bartley

Thanks for your comment, Sea Hoss. First let me acknowledge Tom Lauria who originated this method. Tom uses an ellipse from a template such as this. As I said I prefer a less symmetrical appearance so first I draw up a rough sketch of the size and shape I want to achieve: I would make two or three of these of slightly different shape since on a working ship these coils are neat but not identical. Then i drill holes and insert pins as Tom does and continue with his method. John

Post 61: Faking Down Before the ratlines get in the way I decided to at least attach some rope coils. I use the method of Tom Lauria. I find that that his oval jig produces coils that are a little too symmetrical for my taste so I slightly modify the shape of the jig to make it a little more pointed at one end. After painting with diluted acrylic medium the coils are allowed to dry and then cut from the jig. and here are some attached to belaying pins I am not entirely happy with how the look, but the more I make the better I get. The only trouble is they use up more rope than you would think and my light brown rope is fast running out! John

Bill Could you please provide me with Mikhail's Email address. John

PRS, The answer is yes, and no. It depends on the glue you use (PVA orCA) but in the end the bond is only as strong as the poly to wood bond. I always sand or at least roughen the poly before gluing to it. John

Tidying Up the rigging. Now that the shrouds are on, its time for a final tightening and trimming off some of those "dangly bits". Here is the for'ard region tidied up a bit. \ John

Another way to give a kind of 3D feel is to paint over the letters or part of them with acrylic gel medium which is available from art stores. It is transparent but builds up the surface. John

By the way, I sailed for a day on the square rigger in the foreground down in Cornwall some years ago. There was no way that their deadeyes were in line. They thought it was a strange thing to expect. Apparently the shrouds stretch differently and it is more important to tension the rig to account for this than keep the deadeyes level. John

Post 60: Rigging the Shrouds Though I have done this on my previous build, I cheated and used three horizontal seizings. This time I decided to do it the " proper" way with a throat seizing as described in Chuck's monograph. I had some discussions with him about the details of this since the book by Lees and others suggest that the shroud should run anticlockwise around the deadeye but in Chuck's diagram they are clockwise. His point was that neatness was the main point and that for a right handed person it was easier to tie the throat seizing on the right hand side and so I elected to do it that way. Incidentally, there is a detailed discussion of all this by Ed Tosti here. I also used Ed's method of keeping the deadeyes level: I think this is actually overkill for only four deadeyes!! Chuck does it freehand and, it retrospect that would be just as good. In my view jigs only work if you can keep the tensions on each shroud equal. I found this easy enough for three of the stays but difficult for the fully served stay at the forward end. Anyway here is the final result, John

As others have said, it seems questionable on a square rigger. However on Cheerful, which has a huge gaff rigged fore and aft sail, the backstays are served all the way down because as the main is sheeted out to go off the wind there would be considerable chaffing. Mind you, in this situation the leeward backstay would have been slackened anyway. John

Post 59: Rigging the Jib Halyard Fortunately Chuck supplies a traveler ring. Making one this good from scratch would be a challenge. I decided to stabilize the ring with the out-hall and in-haul before attaching the halyard. Obviously the ring was slid onto the bowsprit before it was installed but I had seized the out-haul onto the ring first. The out-haul travels forward, through the sheave at the tip of the bowsprit and then back aft to belay on the bits at the bow. The in=haul start with a "V" which is seized to the in-haul proper. The V piece is seized to either side of the the traveler ring. This can be seen in this photo with the halyard block rigged The halyard itself passes through a block on the mast cap and is belayed to one of the cleats at the base of the mast. John

Glenn, You will see that I went with standing rigging gangs first before fitting the. topmast. For me there was no way I could tie them neatly on the ship. I did not tie off the shrouds though as I thought they might grt in the way of running riggging but in retrospect it would have been OK John

Post 58: Rigging the Gaff. Before I commenced this job I needed to make some more thimbles. To do this I cut 2mm lengths of 1.6 mm tubing using a Jewelers Tube Cutting jig . I also have a pliers type jig. The advantage of these is that they capture the cutoff piece. However they do not have a small slot to hold this narrow tubing so I used the more complex jig although care need to be exercised so as to not loose the cut off piece. For those living in Australia, Australian Jewelers Supply have useful range of tools suitable for our hobby. They have stores in all capital cities. Their stores are more like a warehouse and browsing turns up all sorts of interesting finds. I have written about this here. These need to be flared out to form a thimble. I have tried using both a hand punch and a spring-loaded punch the problem with the spring-loaded punch is that often one click is not enough and two clicks is too much. I can exercise more control by tapping with a hammer. Here is the result after blackening: These are then seized with 0.66 mm rope and then lashed to the spar in the appropriate place: Hooks were made from 24-gauge wire: I found the installation of the gaff tricky. Unlike the main boom, there is nothing to hold the tip from drooping down and it also tends to slide down the mast. I eventually tied it up temporally to the top of the mast but it was still awkward until the throat seizing is rigged. Eventually, a satisfactory result was achieved. John

