Tigersteve

Start with a breech rope slightly longer than you will need.  Have four eyebolts with rings at the ready.   Also have whatever line you intend to use for seizing ready.   In my case some mara 120 thread that matched my rope color.  Note that I have made a loose granny knot on this.  Or one simple overhand knot but left open and ready to go!!!

Place one ringbolt on the rope and simply bend it over to form a loop.  Leave the tail a bit longish.  I just squeeze the loose loop as shown below with my fingers.  No helping hands needed.  Then I slip the seizing "open knot" onto the end.   Easy peasy.  Then cinch it tight....

This is what it looks like.  And yes the seizing needs to be pushed closer to the end of the breech and ringbolt.  No glue as of yet.

Use a tweezers that you are comfy using for this stuff.   Slide the seizing which is still just a loose overhand knot closer to the end.   It may open a bit.  Thats OK.  Just tighten it again when the seizing is where you want it.  At this stage I place the tiniest bit of CA glue (any glue will work here)  on the knot after tightening it.  Then I use my fingers to brush away any excess so it doesnt make the rope stained or discolored.   Yes you get CA on your fingers.   But the rope stays perfectly clean.   I see folks moaning that CA darkens and stains the rope.  This is nonsense if you wipe most of it away before it dries and you dont use too much to begin with.

No discoloration....super simple method and no helping hands or wacky jigs yet.

It may be hard to see in the photo below.   But
I take one loose end of the seizing and pinch it between my fingers and away from the seizing.   I am basically pinching the ringbolt and top of the looped breech line.   See the other loose end hanging off the far side?

Take that loose end and simply wrap it around the breech two or three times.  I have seen folks wrap like 25 times and make a long seizing.,  This never lays correctly and will look sloppy.  I keep my seizings always very short with at maximum only 3 wraps around.  Then I add a drop of CA to the top of the wrapped seizings.  Just a small drop.   No knotting needed.   I pinch and brush the excess CA away with my fingers to keep it clean without darkening at all.  It will only stain if you douse it with way too much CA.  What  a mess that makes and changes the texture of the rope.  Your fingers get sticky and pull the fibers of the rope etc.  I just dip a toothpick into some CA on a scrap piece of wood and barely touch the seizing.  

Then using a tiny scissors which I have maybe 5 of.....these are spring loaded micro scissors that are very sharp.   I cut the loose ends of the seizing very close to the breech rope.  You dont want to see any sticking out after cutting.  Sometimes a mall amount of CA on that end and using a tweezers to fold it into the breech rope will solve this issue.   I hate when the cut loose ends stick out.  Cut both loose ends.
 

Its nice and neat and no discoloration or staining.  Rope is clean and crisp as it should be.  Note the long "loose" end of the breech rope.

Time to trim that with a sharp blade.  Trim it close and at an angle.  To keep the end of the cut rope from fraying I sometimes put some CA on the op where I am going to cut it.  Then immediately wipe it away with my fingers again to keep it clean before it dries.   

The cut end....note the angle of the cut and the clean rope with no fraying or staining.

Then slide two ringbolts on the breech rope which will be inserted on the gun carriages later.  Take the last one and repeat the process to seize the other end just like we described.
 

Only now you should slide the cinched seizing and adjust the length so the overall breech rope is the correct length.   Then just finish it as you did the other side.

Then I make a simulated fake splice in the center to place on the  cannon or Carronade.  I make sure one of those ring bolts are on each side of the center first.  It is very important.  Then I use my plan for the breech line to find the center.   I use a sharp awl to then pierce the center of the breech rope.   I always use 4 strand breech rope so I can pierce it with two strands on each side.  Then I use some CA to stiffen the splice and keep its shape.   I pinch and brush away the excess before it dries....right away.   It will hold its shape.   No shiny spots or staining or dicoloration.

Finished breech rope.

