JerseyCity Frankie
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Brion Toss has an excellent book on rigging for actual sail vessels and devotes several pages to ratlines and how to install them. He claims a spacing of 16" is "standard". His book is called The Complete Riggers Apprentice and covers modern and traditional rigging. I checked Darcy Lever but he doesn't appear to give a spacing. William Brady says "15" is a good distance between the ratlines" on page 70 of The Kedge-Anchor(1847). Nares Seamanship (1862) asks "haw far are the ratlines apart? Fifteen or Sixteen inches" on page 55. Harold Underhill, in Masting and Rigging of the Clipper Ship and Ocean Carrier(1946) gives "About 15" apart" on page 83. Finally Lees, in Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War (1979) says ratlines "were spaced 13" to 15" apart. Its funny. Before I went back and checked my references I would have said it was 16" to 18". Its also funny that none of the experts I sited were exactly specific, except Brion Toss who's book is more about present day real world rigging and is certainly not intended for the model builder. Its still a great well written book with something of interest for anyone who is at all nautical.
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Something I always look at in a ship model is how the ratlines are tied. In actual practice on ships that used rope ratlines the clove hitch was used for all the inner shrouds but the ends of the ratlines were not tied or knotted to the shrouds, each ratline end terminated in an eye splice. These eye splices were lashed to the shrouds with small stuff. Its my opinion that using a knot for the termination of the ratline ends leaves too big of a lump- the eye splices and lashings were more of a smooth taper that did not protrude outboard or inboard of the shrouds at all. Its an unpopular opinion I know, but I believe you should avoid knots at the ends of the ratlines altogether- unless you are working to a very large scale and then you are cursed to tie hundreds of tiny lashings on all your shrouds. A solution that would avoid the bulge of the knots at the ends would be to sew the end of your model ratline through the shrouds at the ends and use a spot of glue to anchor them. Or perhaps unlay the ratline stuff at the end and glue the fanned out strands to the shrouds? As I say, this is an unpopular opinion and I have not seen the process I have just described put to use on any model under 1/4" scale, and rarely even then, but I assure you this is how it is done on actual ships.
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