Elijah

Hello Mike! Here is a picture I found of the Niagara replica's fife rail. 

Worked thru probably one of the most difficult rigging tasks this morning. First off, it was my own doing - created a problem by adding the futtucks before this task. This made for precious little room under the main top.
 
I was about to start the braces - working from the bottom up. So you have a rope seized to one end of the course yard - let's say the fore course. This rope goes back to a block on the main then down to the belay rail. Well it happens that this block is seized to a shroud right before the shroud loops around the mast head.
 

 
In that area where the futtocks run outside or over the the shroud.
 

 

 
Seems like a pretty difficult job, but one I'm sure we've all faced before.
 
I've mentioned before the sliding seizing and this is how I tackled the problem. This technique can solve so many problems like this, I am amazed. The only downside is that sometimes you have to use a really long piece of rope and you will waste a lot of it. With this in mind I saved my Syren rope and used a piece from the kit. It wasn't going to show anyway.
 
 
So the long rope is looped around the shroud in preparation for seizing.
 

 
The catch here is I need 2 loops with a seizing in the middle. One loop around the shroud, at the other end a loop for a block. This is pretty common and is done with a figure 8 seizing. You can see the 2 loops below.
 

 
Then you do your seizing.
 

 
And when you're done you have your 2 loops.
 

 
I will add here that the actual seizing technique I used is nothing new. You can find plenty of YouTubes showing it.  So you make the loop for the block smaller by pulling on one of the ends.
 

 
Prep your block by drilling out the holes. Syren blocks are good about that but the last thing you need is to have to try to drill one out after it's installed. Then insert the block in the loop and pull the end tight.
 

 

 
So now you can take the other loose end and slide the block  and seizing all the way up the the shroud.
 

 
And there you go.
 

 
The whole idea here is not to do all the twisting and contorting with all sorts of tools where the seizing will end up. Instead, that long piece of rope allows you to bring the work out to a manageable place and you can do your work right in front of you. When you are done, the sliding seizing allows  you to slide the work where it needs to go.
 
This will take a little practice, but I was able to do 8 of these buggers in no time at all. With very few one syllable words I might add.
 
Hope it helps someone.
 
BTW - I didn't invent this. It is just a compilation of several techniques I have come across.
 
 

The good news - the rats are all done. The bad - I'm about to give up taking pix of the rigging. These suck, as usual. Just can't get the right angle and lighting.
 
Good news - I came up with an easy way to tie cow hitches on the outer shrouds and half hitches on the shrouds in between. Bad news, it would take a video to show it. No way I can describe it verbally. Interestingly, 3 of the 4 steps are identical and the other one is just the reverse. Of course it took half a boat to get it figured out. I'm not overly crazy about the tan rats on black shrouds. Will use something a little darker (dirtier) next time. Will also probably go with dark brown for standing rig.
 
So I added the top yard.
 

 
Then inserted the top gallant mast and began fastening that down - shrouds & rats first.
 

 

 

 

 
As the rigging goes up I have been working with rope coils on belay pins. A lot trickier then one would think. The ropes from the masts are wrapped around the pin 1 time then glued and cut. Coils are made separately on a jig with some straight pins stuck in it.Rope is wound around the pins and the ends are CA'd to the coil. Kinda half way hiding them. Next, something to smear on the coil so it will keep it's shape.
 
I didn't like my first attempts at white glue & water - I think I had too much glue and the rope looked glued. Then I went on to my favorite, acrylic matte varnish. The rope looked OK but for some reason the coils began to twist as they dried which looked kinda dumb. There's a pic that shows this. So tonite I went back to white glue & water at about 1:4. We'll see how this works.
 
Would love to not use anything but I am afraid that over time the coils might get kind of wild.
 
Then there is the amount of rope used for a coil. In real life, many of the coils would have been huge. The rope having to go from the deck up to the 2nd or 3rd mast spar in some cases. The problem is, with that pin layout there just isn't room for huge coils, especially if they are side by side on the pins. You can see this in a few of the pix.
 