 

Next up was fitting the platform into the hull. Hahn jig makes a very nice stand for dust-free sanding and fitting, would come in handy  

When fitted into the hull - the platform looks quite off-center due to the one-sided planking. Carlings would be centered around the keel line, making them shifted from the platform center.
Looks strange when taking a straight up photo, but it should be better once more layers are done, so it is viewed at an angle. I think it is a better alternative than adding spacers on the non-planked side or shaving off some meat from the knees on the planked side.
The offset would get smaller the higher up you go, this platform is the deepest structure in the hold where the ceiling planking has a significant angle.

Cutting notches for carlings was a blast! An incredible set of carving chisels came in handy, this is not even the smallest size! The smallest Veritas chisel for comparison. 

Incredible feeling when a piece perfectly fits into these notches when dry, nice and tight!


Video 2024-07-29 22 01 07.mov    
 

Was postponing the next big phase of the build - platforms & decks. 
It should be a very enjoyable part, one of the main reasons to start the fully framed model in a first place.
But the learning curve is steep, primarily the planning part. Previously I relied on Hahn drawings to locate the parts, and the rest was rather repetitive. 
Now I need to sail uncharted waters - Hahn only provides locations of top deck beams and that's about it.

So I relied on TFFM to understand the inner workings - these books are worth their weight in gold, I am immensely grateful to authors for simplifying a lot of research in an easy to understand form.
And, of course, old Admiralty drawings from May 1778 done by George White.
So I spent some evenings trying to wrap my head around and map the location and dimensions of the aft platform.

Brain went into an overthinking mode and too many decisions should have been done too late in the evening.
"What should I take as a reference point vertically? What about the horizontal reference?  How to ensure a fair line? What method to pick to compensate for a lack of planking on one side? How to avoid a cumulative measurement error creep?" 
 
Finally the markup was done

And a transparent template was born

 
Transfer paper allows to copy the shape easily to cut off the wood patterns, but of course it leads to a creeping inaccuracy.

Shaping 12 symmetrical parts that form 6 knees was not easy, but at least it did not require any thinking - just a pure relaxing process of small wood parts fabrication. Was missing a nano-sized flush trim router to make an exact mirror copy of each part Ideal usecase for CNC! Though where is the fun in that...
Even forgot to take any pictures, the only one is the final edge polishing. 

The final assembly was tricky. I was planning to fine tune the knee angles, but trying to assemble a trapezoid when all its sides are sliding around is a very annoying process.
If only I could somehow clamp all these pieces 🙄 Oh, wait, the past me thought about this and made some clamps. Six years ago. 😳  How very nice of me! 
Time to dust them off and use them first time for their intended purpose!
They worked excellently, providing a gentle clamping force to get all pieces under control. Still took a while to fine tune the angles (adjusting one angle immediately affects the rest, what a mess).

Here is the assembled platform, just need to fit it to the hull, add carlings and ledges and sand everything nice and smooth.
Before adding ledges one is supposed to make sure they do not interfere with the lower deck pillars, but it's too much effort for now (requiting to mark the locations of all lower deck beams), creating a risk for another half-a-year modelling block.
Will sort that out afterwards, moving the beams a little bit and even notching some ledges into the pillars.
After all, the ship I am modelling is not famous for the build quality. The whole story around it smells "Friday night shift, shoddy engineering", so a few internal structural members overlapping each other are rather on brand  

Glad it would be hidden deep in the hold, a practice piece that still gets to be on the model
Also I saw a number of build logs using pins to dry fit in place, but that implies drilling a tiny hole in the part. Do you just leave a hole there? Or plug the hole with glue and sawdust and do one more round of sanding before the final glue-up?

Would be very happy to hear advices, suggestions and ideas to improve that process. 
I made it work, but surely it can be made easier and faster (and, frankly, more accurate). 
 
 

Congratulations!
Steve

Finally done

Transom work 🙂

The main mast is done and I cleaned up the mizzen and lateen.
 
A lot of prep work was done, so once it was time to add the spars to the model, it went pretty quickly.

I spent the week making 17 belaying pins using my Dremel tool.  While it's not too difficult to make one belaying pin, trying to make a bunch that are identical proved to be impossible.  Glad I'm done with that step!  They turned out pretty good anyway.  I remind myself that once all is said and done, there will be rope placed around all of them, so any variations in shape that are visible now, won't be able to be seen then. 
 
