Tomculb

Slow progress, and only one picture of that progress. The mainmast standing rigging is now complete, including ratlines and all shrouds. I also drilled holes for the remaining stanchions, but I have not glued them in place yet. I have also started on the foremast standing rigging, wondering again why I didn't do this before rigging the yard lifts. In addition to the usual distractions this time of year slowing things down, for the first time I can remember I've found myself frustrated that it's taking as long as it is to finish this model. A year ago I thought I would be finishing about now. That's led to some rushed work, a few mistakes* and do-overs, and the occasional sense that I needed (not wanted) to get back to work on my model. So I'm now intentionally slowing things down (somewhat counter-intuitively), getting my mind back to recognizing again that it's all about the journey, not the destination. And it's working; the last couple of sessions in the shipyard were shorter and more enjoyable. So if a month or more passes before my next post, you'll know why. *The most obvious (but not the only) big mistake was running the middle stay from the main mast to the foremast top rather than to the mast cap. What should have been incredibly obvious is that running that stay to the top meant it interfered with the main mast gaff's peak halyard. Live and learn 😵‍💫, and correction made.

Merry Christmas to you too Jim and glad my research was of some help. I too have been sidelined a bit, slow progress and even slower posting to this blog. Hope to do so within the next week or so. Your James Caird build looks really great!

I have now glued the mainmast in place and rigged the three stays running from that mast forward to the foremast. I have also rigged the pairs of lower shrouds, port and starboard, that will be home to the ratlines. While securing the lanyard above the upper deadeye on the final one, I managed to pull that deadeye away from the shroud to which it had been secured. That meant I had to do that pair of shrouds all over again. To reduce the risk of bringing on that calamity again, I left the bitter ends of the shrouds untrimmed, until after I have rigged the ratlines. As can be seen in the first photo below, the upper part of the lower shrouds don’t align with the futtock shrouds very closely, and I was concerned how I was going to tie them together as they should be. But when I tied the lowest ratline onto the futtock and the lower shrouds together, they came together quite well, distorting the straight run of the shrouds only slightly. Up next . . . too many more ratlines.

Amazing work on the 3D printer! It's going to be really great seeing these features when they become an integral part of your build. As you may have seen, I've been working on my Endurance for about 20 months so far and estimate I have 3 to 6 more months to go. I'm finding there is a lot to like about OcCre's kit, but also lot's of potential to make corrections and to add details that are not part of the kit, planking the sides of the deck house (as you have done) and the bulkheads being prime examples. I'm looking forward to following your build.

Jim, here's one of several Frank Hurley photos showing the opening in that bulkhead. The anchor windless was in there (as you probably saw in my log), probably linked to the captain above, with the chain locker immediately below.

Next project was upper shrouds and ratlines on the main mast. As @theoracle09 pointed out on his log, and as can be seen immediately below, the upper shroud ratlines go only a little more than half way up. Aft, between the shrouds, is a ladder, the ratlines on which overlap the other ratlines part way and continue on up to an opening in the bottom of the crow’s nest. I attached the ladder to two eyebolts extending out from the back of the maintop, visible in the closeup photo of the bottom of the ladder and the futtock shrouds. The top of the ladder is attached to two eyebolts extending out from the mast at 45° from astern, not really visible in the attempted closeup of the top of the ladder. Ratlines are seldom easy, but I found these to be more than a bit of a challenge. I think the thread I used was too stiff, making it definitely uncooperative. But I got it done. What has me concerned though is the shrouds and ratlines on the foremast. I have no idea why I installed that mast's running rigging first, rather than doing its shrouds and ratlines first. To give me a little practice I’ll do the main mast standing rigging first (with little running rigging in the way), then tackle the counterparts on the fore mast.

