, which the admiral and I did enjoy, I managed to get a lot done. It started with making and adding the shear poles to the fore mast shrouds. To make them, I used the thinnest brass rod that came with the kit, which I measured to be about .013" diameter. It took me a while to find a good setup in the serving machine that would hold up for the length of the serving, but I finally came up with this arrangement of clamps which worked well. The trick was to bend the rod at the ends so the clamps could grab them while being clipped around the nails on the serving machine, which prevented them from floundering around when the crank was turned. Of course this only works with full size rods. I did manage to serve a few short pieces by hand, but I wouldn't want to do a long piece that way. I found serving over brass to be a lot harder than serving over line. The serving line wanted to slip so I kept having to stop and bunch it back up with some tweezers. There were still a few shiny spots when I finished but I will touch up any of those that show with some black paint, as well as the trimmed ends of the rods. I tied these shear poles to the shrouds by starting with a loop with a slip knot which I tightened to hold the shroud to the shear pole, then two more half hitches in the same diagonal as the loop, then three more half hitched in the opposite diagonal, finished off with a tiny drop of glue. When all the shrouds were tied, I found I needed to also add some glue to the ends of the pole at the outside knots to keep the poles from slipping in the last knots. The last thing I wanted to happen was the pole slip out of those knots. You can see I also used xken's technique to place a strip of wood between the lanyards to lessen the twist on the dead eyes. There is also a short pole that goes just above the block in the swifter to the first shroud, which I did the same way. After I trimmed the loose ends of all the ties, I retied the deadeye lanyards to the shrouds above the poles. I used a combination of half hitches and loops to tie them. Further along in the build I will finish off the lanyards by seizing the ends to the shrouds. I finished adding all the lanyards to the main mast shrouds, and made one of the main stays. After I was satisfied with it I made the other main stay, but it was late last night so I don't have a picture yet. Here is the first one in place. Next up is to add the shear poles to the main mast, then start on the mizzen shrouds.

Fantastic, Popeye. Those nets really make the model.

That's a good tip Ken. What I did for the fore mast was to loosen up on the deadeye lanyards on the shrouds, added the stays, then tightened the lanyards back up, which put tension on the stays and pulled the mast into the correct rake angle.

Nice job on the main stays and the snaking, Ken. I am going to be making mine this weekend, but not snaking them yet. I will keep your method for snaking in mind when I get there.

Here's some status for the week. I was away last weekend cleaning out the stuff from my father's basement, so all of this work was done after work during the week. He lived in the house over 50 years, so you can imagine what he accumulated. Found some good stuff to save though, and some good memories. My son and nephews chipped in big time to help me out so we filled up a 20 yard dumpster in about 5 hours. I finished up the fore mast shrouds and stays last week, and here is how they came out. This week I was focused on the main shrouds. I have all of the dead eyes seized and the lanyards in place. I will finish them off after the main stays are added, so I can adjust any tension that needs it. Starboard side: Port side: I am now noticing that the last dead eye is a little higher than the others, so I need to correct it. I also see from Ed Tochi's log that I should probably have put the shear poles in before tying off the fore shroud lanyards. Good thing they are not glued in place yet, so I can loosen them up to put the poles in without too much trouble. My goal this weekend, after those fixes, is to get the main stays made and installed and maybe finish off the main shrouds. We will see...

Very nice Dave. Those a bit tricky to get right.

Excellent advise Frankie. I use that technique for all my seizings and it works great. Once I learned to do it properly rigging became a whole lot easier. One tip for you Mike, pull everything tight with the end marked a before you pull b. Otherwise you might get loops that form in the middle.

Thanks Robert. Bill, you know I was looking in AOS the other day and saw them and had to stop and think, but I came to the same conclusion as you. It could have had them in 1812 or not have. I am sticking with not including them, but I hope to build a model in the future that has them because they do look cool.

Thanks Rob. So far this is the best rigging I have done to date. I am really taking my time. Dan, thanks too, and what a great tip! I had never thought to do that. I can see that one paying off soon. Popeye, thanks. It is tedious but I like it a lot. Lots to go but it is all good. And thanks for all who hit the like button too.

The mast rigging continues. I have been working mostly the fore mast shrouds over the weekend, and they are pretty much done now. I made the line for the lanyards in my rope walk, but the shrouds themselves are .045 line from Syren. The lanyards are not tightened down yet. I still have to add another seizing on the shrouds above the two that are already there. I am pretty happy with the alignment of the deadeyes, although I did have to redo the seizings on a couple. I am working on the fore stays because I need them to offset the pull of the shrouds on the mast, especially those back ones. I experimented with different ways to make the mice I need for the them. I started with Sculpey but couldn't get the hole big enough for the large line to go through without the mouse collapsing or disintegrating. I ended up making them from dowels on the lathe, which came out pretty nicely and was not very hard to do. I made all six mice I need for the lower stays, and painted them black. I also ended up making new closed hearts for the fore stays because the laser cut supplied ones fell apart as I was cleaning the char off them. I like the new ones better because I was able to cut a groove around the outside for the stay line. You can see them in the little jar lid on the box after I stained them. After I tried the mice on the fore stay line, they looked a little wooden to me, so I put them in the serving machine and wrapped them in line. I think they look much better now. For comparison, here is an actual mouse from the Constitution on a stay (not sure which one this is). You can see that the lines go more front to back than around it, but what the heck. You can also see how the serving looks on these large lines. Here are the fore stays around the top of the mast. I did not have the closed hearts seized to these lines when I took these pictures, but they are now. I also started making the pendants and shrouds for the main mast. In making the pendants, I tried something I haven't before, and that is wrapping line around the bottom of the loop around the thimbles in the serving machine, which made them look more like a splice to me. I actually did this to one of the fore mast pendants too, but that was done by hand and not in the machine. I like the look of these now better than i did before. It always seemed to me that the seizing was too far from the thimble. This method covers the gap nicely. You can see another modification I made to the serving machine, which is just an alligator clip with a snug fit into the tube the line goes through. I am finding many uses for this clip, including being able to hold line very close to the end so I can serve almost a complete length. I made the mistake a few times of cutting a length of line to almost the exact length, which didn't leave enough to wrap around the nails on the outside of the machine to serve its length. This solves that problem by letting me hold the end of the line in the clip. Another thing I found was that WD-40 makes the serving machine so much quieter and easy to turn. I didn't want to use it on the nice cherry wood, but it was really squeaking so I bit the bullet and sprayed a little on. What a difference! My wife still says I look like Rumpelstiltskin when I am using the serving machine. OK, last picture, here are the pendants and first shrouds on the main mast. Lots more to do there.

That is really nice deck framing, Mike.

Whatever you call it, it is a great job. Nicely done.

That's OK Jon. I downloaded all those plans off the web site when they were available and have been using some of them for this build. I didn't remember seeing that one before, but I did find it in the set of plans I have. My guess is that it is from the 1930's.

Beautiful framing.

That net looks great! You have an aquarium you can test it in?