Erik

@druxey
@albert
Many thanks for your interest and encouragement, and thanks to everyone for the many LIKES.
 
In the meantime, the constant rain here in Bavaria is getting on my nerves.
On the other hand, I can spend more time building models again, so I can show you the latest results:
 
Equipping the fore royal yard - Vergue de petit cacatois
I continued with the equipment of the fore royal yard, analogous to the main royal yard. The fore royal yard still has a thickness of around 2.2 mm in the middle.
The first picture shows the attached tye and parral.

The clew line blocks that had already been produced were then fitted with served block strops and attached to the yard.

This was followed by the final fitting of the yard with the lifts, braces and clew lines. As already mentioned, I will not be attaching any sails to this model. Accordingly, I will later connect the clew lines of the royals to the sheets without the corners of the clews using the toggles.


Last but not least, a picture with the center section of the main yard for size comparison.

To be continued ...
 

Beautiful carving! 
Steve

Looks very neat. I like it!
Steve

Thwarts and stern seats
 
The first step is to fit the risers.  There is a for and aft part and the by pre-bending these to fit the inner part of the hull they fitted well.  The main issue is to make sure that the port and starpoard risers are at the same height.  By measuring the height from the plans I found this fairly easy:

The next task was to fit the thwarts and the cockpit seats. All of these parts are in two pieces.  As Chuck points out, it is difficult to rebate a nice even edge particularly in AYC so all of these parts consist of a thick wide part with a thin narrower one glued on top.  For example here are the thwarts:
 

 
And the Cockpit seats ( only dry fitted here)
 
 

 
The side cockpit seats are painted red:
 

and finally the crosspiece an the Knees are fitted:

 
Next up is  to fit the rest of the thwarts permanently.
 
John
 
 
 
 

Perhaps he was infiltrating other workshops. 😎
Steve

Perhaps he was infiltrating other workshops. 😎
Steve

Perhaps he was infiltrating other workshops. 😎
Steve

Perhaps he was infiltrating other workshops. 😎
Steve

It was so great to see everyone at the New London show yesterday.  There were some fantastic models on display.  I hope everyone has a safe trip back to their workshops.
 
And talking about a safe journey back to the workshop.  Many of you may recall that 4 and maybe even 5 years ago, Someone swiped my mini-me off the Winnie model under construction at the show.  
 
I am happy to report that after several years as hostage…and with no ransom paid,  someone anonymously released mini-me and placed him in the depths of the speedwell model at this years show.  I was happy to find him below deck upon my return to the shop.  No harm was apparent on “mini-me” and he is in good health.  Thank you goes out to person for having a change of heart and I am sure that both of you will sleep a bit  more soundly this evening!!   Since I have lost 30 pounds this year so far...mini-me will now undertake the same dietary and exercise regime that I am now unfortunately tolerating.
 
You cant make this stuff up!!!
 

As always, thanks for the likes.  I do appreciate you all following along.  After all the metal work of making the chain plates, backstay plates, eye bolts, and deadeye strops, I decided I'd work on a relatively straight forward sub assembly.  I went ahead and installed the rudder, and gudgeons and pintels (I had shaped the rudder itself a couple of months ago).  I used Chuck's mini kit for those.  You have a choice in the mini kit of .010" thick paperboard material or .028" thick plywood.  I opted for the thicker plywood and sanded it down to .018" thick.  By my eye that's a good compromise.  I used .020" diameter styrene rod for the bolts.  Yes, yes, I know it's probably sacrilege among purists to use plastic on a wooden ship build.  Haha.  But since the bolt heads are covered in paint I chose the easier to cut and work with styrene rather than metal wire.  Everything was painted with black paint and then once mounted I taped the simulated metal straps off and applied rust brown weathering powder. I haven't glued the rudder on yet.  I'll do that at a later date after I drill the final hole to mount the tiller (I did drill a small pilot/locator hole though).  That said, the rudder sits correctly straight and true with the pintels snugged down into the gudgeons.
 