Hi Jim, welcome to the group of Endurance builders. While your approach is different from mine, I think yours is a beautiful build. Both Keith and Josh @theoracle09 stopped posting quite some time ago, which as far as I can tell, leaves me as the only Endurance builder still posting. A year or two ago there were quite a few. I would love to have some company if you want to start posting. Or add whatever comments you want to mine. The link is in my signature block below. Tom

I have built the mainmast and installed the gaff, crane and crow’s nest barrel. One of the pictures below shows the mast installed on the ship, but it hasn’t been glued there yet. Among other things, I will probably rig the upper shrouds, futtock shrouds and ratlines with the mast temporarily installed in a 2x4, which makes it more accessible. The only thing deserving comment at this point is the crane/boom, which I thought seriously about not installing. I think I’ve only seen one or two photos in which it appears, and I’m guessing it would be used only when loading things on and off the ship. It might even have been removed except when needed. The lower stay between the foremast and the main mast would have to be unrigged for the crane to be useful. As you can see below, I chose to rig it pulled up tight against the mast. I have two sizes of photo etched hooks left over from prior builds, I feared the larger ones were too big, and I used one of the smaller ones. Now I think that was a mistake as it can hardly be seen, but not important enough to redo. OcCre has the loose end of the hook’s tackle tied to an eyebolt at the boom’s inner end, a place which probably couldn’t be reached by anyone. I ran it through a block on the inner end of the boom, then down to the forward cleat on the spider band at the bottom of the mast. That’s also where the working end of the boom’s peak halyard is secured. There’s really no other good place to secure it. There are 8 cleats on that spider band-- one for the gaff peak halyard, six (three on each side) for the foremast braces, and one for the crane rigging.

Unrelated, but my wife and I just returned from a trip, and I posted here about the amazing ship model collection at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. I mentioned previously that I intend to place the forward ship’s boats on racks inboard from the bulwarks, instead of outboard hanging from davits as OcCre intends. The ship’s plans I refer to and a number of the Frank Hurley photos show the forward boats stowed that way. Before leaving on our trip, I built the basic frames for this stowage, and I partially assembled one of the boats to see how everything would fit. I had already determined that the smaller boats fit better forward, with the larger boats aft, the opposite of the way OcCre places them. Neither these racks nor the deck gangways are glued in place yet. I will assemble, rig and install the mainmast before these things are glued in place.

Thanks SHJ. I wish I was smart enough to deserve the credit you gave me. Actually I didn't paint those lines at all. What I did is find some grey thread which I used untreated, then mixed some white and grey paint to give the brass stanchions a color that is at least close in color to the lines. The goal was to have the lines look like wire cable.

At long last the time has come to glue the deckhouse in place. As I mentioned in an earlier post, OcCre shows a stay running from half way up the main mast down to an eyebolt at the front of the deckhouse roof/deck. Stays are frequently rigged with a lot of tension, they should be fixed to something having plenty of strength, and what could be stronger than the base of Endurance’s foremast? I stared at it for some time, trying to figure out how I was going to get my big clumsy fingers in there to wrap the thread around the mast a couple of times and then using thin thread, tie half a dozen or so half hitches around the two parts of the stay, all without disturbing the lines tightly secured to the mast’s spider band and the bulwark pinrails. Eventually I decided that it can’t be done (only barely acknowledging that it can’t be done by me). So I installed an eyebolt to the deck of the deckhouse as instructed and secured one end of the stay to it. I then loosened the gaff sheets to make room, applied glue to the bottom of the deckhouse, gently slid it in between all the running rigging, and glued it in place. I was then able to tighten and secure the gaff sheets to the pin rails and glue the remaining ladders in place.

After some delays, I have now finished rigging the headsail halyards and the downhauls. There are four headstays. OcCre has you install running rigging and sails on the inner three, consistent with plans and some photos I have. Other photos show running rigging on the outer three. For no particular reason, I chose to do the latter. In each case, OcCre's instructions show a halyard and two downhauls on each designated stay. One downhaul is attached to the head of the sail and one attached to the tack. I have been on many sailboats but never one with a downhaul attached to the head of the sail; the weight of the sail was always sufficient to bring it down when the halyard was released. Also, the tack was secured to a fitting on the bow (on the bowsprit here), and the purpose of the downhaul was to adjust the tightness of the luff (leading edge of the sail). As such, the bitter end was attached to the bow, and the line ran up through a grommet a short distance up the sail and then back down to a block and then aft. But then the largest sailboat I’ve been on was about half the size (by length) of Endurance and about half a century newer, so what do I know? In any event, I opted for one downhaul and linked it to the halyard. Keep in mind that I decided not to install any sails. The loose ends of the downhauls and halyards were then secured to the forward pinrail and the foremast’s spider band respectively.

