Dr PR

Steve, 1. More belaying points is better than not enough! 2. I think you are correct that the spaces between pins should be over the gun ports. When the cannons recoil you don't want them hitting belaying pins. 3. Take what I have said in my build with a grain (or spoonful) of salt. It is a hypothetical build, so I can do whatever I can imagine. I am building that schooner to learn about schooners, and not to build a correct replica of any particular vessel. 4. With very few exceptions, we are never going to know exactly how any particular historical vessel was rigged, especially from times before photography and modern engineering practices. My philosophy is to put myself in the bosun's shoes - how do I make this work so the Captain doesn't chew my posterior? **** I wasn't around centuries ago, but I did my time on ships in the mid 20th century. Whenever the ship's bosun decided he needed a new belaying point - a cleat or bollard - he talked to the chiefs in engineering and soon a new fixture appeared. Sometimes he took a five pound can of coffee from ship's stores over to a friend in the shipyard and came back with what he wanted. And for something really big a canned ham would usually do the trick. Official blueprints weren't needed. Where there was a will there was a way!

Karl Heintz Marquardt's The Global Schooner (Chapter 1, Origin of Schooners) shows numerous examples of this "bermuda rig" dating from a 1526 Spanish account of a Peruvian raft, and a Dutch sketch of one of these rafts from 1615. The Dutch were building similar two mast triangular sail torentuig rigged vessels in the early 1600s, and possibly introduced it into the Bermudas in the 1620s. By the late 1620s the Dutch had developed a refined version called the speljacht. It is suggested that these vessels might be the origin of all schooners in Europe and then the Americas.

Looking good, and lots of detail.

Steve, You are making good progress. I have been working on the rigging and belaying plan of my topsail schooner model for some time, and routing the lines without any fouling is tricky! Chapelle's The Search for Speed Under Sail (W. W. Norton & Company, New York & London, 1967) has a two page drawing of the Prince de Neufchatel sail plan, including a belaying plan, between pages 229-230. It is pretty small print but I can read it clearly with a magnifier. This is very rare! Most sail plans just show lines going down to deck somewhere. Few plans actually show where the lines belay. He shows nine pins forward and five aft (9-5) of the gun on the aft pin rail, and 4-8-3 (fore to aft) on the forward pin rail.

Jsk, I have heard of using coffee filters (and tea bags) for parts of models (like tarpaulins over hatches). I just measured the thickness of an ordinary coffee filter paper, and it is 0.0005 inch (0.0127 mm)! That is thinner than the silk span, and would be closer to scale for sails on 1:64, 1:75 and 1:96 or 1:100 scale models. The only problem I see is that the filters I have are too small for any of the sails on my 1:48 model. But if you can find sheets of coffee filter paper (I'll bet artists use it for something) I can see no reason not to use it. Come to think of it, we did have large sheets of filter paper of several different grades (thicknesses) in our chemistry labs in college, so it is probably available through chemistry supply companies. Paper chromatography paper is similar to filter paper.

Gregory, I glued two pieces of parchment paper together with white glue and then clamped them together. After about eight hours I removed the clamp and the two pieces pulled apart with almost no force needed. I think parchment paper has another advantage. The wax on waxed paper melts when heated and sticks to the sail material (and probably the iron). I suspect this is part of the problem with the tabling material lifting off the sail with the waxed paper that Lauria mentions. Also, when I used waxed paper under the sail to prevent the glue from binding to the cardboard work top the sail stuck to the waxed paper sheet (but not very tightly). I will use parchment paper instead of waxed paper for making the next sails.

Roger, Where did you get the square brass wire? Is it available commercially or did you use a draw plate? It may be a "fussy detail" but this is what sets an excellent model apart from an ordinary one.

Eberhard, Very nice work!

Gregory, I was wondering that myself. I have a roll of parchment paper in the drawer with the waxed paper. The virtue of waxed paper is that the glue isn't supposed to stick to it. The white glue doesn't actually glue to the waxed paper because it can't soak in, but it does adhere loosely. I'll have to experiment with the parchment paper.

