popeye2sea

Parrel tyes for the lower yards led down to tackles hooked into eyebolts in the deck abreast the mast. For the upper yards they most often led down to the tops. Regards,

Hi Chuck, Here is how to serve and set up your shrouds and deadeyes. Strop and attach your lower deadeyes to the channel. The channel is the platform that sticks out from the side of the ship. Depending on which ship and when it was built will determine the shape and style of the chains (the extensions of the strops that secure the deadeyes to the hull). Measure the distance from the masthead to where the upper deadeyes will be. The distance, or drift between the deadeyes was usually about 2 times the diameter of the deadeye. Now double your measurement. The shrouds are going to be put on in pairs. Do not cut to the final length yet. You need to leave extra length for setting up the shrouds. Now serve the middle 1/3 of each shroud, calculated from your doubled measurement above. This will be the portion that forms the loop around the masthead. If you have calculated the length of the service correctly it should end slightly below the point where the futtock shrouds meet at the futtock stave. The forwardmost shroud on each side of the mast was usually served its entire length to prevent chafe from the sails and their gear. Middle the shroud pair around the mast head and clap on a seizing to form the loop around the mast head. The seizing should come just below the bolster on the trestle trees (the bolster is a quarter round molding placed next to the mast on top of the lattice of beams that supports the top platform. It's purpose was to ease the angle for the shrouds passing over the trestle tree. For each succeeding pair the seizing should lie just below the previous one. This would prevent the seizings from chafing against each other. Next, turn the upper deadeyes into the ends of the shrouds. Some find it helpful to make a jig that will position the deadeye at the proper spacing. The shrouds go around the deadeyes in a specific way that is determined by the lay of the rope. Looking from the outside of the ship, if you are using right hand laid rope the shroud will pass counter-clockwise around the deadeye, behind the standing part (that is to say more inboard) and then the end is seized to the standing part with three seizings. For left-hand laid rope the shroud runs the opposite, clockwise around the deadeye. The first seizing to be put on is called a throat seizing and it is put on where the two parts of the shroud cross above the deadeye. The next, the middle seizing, is a short distance up the shroud and the third, the end seizing, an equal distance above that. The rope that runs between the upper and lower deadeye is called the laniard. The laniard should be a bit less that half the diameter of the shrouds. It always starts on the upper deadeye in the hole furthest away from the end of the shroud. The stopper knot will be on the inboard side of the deadeye. Pass the laniard from outboard in through the corresponding hole in the lower deadeye then up and from inboard out through the middle hole in the upper. Continue passing the laniard through the remainig holes. You will end up with the laniard passing from outboard in through the last hole in the lower deadeye. The end of the laniard is then hitched around the shrouds where they cross above the deadeye. It is best to leave some extra length on the shrouds and laniards so that final adjustments can be made later in the rigging. Set up the shroud pairs starting with the forward most and alternate sides until all of the shroud pairs are done. If you have an odd number of shrouds on each side the final one will go on single. I hope that helps, . Regards,

If you consider that each rope on a ship is either being hauled on or slacked off to accomplish some task you will quickly see that there needs to be some length on the hauling end of the rope that will need to be coiled on the belaying pin. Take for example a halyard. With the yard in the lowered position the blocks for the halyard tackle are at their farthest apart. There is a certain amount of rope that makes up this tackle. As the yard is hoisted by hauling on the tackle fall these blocks get closer together and all of that rope that used to be in between the blocks is now in your hands at the working end. That is the rope that must be coiled and hung on the belaying pin. All of the lines on the ship function this way. So, there will almost always be a coil of line to be found at the working end. Regards,

The angle of the ladder varied with the amount of room available. No standard angle as far as I can tell.

It appears that the sail from the kit and the sail from the book are from two different ships. You have to decide which is more correct. Since the proportions of the sail are determined by the length of the yards, and you already have the kit yards, I would just go with your existing yards and make your sails accordingly. Unless, of course, you decide that the yard lengths depicted in the book are the correct ones. Regards,

That is a common misconception. The average height of a human has not changed much in hundreds of years. They just leaned out of the gun ports sometimes to service the guns. Or they used thick rope for the handles of the sponge and rammer. Made for a flexible handle that would bend around corners.

