SardonicMeow

I'm starting with the mainsail. First, it's laced to the gaff. I decided it was best to attach the boom to the sail before placing it on the model. The tack of the sail is attached to a hook above the boom jaws. The outhaul passes through a sheave at the end of the boom and ends on a block which, along with another block on the boom, is a tackle for the outhaul. I pre-ran the line for that tackle. The parrels were added to the gaff and boom with some tape to keep the beads from coming off. The sail is attached first by the throat and peak halliards. Loose at first, then gently tugging little by little into place. Wire was previously twisted around each mast hoop, and this wire went through holes in the luff of the sail. Foolishly, I didn't attach the wire before the mast hoops were on the mast and impossible to remove. Therefore, it was awkward to get the wire twisted and it couldn't be done neatly. It's not bad from far away but doesn't look so great close up. The topping lift and boom sheet were threaded, and the sail is looking pretty good. Right now, nothing is glued. Everything is held in by friction and can be adjusted as needed. One sail down, five to go.

Making sails... I had the crazy idea of putting wire inside teabag paper in order to make sails that can be shaped. It was mostly successful, but didn't fully achieve what I wanted. For all the details, have a look here: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/37106-some-silkspan-tips/page/2/#comment-1083821 Once I had wired teabag paper, the sail pattern was marked. Additional strips of teabag paper were glued on for reef bands, edges, and reinforcements And then the sail was cut out. And here they are. As you can see, I have already been experimenting with shaping the sails. Now everything can finally come together. My greatest worry is that, as I work on the rigging, belaying points and other things will become inaccessible, so I've been thinking hard about the best order to assemble everything.

Mark, the kit comes with some wire, but it's not formed into eyelets. I have been making eyelets by wrapping wire around a pin, then around the block. (I really should learn how to do this properly with thread rather than wire. But wire is convenient, especially on the smallest blocks.)

I have been thinking for a while about how to make sails for my Sultana. I want them to look good, of course, but also I want sails that appear full of air. Sails that hang straight down on a schooner just look sad. I purchased some of the material sold as artist teabag paper and have been experimenting with it. On my model, at 1:64 scale, the sail seams would need to be less than half a millimeter wide, with panels 7mm wide. Overlapping the teabag paper to achieve this would be nearly impossible. For such narrow seams, one would typically represent them with lines scribed by a pencil. But in this thread, there was mention of using wire to allow the sails to hold shape. And that got me thinking. What if there were a solution, a crazy solution, that takes care of everything? Below is what I came up with, after a few iterations of testing my ideas. First, the design in Autodesk Fusion. Teabag paper is taped tightly around a piece... ...that fits into the contraption. Then 34 gauge wire is threaded from one end to the other. Glue is spread and a second piece of teabag paper is placed over the first. To do this, I tried both a glue stick, and brushing on white glue. The picture below shows brushed on glue. As you can see, there are some inconsistencies in coverage, and these show up as blotches in the final product (though they aren't as prominent once the glue is dry). With the glue stick, there were fewer blotches, but because the glue stick couldn't fit into the edges, there was glue absent around the border. This allowed some wires to shift inside. Here I start to make the sail, using a pattern printed on office paper. The lines show up fairly well through the two layers of teabag paper. In this picture, by the way, is material from a trial using the glue stick. You can see how wires near the edges have shifted, reducing the usable area. Carefully cut strips of teabag paper are glued on for the reef bands and edge reinforcement. Cringles and an extra wire at the foot of the sail are glued on and covered with teabag paper strips. Once all the gluing is complete, the sail is cut out. It's not too bad. All the wires do allow some shaping of the sail. This picture doesn't show it very well, but there is some decent curvature of the sail, particularly along the edge at the stay. Anyway, I hope you found this interesting.

Preparing blocks... Blocks here... Blocks up here... (And this reminds be that I still need to fashion masthead trucks.) Blocks all over... There will be 102 blocks in total. Everything is ready for the running rigging at this point, but there's a final major task to work through. That'll be next time.

Here's a picture from a while ago when I made the boom, gaffs, and jibboom. The boom and gaffs have had blocks and some rigging elements added. Now to make the topsail yards. These require a lot of tiny 2mm blocks. I have been using blackened 30 gauge wire to attach them to the yards. And then footropes and other elements are added.

Enjoy. I hope the pictures answer more questions than they create. (One peculiarity I noticed is that the gaff throat halliard is completely absent on the model.)

So, I happened to be visiting family in the Toronto area over the holidays and went to see the Surly model at the Art Gallery of Ontario. My pictures have been posted. I hope they are useful to vossiewulf and others.

The Cheerful model at the US Naval Academy museum has three yards. I have lots of pictures, if you're interested.

Here are the jibboom guys hanging free with deadeyes at the end. The deadeyes were linked with deadeyes previously attached to eyebolts at the bow. Here's a neat view of everything from above. The main stay and main topmast stay were added each with a pair of hearts. Next time: adding lots of blocks, probably.

