iiihmb

stiffen the thread with a little thin CA glue.

3 or 4 loops. take a look at some other builds an see how many look good to you. Ive done only one other ship ' the Pickle, and the instructions said 3. 

I just looped them behind the coils and fastened them with glue. The coils hide how the are fastened.

herb

Looking good!

Now is a good time to complete all your deck work before you start rigging. 

Things such as e.g. rope coils on the belay pins  because its a lot harder with rigging in the way.

To get a braided appearance over the thimble I've used bandaid tape stretched over it and then painted black.

Hey your building log is great and your helping me a lot as I'm building the same ship. I don't even have the right sanding techniques down so I was happy to discover your Easy touch sander in one of your pics. Back to Amazon have it in a couple days.

I joined NRG in October of 2016 so I guess I'm still a new guy. First ship I built was the Pickle and am now working on the Niagara. For 3 months in Summer I'm in Spring Lake MI.

I'm a beginning builder-- - Pickle being my first completed build so for what it's worth:

On my ship those stays lead through blocks attached to the mast and cap where shown. They lead down toward the deck where a double block is seized. This is a pic from Jotika's site. Not my build. You can see how lines run to another block attached to an eye on the deck and that line is belayed to the fife rail.

I have a question about installing the gunport pattern. I think the directions state that the  pattern should be GLUED and pinned to the bulkhead uprights even though they will be removed later. Am I reading this correctly?

Herb