I seem to remember a reference that stated the drift between the upper and lower deadeyes should be 1.5 to 2 times the diameter of the deadeye. I do not remember where I read this though. Regards,

Of course, you still need men aloft shaking out the sails. As soon as the anchor is aweigh the vessel is adrift, so you need to set sails for her to be hove to while you finish raising the anchor.

I think we can assume that working the capstan to haul the ship up till the anchor cable is 'up and down' (the actual term we used to use in the Navy) and then weighing and hoisting the anchor out of the water would take the longest. The stowage of the cable in the cable tier would run concurrent with this. The set up, i.e.: Laying out the messenger, breaking down stanchions, and rigging the fish davits would not take that long. I could see catting, fishing , and stowing the anchor taking , timewise, something in between the two. I bet I could find more info if I spent more time researching.

I wish I could find the detailed information that might answer that.

There is one book that I know of that explains almost every part of the ship and rig. Falconer's New Universal Dictionary of the Marine. My copy is a reprint of the 1815 edition. That being said, learning the ropes just takes time and practice. Soon enough you will no longer be a landsman and you can earn your keep as an able bodied or ordinary sailor. Diligence, attention to detail, and hard experience will merit an assignment as a tops man in no time. Maybe even a promotion to petty officer. Aye lad, that be the life of a sailor!!

I understood that it could take up to four or five hours to raise a large anchor.

Wow! Super detailing

Nicely done on the gammoning!

You will make your eye splice in the end of the line while it is off the ship. Then to start the gammoning loop the eysplice over the bowsprit and pass the other end of the gammoning through the eye. Tighten the line around the bowsprit so that the eye splice lies under the bowsprit and then commence the turns through the hole in the stem. Each successive turn lying forward on the bowsprit and aft in the stem. I think it is best to heave the gammoning well taut as you are passing the turns. The frapping turns at the end will pull the the gammoning closer together no matter how tight you make the gammoning turns. The sides don't need to touch. In fact if they do you probably have the gammoning too loose. Sometimes the gammoning is the only thing holding the bowsprit down against the upward pull of the fore rigging.

Back to the deadeyes and chains. First up was creating a test piece to determine the look and fit of the channel deadeye strops and to use that to see how much material to cut out of the channels to slide the strops into. The strops are made from 20 guage steel wire, which seems to fit the groove of Syrens 6mm deadeyes nicely. Note: The deadeye on the right is an upper deadeye. I filled in the groove on the left hole. This will be the hole on the inside face that the mathew walker knot on the end of the laniard bears against. For anyone who chooses to go this route...caution!! The 20 guage steel wire is relatively hard to bend around the deadeyes and fills the groove completely. Any sideways torque when bending the wire WILL split apart the deadeye. Although this ability to split the deadeye face off came in handy later when I had a couple of solder joints break! After the concept piece was done I pulled it apart to measure the length of wire for the strop and went into production mode. The wire was cut, the ends cleaned up and the strop was formed into a wide loop (big enough to fit the deadeye) and silver soldered closed. Then the pieces were blackened in a bath of Blacken-it. The strops were then bent into final shape around the deadeyes. Appropriate size slots were cut into the channels to fit the strops. The stropped deadeyes were offered up to the channel and a line was run from the main masthead to determine the proper angles to bend the strops to. More caution here. My original thought was to hide the solder joint in the channel slot. Bad idea. This is where the bending occurs to get the strops pointing in the right direction. I should have planned it better so that the solder joint fell in the lower straight portion of the deadeye strop. The solder joints are barely visible anyway. I had a few joints open up on me and being at the bending point right beneath the deadeye the only way to re-do the solder joint was to pop the face off the deadeye, remove it, re-solder the joint and then re-assemble the deadeye in the strop. The chains were made up and blackened in the same manner using 24 guage wire. The deadeye strops were inserted into the chain loops before soldering closed. I also made up some backing links from the 24 guage wire. These are the same style of elongated loops but with the center portion squeezed together and then the whole thing is bent so the the end loops are offset in order to fit from the wale to the hull planking below the wale. The sharp eyed of you will note that some of the deadeyes are not set straight in the strops. The ones for the aftermost shrouds have a slight angle to accomodate the angle of the shroud. The pins in the above photo are bending jigs set for the size of the chains and the backing links. The eyebolts in the hull were prized open, a backing link was put on each one, and then the chain/deadeye assembly. The deadeye strop was then swung up into place in the slot in the channel. A little flat black touch up paint was used to cover up some spots were the blacking was rubbed off with the pliers. Still to come... filling the holes cut into the edge of the channels and pinning the lower loops of the backing links to the hull. See you next time. Regards,