So the approach I ended up with is all rope will be 0.012mm or less and no more than 6 turns around the pins in my jig. As I mentioned previously, since I am not rigging sails there are a lot of empty pins on the rails. I am going to fill some of those in with coils, just to fill out the rails a little.
 

 

 

 

Lastly as you may notice, I have placed the coils directly around the pins. There seems to be some discussion as to whether coils would be placed like that (actually around the pin) or if the fall of the coil was pulled thru the center of the coil, up over and behind the coil and then wrapped around the pin. So the coil ends up hanging there. I can see points from both sides of the argument, but in the end I went for coils directly on the pins.
 
 
 

Thanks buddy - I've learned a lot of do's and dont's during this task.

Well done with the new PE there, Carl.

Thanks, Jan. Still needs some light grey, wooden decking, a conning tower and some varnish ... nearly there

Hmmm.... not completely convinced by the argument.
Nice colours, by the way.
 
Jan
 

A mere educational distraction RGL ... needed the practice on the railing ...

Very sneaky Cog, you got distracted! 

I have been working on and of this kit. For the content of the box and another build of this same kit I refer you to Piet's marvelous build of this same submarine.
 
I have replaced a few parts in the box: Most of the PE as that was to crude to my taste, and I since I had redundant PE from Musashi, I have used some of that. Whilst sanding the hull, I broke the bollards, so I had some replacing to do, rather easy ... just drill a few 0.2 mmm holes and insert some brass rod, in the end I replaced them all ...
 

 
Added Primer

 
First paint layers

 
A wee bit more work ...
 
Cheers
 
(The copy right  notice has been added programatically so it does sometimes "interfere" with the view)

Here's this. I might be able to send more later.

The rigging is looking nice Mike! She's starting to look ready to go somewhere!

The rigging is looking nice Mike! She's starting to look ready to go somewhere!

A slight hitch in the plans. Was just about to start tying down the t' gallant when I realized I haven't raised the top yard yet. That's gotta be done before the t' gallant goes in. That rope parrel is a bear. I may end up cheating on this one.
 
And if that wasn't enough, the square opening in the top where the t' gallant foot is supposed to go - I ran several of the stays thru there   May have to redo a few of those. At least they're on top of the stack.

Now that's the ticket!  Thanks Don. T' gallant will go on tonite.

She is coming along fine Mike, all looks good. If you need a push consider my foot very close to your butt right about now. Final contact will happen very soon if you keep talking like that. Get to Work!!

Well I've hit the point where I have to add the fore top gallant/royal to the mix. Nothing else I can do until then. I think the bowsprit came out OK. There will still be a few more ropes fixed to that when I add the last spar. The top gallant has a couple of backstays and some forestays and a couple of stays from the main still need to be fastened to it. I'll add the braces between the fore & main and probably call those two done.
 
Which leaves me with the spanker. I think I have everything rigged on the boom and gaff. Just have to tie them off.
 
Thinking about it, that'll be almost everything. I may need some pushing from you guys to finish off the last details. I'm pretty bad about not finishing things. If I am not mistaken, this week 2 years ago I started this build.
 
Here's where she's at:
 

 

 

 

 

 
 

Thanks for the likes and feedback everyone. Always good to have your support when I am in doubt about something.
 
Don, I'll try to find that. It's exactly what I am envisioning for future square rigged builds. We do so much hard work adding detail to the decks. I just feel like rigging detracts from that. Lower masts with shrouds should be enough to give most people the idea of rigging and still leave a clear path to what's on deck.

Looks good Mike, even if you decide to omit the sail related lines there will still be lots to look at and she'll be a fine looking ship. Recently B.E. showed a picture of his Victory, I can't remember where, and all he had was just the lower masts and the the related standing rigging looked real good. A little late for for you now but might be something for in the future.

Dr Per - good of you to stop in!  Thanks for your comments.
 
Interestingly, the hearts from Syren even have the teeth (dont know the real name) on the inside and they really do grab the rope. Just wish they had some additional larger sizes.