On a related note, I received the last few packages of blocks I'll need for the build, and a serving machine, from Chuck this week.  If I'm inventorying correctly, I think that may be the last stuff I need to complete the build.
 
Erik

Thank you! Initially, I believed the build would be complete in just 1.5 years, but how mistaken I was—it's turned out to be a 6-year journey. LOL. I've been observing your progress from the early stages. Looking forward to seeing you get back at it😊

Garnet Tackle work. 

I finished the deadeyes and deadeye strops this week.  And set a new personal record for the most discarded/rejected parts.  Haha.  I can laugh now, but at the time, it was the height of frustration.  I think to get the 8 usable deadeye strops shaped correctly and mounted, I wound up with an additional 15 or so I scrapped.  Admittedly most of that was trying to get the first couple formed.  Once I had a system down for shaping them, things went more smoothly.  I wound up chipping the paint off some of the chain plates, so had to touch that up.  And I wound up rubbing off the finish of the annealed wire I used for making the strops from handling too much, so had to blacken those again . . . which made a bit of a mess on the deadeyes from blackening smudges coming off of my fingers.  So, I had to re-sand some of the deadeyes to remove that.  All in all not the most fun part of the build.  So, I'm happy that buttons up Chapter 9 of Chuck's monograph, and I look forward to getting away from handling metal and back to working with wood for the next parts of the build!
 
Erik

After pulling some hair out, and the remainder going gray, haha, I have finished the backstay plates and chain plates . . . on the port side anyway.  I revisited blackening them, using advice here and on the internet.  My test brass strips looked OK, but I couldn't avoid bare brass spots being rubbed off after lightly wiping them down with a dry cloth.  I'm pretty sure I didn't clean the brass well enough beforehand.  After being left frustrated by that, I just went ahead and followed what Chuck had done on his, and painted them black and used a rust brown weathering powder to give them that iron look.  I'm happy with the results.  A trick I learned years ago as a model railroader with brass, is to bake the brass after painting.  Just put the parts under a hot halogen or incandescence light bulb, about an inch away from the bulb, for about five minutes.  This hardens the paint on the metal surface and makes it much more scuff resistant.  The nails themselves I ordered from ModelExpo (being my first ship build I didn't have any extras from prior builds to use).  They are the smallest ones they offer.  They're slightly rounded on the bottom of the heads, so don't appear the sit flush when pushed in.  So I used a larger diameter drill bit than the holes in the brass were drilled with, and counter sunk all the holes in the backstay and chain plates.  I also ran a sharp angled file on the underside of the heads of each nail.  This helped get the nails to snug down flat when pushed in.  After getting the parts mounted and nailed in place, I went ahead and touched up the paint and weathering powder.
 
Of all the processes involved on this build, metal working is probably the one I have the least experience in.  The backstay plates and chain plates have taken a lot longer than I thought they would.  That said, I've learned a lot, even with the error part of Trial and Error being frustrating at times!
 
Erik

It’s perfect!
Steve

Wow! 
Steve

Found my rhythm and finally produced first parts!
Admittedly got carried away with the shape of these mast posts, they are supposed to be much more boxy-looking and utilitarian. I was inspired by a few other models with very elegant posts For the same aesthetic reasons iron bolts are omitted and edges are aligned with the run of the planking.
I really love the look of curvy pear parts, big fat black dots would spoil it a bit. And after all these parts would be hidden deep in the hold.
It is more labor intense without a disk sander, so shaping and beveling involved a lot of chiseling. Though it is a pleasure with a nice and honed chisel.

The most pleasuring moment was chamfering these edges with some relaxing background music Super happy, the joy is back!
 
Finished with my new go-to finish Osmo Polyx 3062. Contemplating leaving smaller parts unfinished later during the build, but these are right next to the dark shiny pear frames, would be too much of a contrast. 
Before and after the finishing, side by side:

 
In the hull (dry fitted). Quite ashamed with the quality of planking at the bow, who left all these giant gaps? 🫣 Did not look that bad on photos from 2021...
No big deal, it only means I should be more careful next time. Also spotted an obvious misplacement of the top breast hook notch, it was the same guys fault. I was too young back then