Clew lines and their blocks all run behind the square sails; as do the sheet lines. The only lines that run down the front of a square sail are the bunt lines and leech lines. Regards,

Cleats come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Belaying cleats, stop cleats, comb cleats, shroud cleats, thumb cleats, range cleats, kevels, etc... A staghorn cleat, a range cleat and a kevel are essentially the same thing. I believe in this case the name derives from the shape of the horns on the cleat. For instance the word kevel is from the middle english kevile, which is itself derived from old French keville, originally from the latin clavicula. The same name for the collar bone which it resembles. Figure 12 below shows a kevel or staghorn cleat

A Range Cleat is a large cleat, with two arms or branches, bolted in the waist of a ship, to belay the tacks and sheets to. Also known as a Kevel Definition from Falconers Dictionary of the Marine

Another way would be to use an even number of holes in the top and the euphroe and start the crows feet at the top. Start with the laniard passing up through one of the center holes. Knot it under the top. Pass it through the first hole in the euphroe and then down through hole number 2. Pass the line under the top and up through hole 3. Repeat on alternate sides moving away from the center. Just remember to pass the line over the rim of the top each time. When you get to hole 10, or whatever number you have you can tie the end off on the previous pass under the top (i.e. between 6 and 7) Hope that makes sense. Regards,

I took a look at the tables in The Art of Rigging and for a ship rigged vessel of about 300 tons the Main Shrouds would be 7 inch rope (circumference) and the ratlines would be 1 inch. If you go down to a 200 hundred ton ship the shrouds are 6 inch. Not sure what the tonnage of Bounty was. So, 7 inch rope is 2.2 inch diameter, at your model scale is 0.02 inch (0.5mm) and 1 inch rope is 0.3 inch diameter, at your scale is 0.003 inch(0.07mm) So you see what I mean about the ratlines on the pre-formed stuff being way too thick. The laniards for the deadeyes are half the diameter of the shrouds. Not sure if anyone supplies iron stropped deadeyes, or the chains and backing links. All that being said, since this is your first foray into shrouds and ratlines, don't let all this minutiae intimidate you and cause you to stop your build. I am one of those crazy people who love the rigging of these ships and I tend to go a little nuts with the detail on my build. Do whatever is comfortable for you, and enjoy your build. Regards,

I think that if you decide to go with making your own shrouds you will probably want to go all the way and replace the deadeyes and chains with them. You can probably still use the channels. The pre-formed deadeyes do not really have the depth to use with rigging line. As far as what size line to use, the question will be are you using the kit supplied thread or will you purchase or make your own rope? Usually these kits only supply three sizes of thread. If you do use the kit thread, use the largest for the shrouds and probably the smallest for the ratlines. If you are buying your deadeyes and rope, there are general rules of thumb regarding the sizes. Some of the reference material mentioned in your other posts will have this information. But in general, deadeyes were half of the maximum diameter of their masts. Shroud sizes can be calculated as a certain fraction of the main stay (which was the largest line in the standing rigging), or if you find a table of rigging sizes specific to your vessel ( I have most often seen these published tabulated by vessel tonnage). I am in the process of replacing the kit supplied deadeyes and chains on my build. I should have some pics of the process I used uploaded in the next few days. I am sure you can find others who have done this with their builds here in the forums. Regards,

Glad to see your build is back on. Looking forward to following this. Regards,

There are several resources available that show how to rig shrouds and deadeyes. A small list of books is: The Young Sea Officers Sheet Anchor, Darcy Lever The Art of Rigging, David Steel The Elements and Practice of Rigging and Seamanship The Rigging of Ships in the Days of the Spritsail Topmast, R.C Anderson Falconer's Dictionary of the Marine These are the titles I go to most often. Regards,

Planning on adding pi** dales, Dafi?