Mike,
You are doing a great job there, the rigging looks good.
The idea of using the hearts from Syren made a difference.

Thought I would show some pix of where I am. Rigging has been an interesting endeavor, however I believe I will research the admiralty style build. Maybe not exactly, but no more than the first spar for the masts and maybe it's shrouds and rats. Why? I think what I am ending up with now is too cluttered. It really detracts from all the deck details. Not to mention it doubles the size of the display case
 
A few observations. As most of us do, I added as much rope as I could before stepping. For the main, I actually attached all 3 spars and rigged as much as I could to the side of the boat. That included ropes and yards. When I finally did step the main the top spars were constantly bumping the cabinets above my bench. In fact they were even bumping my lighting which clamps to the bench. For the fore mast - the 2nd mast to be stepped, I just stepped the lower spar did as much as I could do with that, then added the top mast and did the work there. As you can see from the pix I still haven't added the fore top gallant.
 
I also seem to have gone backwards, stepping the main first then the fore. I didn't even bother with the bow sprit until just recently. This order worked out well. The two masts don't need the bowsprit for all that much.
 
There is a question as to how much rigging to do. Most all of the standing rig needs to be done. But the running rig is another question since there will be no sails. Seems like there is a fine line between too much rope running around the boat and not enough. Given that I feel things are getting cluttered already I'll probably end up on the lite side. Personally I feel that most of the ropes that fasten to a sail should not be included in a build with no sails.
 
So here's some shots of the boat - picture quality is still dubious.
 

As you can see I have about 1" before the bow spars bump into the cabinets. Had a few "hold your breath" moments already.

 

 

 

Since I'm eliminating a lot of the running rigging, I've come to realize there will be a lot of empty belay pins. IMO this looks sort of weird so I am adding some "dummy" coils to fill in the spaces. A real seaman would scoff at this but most people would never know.

I gotta wonder who they sent up this high. Probably someone they didn't like very much. How the heck did they get all the way to the top? The rats don't go that far.

I'm holding off on trimming the ends of the big ropes in case I have to rework something. Would hate to have to replace a stay now!

I used 7mm hearts from Syren. I like the way they look but I wish they had some a little bigger.

Cheap basswood part. Broke the thing 3 times while fitting the harness to it.
 
 
 
 

Odds are 10 to 1 I break that bow sprit before this build is over. 

I forgot to mention one related point. I also purchased the separate paint kit for this model, but had a serious problem. I have always used water-based paints because of their easier cleanup and lower toxicity (I work in my living room and both my wife and I are fairly sensitive to chemical odors). I did not realize that the paint kit was oil-based until I received it (although I should have as the list includes thinner). The odors from the open bottles permeated our house and gave me nausea and a headache. Even when I tried painting outside, when I brought the dry model back indoors it still reeked of chemical paint smell. I closed up the entire paint kit, set it aside, and never touched it again. I used water-based paints instead with no problems, as is my normal practice.
 
So if anyone would like a complete, nearly unused set of paints for this kit, I'd be happy to part with them rather than having the bottles sit around going unused. If you're less sensitive than I am, or have a better painting setup, they may well work great for you. Just not for me.

Eric:
A very nice build.  I like the colors too.  I built the Bluejacket Lobster boat with the fiberglass hull and the instructions and plans appear to have been much better with the kit I did as it's a newer kit and the instructions in their more recent offerings just keep getting better.  I considered the same green color you used but used a lighter green.  I attached two photos of my build.
 
I agree with the paint issue - I switched to acrylics many years ago.  When I opened the old Floquil paints my wife would immediately start to complain about the smell.  For peace I started to investigate acrylics and have not used any solvent based paints other than rattle can primers (occasionally) and then out doors.  Since Badger introduced their Stynylrez primers I use them indoors.  In fact Mary will often be in the shop at the same time I am airbrushing with the Badger paints and doesn't mind the very slight odor.  It's great being able to paint w/o a respirator - though I do use a spray booth - for the particulate issue not harmful fumes.
 
What's next on the building board?
 
Kurt