Putting aside the things I was thinking about in my last post, I installed the head stays between the bowsprit and the foremast. For thread I used a very dark brown by Gutermann that I ordered online. It turned out to be too dark, brown instead of black only on close inspection, but I used it anyway. In the photos below it certainly looks black. The OcCre supplied thread is a mid brown color; not dark enough in my view. It is also half a millimeter thick, which translates to almost 1.4 inches thick on the real ship. I doubt that Endurance’s standing rigging was that thick. I’m not sure what the thickness of the Gutermann thread is, but it is something less than half the thickness of the OcCre thread. OcCre has the lowest stay secured to the mast at the mast cap. As can be seen in the second picture below (from the rigging instructions), that would put the stay right smack in the middle of the topsail. You would have to cut a hole in the topsail for the stay, which makes no sense. I ran it to the mast at the foretop.

Progress report . . . I installed the gaff, with a couple of eyebolts imitating a gooseneck. I then brought the gaff peak halyard, the topsail and topgallant yard halyards, and the main spar lifts down to the cleats at the base of the mast, where they were secured. I then separately made rope coils and draped them over the cleats. That’s a total of five lines, leaving three cleats available for the headsail halyards. Since none of the installed lines are attached to the hull anywhere, I was able to do this rigging with the mast off the ship, which made things a lot easier. Then after securing the mast to the hull, I brought the topsail and topgallant spar lifts down to belaying pins in the bulwark pinrails, secured them and added rope coils. As I mentioned previously, the deck cabin is only dry fit in place, and removing it made it a lot easier to secure these lines and add the coils. I installed paralls at the back of each of the yards. Had I given it any thought, I would have installed them before installing any of the other rigging; securing them with the spar lifts and halyards in place made things considerably more difficult. The gaff sheets are still loose, but they do run through blocks I installed in the deck below the aft pin rails, where they will be eventually secured. Fortunately I recognized that putting the deckhouse back in place would be very difficult with those sheets fully rigged. Same issue as to at least one stay that will run between the mainmast and an eyebolt on the deck house deck (or as I prefer, to the foremast). On the other hand, with the deckhouse fixed in place, it will be a lot more difficult securing those sheets to the belaying pins as I intend to do. Hmmm . . . Some other issues I need to think about. . . As I said it was a lot easier securing lines to the cleats at the base of the foremast with that mast not attached to the ship. Most of the lines that will similarly be secured on cleats at the base of the mainmast (that is, the braces attached to the foremast yards), can only be installed with the mainmast installed on the ship. And the bulkhead immediately behind that mast obviously cannot be temporarily removed. Maybe I will secure those lines to the cleats first (before the mast is installed), then once the mast is installed run them up to, and attach them to, their yards? Or will I attach the lower end of the braces to pinrails I could install at the aft end of the bulwarks?? Or run them to the cleats on the mast as I originally intended after the mast is installed??? As did @HakeZou, I want to build cradles for the forward ship’s boats, stowed on board rather than hanging from davits. A number of Frank Hurley’s photos show them stowed that way, as do the ship’s plans I refer to frequently. Obviously they would need to be stowed in such a way as to not interfere with any rigging. As supplied by OcCre, the boats come in two sizes, with the forward ones being larger than the aft ones. After test fitting laser-cut one-piece railings for each size boat, I think I want to reverse that, as Hake did. Regarding those boats, someone(s) mentioned that ship's boat kits manufactured by Master Korabel and available in different sizes are much better than those included in this kit. I gave some thought to purchasing four of those kits, but everywhere I looked they were out of stock. Not surprising given that Master Korabel is apparently a Russian company.

That's really interesting George. I never would have spotted those blocks in the photo you posted. I am beyond the point of rigging my model that way, but some other builder will likely benefit from your research. Thank you.