Post 56a. Mast Cap and Topmast: This Post is out of order and should have come before the last one (Post 57). The topmast was made art the same time as the mainmast and dry fitted as shown here The topmast was removed so that the lower the gangs for the standing rigging could be slipped over the masthead. Now that this is complete the topmast can be installed. The dimensions for the mast cap are given in the plans and two holes were drilled in the appropriate places - the forward one to take the topmast and the aft one was squared up to take the mainmast tenon. There are four blocks located on eyepins on the cap. I elected to install these prior installation of the cap rather than do it on the ship. The for and aft blocks have al length of rope attached for the Jib halyard and the main boom topping lift and the respectively. The ropes associated with these were installed and coiled in readiness for installation at a latter date. Of course the topping lift was installed in Post 57. John

Some great tools for our hobby are available from Jewellery supply stores. Amongst the tools I have bought from such outlets over the years include: Swiss quality needle nosed pliers: bending mandrels: These cone shaped sanding tools (5mm tip on this one): Vallorbe files: Particularly this Barrett style file which you will notice has no teeth on the sides: Tube cutting jig: Knew Concept Saw Copper wire: As well as silver soldering equipment and small ultrasonic cleaners (great for cleaning files and small brass parts). If you live in Australia, Australian Jeweller's Supply has a store in every capital city and they have an online outlet as well John

Just an additional comment, Bob, the best place for the small ones is a jewellery supplier. I find they have lots of good stuff. Or try searching "small bending mandrel" because there are industrial scale ones. John

John, In Australia I bought mine a while ago in my local pharmacy ( I think you call them "drug stores". Cheers, John

This tool ( at least in Australia) is called a "Bending Mandrel". Cheers, John

Yes Glenn, I got this Idea from @bigcreekdad. I have been using these as well for a while and they are great. I bought them at my local Pharmacy (I think you call them Drug Stores) so they are easy to replace if the edge goes dull. No problem so far. John

Thanks Chuck and Glenn for your kind comments. There are some faults of course but I am enjoying the build. It will be hard to go back to kits from here. John

One of the disadvantages of the MF 70 is that there is no head-stock rotation. This may not be a limitation for your work. The FF 230 offers this facility but at a more expensive price point. As a small group of builders we purchased this machine as we could spread the cost. It is certainly more versatile and I think all the Sheerline models offer this facility as well. John

Post 57: The Main Boom The main boom was constructed in post 54. It is now rigged and installed on the model. There was nothing special about this process but no ropes are tied off permanently yet. I used black Parrel beads as that is what I had in stock.

Yes Indeed, part of the standing rigging. There is no pressure on the leeward backstay, so it can be loosened. This is actually vital as the ship moves off the wind ( wind from the side) because the boom then has to be moved outward and a tight leeward stay would foul the boom. In fact the capsize of the American yacht in the Americas cup was caused by just this fact. fo some reason the leeward stay did not release and over she went! John

Allan, I certainly don't think its a good idea on rigging. The ropes are very thin and the glue will penetrate a way as well. Interesting point with regard to timber though. The layer of glue is usually quite thin compared to the bulk of the timber so maybe its OK. There is a guy on this site who is a conservator. Maybe he will give an opinion. John

Yes, Christos, I think that is probably correct. Asmall variation from 7 still leads to a small excess of acid and slowly over time damage can occur. another example of this is in PVA. Tightbond for example has a pH of about 2.5! we should not be using this on rigging. Craft PVA or bookbinders PVA is said to be "neutral" but is it pH 7? Probably not but better than Tightbond! John

When the reference says "compounds and their ratios vary from species to species", this does not mean that the pH varies. The compound present are called "esters". These are common components of many naturally occuring vegetable oils and animal fats. It is difficult to explain to a non chemist what these compounds are but I will try. They consist of two long chains consisting of only carbon and hydrogen - hydrocarbons. These are separated by an oxygen containing group. Each species actually contains a mixture of these esters in which the length of the carbon chains varies. Now in different species The way this variation occurs is different if this makes sense. For example a common chain length in vegetable oils is 18 carbons (called C-18 for short). So one species may have 80% C-18 and 20% C-16 another species might have 50% C-18, 40% C-16 and 10% C-14. So its a kind of variation of a variation! But the pH could be the same for both species. John These ester