Wire is wrapped around a pin, around a tiny 2mm block, and then around another pin to give me two loops at either end of the block. Glue was applied and excess wire was cut off. The outer jibstay was threaded through the jibboom with the block at one end and a seized loop at the other end. Before the jibboom was put into place, the block at the end of the jibstay and the block already placed at the end of the bowsprit were threaded. Finally, the jibboom was glued into place and the line between the blocks was tightened. The fore topmast was glued on and the fore topmast stay was run from the top of the topmast and through the loop at the end of the jibboom. There are a few more details to do around the bowsprit and jibboom but the majority is complete. Unfortunately, the tightening of subsequent stays has caused the forestay to become slack. I'm hoping that the mainstay will pull the foremast back a little bit and correct that.

Thanks, Matt. I'm definitely going to push through to the end. Glad you're following along again. So, I said that the shrouds were done, but I forgot about the cleats. As before, I laid the model on its side, and was able to glue the cleats simply by applying glue and laying the cleats on the shrouds. Afterwards, I used some thread to reinforce each cleat. One heart for the forestay was already attached to the bowsprit several build log updates and four years ago. The forestay was seized to the foremast and the hearts were threaded. It took multiple attempts until I was able to get the pair of hearts oriented the way I wanted. The heart for the inner jibstay was also attached to the bowsprit. For now, it's just dangling loose on the bowsprit.

There are poles or rungs (not sure what the right term is) where every fifth ratline should be. These were added by laying the ship on its side and gluing black plastic strips in place. With that, the ratlines are truly complete.

The ratlines are complete. Quite a time-consuming operation. It took me... wow. What year is this? As shown below, I printed out a spacing guide and used chalk to mark the location of each knot on the shrouds. Here's a shot with all the ratlines done. Note the gaps in the ratlines. Those will be addressed in the next update.

Thanks for clarifying, Eamonn. I think the right name for the sail you're describing is the fore staysail. Looking at your (really lovely) pictures of the Ballahoo in profile, there is a very short distance between the fore mast and fore stay, so I assumed there would be no fore staysail. But it's certainly possible. As always, I look forward to seeing your progress.

I've been spending a little while looking at your diagram. The only major issue I see is the foresail sheet. Perhaps you intended to assign that to the aft pinrails, but put it on the fore pinrails by mistake? Also, I don't see what a foresail halyard would do, as the foresail can be raised and lowered with the gaff peak / throat halyards.

Hi, Max. If you have discovered any new techniques in Fusion 360, please share. As for including pictures, start a reply, then click on the "choose files" link at the bottom where it says "Drag files here to attach, or choose files..." Move your cursor into the position in your text where you want the image to appear, then click the plus sign on the image. For more help, look in the "How to use the MSW forum" forum.

Very interesting to see a different take with the painted hull, coppered bottom, and modified anchors. Thanks for sharing.

Here's a picture I took of the figurehead on the E. C. Collier. I love how yours captures the same feel and style of this and other skipjack figureheads I've seen.

Nope. The mistake is not yours, it's Artesania Latina's. You're finding flaws in the kit that every other builder also encounters. I like your fix for the rudder. I think it'll look better than the correction I made to mine. To my eye, your stem still looks a little low. You'll need the bowsprit at an angle such that a line from the end of the bowsprit running aft towards the bow will be able to go over the bow railing.

Yes, the horizontal lines are the waterlines. In the plans you posted, they are labelled F, G, H, and I in two of the three views. They are not labelled in the side view, but you can figure out which match the corresponding lines in the other drawings. To make the vertices match up to the lines, you'll need to subdivide the plane object to get the right number of lines, then slide the lines up, down, left, or right to match up with the lines in the plans.

Ok. You're asking about the waterlines. On the plans that you posted, the waterlines are marked F, G, H, and I. These lines appear as straight lines on the first two pictures and are curved in the view from above. In my procedure, I create a Blender plane and subdivide it so that it matches the way the lines are arranged on the plan. Here is the side view of the plans I used and below that the blender object. By subdividing it this way, there is a vertex at every intersection of each of the lines. Here is another view of the same. Notice that at the beginning, the object is flat. The vertices will need to be pulled out into the hull shape. Here is a similar view with the other plan image visible. Also, I have deleted some of the vertices that I know will be unused. At this point, to follow the curve of a waterline, you have to go along each vertex of the waterline and move them one by one outwards to match the line on the plans. This picture is the view from above after a single waterline has been completed. And here is the same from a different viewing angle. I have captured both a wireframe and solid view. You can see how the vertices for a single waterline have been pulled out to match the proper curve. To complete the hull, it's just a matter of repeating the same procedure for all the other lines. I hope that answers your question, but if not, let me know and I'll try to explain further.

I'm not sure what you mean by "match the curvature of the top view". Can you post a picture?

Thank you for this, Phil. It's by far the best explanation of schooner rigging I've seen in one place. I do have a question about the jib / fore staysail inhaul. Wouldn't the more common arrangement be a downhaul that starts at the peak, runs down the stay (either through the hanks or free) to a block at the bowsprit, then to the bow? That would allow the sail to be entirely hauled down to the bowsprit, which isn't possible with a line attached at the tack. In this arrangement, the tack would simply be attached by a hook at a fixed point at the bowsprit cap or traveler. Maybe there would be an inhaul for a flying jib, but a downhaul + hooked tack for a jib or fore staysail?

Welcome to Model Ship World! You're off to a great start. The trenails on your deck are particularly well done. I look forward to seeing your further progress.