Here is my first attempt to make a sail. First I arranged the sail templates on the two usable sheets of sail material. Then I cut off one of the ragged sides of the second sheet where the template for the main gaff topsail fit. Here is the sail piece and template after trimming the sail from the sheet. My first mistake was failing to draw on the cloth lines before cutting the material from the sheet. It probably would have been easier to draw the sail outline and cloth lines on the sail material sheet before cutting the sail from the sheet. This is what Tom Lauria suggests. I just aligned the template edges with the sail edges and drew tic marks where the lines should terminate. Then I penciled in the lines with a mechanical drawing pencil, using #2 lead. A drawback to this method is that the tic marks are visible on the sail after the lines were drawn. I also discovered that even though the sail material is very thin and easy to wrinkle I could erase the lines I screwed up and draw them again. There were a couple of opportunities for that experiment! The dry sail material is pretty tough and I have seen no tendency to tear. One slight variation from Laura's procedure was cutting the tabling strips from along the edge of the hole where the sail piece had been cut out. He just cut a bunch of narrow strips from an unused part of the sail material sheet. Here is the work area for gluing the tablings and linings to the sail. The plastic tray held white glue (school glue, Elmer's glue, etc.) and water. I used a fairly narrow paint brush. Tweezers were necessary for handling the thin tabling strips and the lining pieces. I also had a thin probe to help lift stray ends and realign them. One thing I did different from Lauria's tutorial was to cover the work area (a sheet of cardboard) with waxed paper that was clipped to the corners of the cardboard. I was worried that the glue would stick the sail to the cardboard. The waxed paper worked well to prevent this. Here is the "finished" sail ready to add the bolt ropes. The material is slightly translucent, and against the dark background you can see the linings at the corners (on the back or port side of the sail). The thin tabling strips are visible along the sail edges on the starboard side of the sail. After it has dried overnight I will iron the sail again to take out wrinkles. (It ironed out perfectly smooth the next morning!) One thing about this process that isn't clear from Lauria's video is whether the white glue was diluted before using. He used a wet brush dipped into the glue, so in that respect the glue was diluted. This was a good thing because it delayed the drying of the glue to allow things to be moved into position. But the strength of the glue was unpredictable, depending upon how wet the brush was and whether the glue was becoming diluted from the water on the brush as it was dipped into the glue. Sometimes the glue was thicker than at other times. I am concerned that in some places the glue was too watery and the pieces may not remain glued together. I may try just using diluted glue (1:1 with water). I did have a few problems. First off I got glue on my finger tips and then they stuck to things I didn't want to pull on. I kept a paper towel close by to wipe my fingers on. The long tabling strips were a bit unwieldy and tended to go out of line or settle with raised sections. It was easy to correct this using the metal point or just the tweezers to fit in under the wayward portions and pull them straight. I did use a piece of waxed paper on top of the glued sections as I heated them with the iron. I guess I was using too much glue because I had the same problem Lauria demonstrated in his video. The tabling strips often stuck to the piece of waxed paper as I lifted it. With practice I learned how to lift the paper from the appropriate direction to avoid this problem. But another problem I saw arose from the extra glue on the lower sheet of waxed paper after I painted a line of glue along the edges of the sail. This glue tended to glue the sail to the waxed paper after I had heated the area with the iron. So after each tabling I wiped the waxed paper sheet with the paper towel to remove glue. All part of the learning curve!

Do you ever buy from McMaster-Carr? It is an industrial supplier but they sell small quantities to hobbyists too. I have been purchasing from them for decades. Top quality items at prices better than you find in hobby shops (if you can still find a hobby shop). They have quite a selection of plastic and metal stock for machining. The only shortcoming is that much of their stock is larger sizes and not the very small things for modelling. https://www.mcmaster.com/products/rods/?s=plastic+rods Look around their site and you will find all sorts of useful things!

chickpeas, First of all, you shouldn't have planks coming up to the keel at an angle like you show in the picture. The first plank up from the keel is called the garboard strake. It runs parallel to the bottom of the keel, and is tapered to a point where it starts to curve up at the bow. Getting the right shape is important because it allows the next plank (strake) to run fairly straight without really sharp bending. Here is a drawing of a typical garboard strake from Donald Dressel's Planking Techniques for Model Ship Builders. This is an ideal shape for a vessel with a bluff bow, cut from a wider plank. The wider part at the stern (left in the drawing) allows the next plank up to fit easily without a gap. But if you are using the normal planks that come with the kit just taper the forward end to the point. You add a triangular "stealer" to fill any gap between your garboard strake and the next plank (see below). The garboard strake is a complex shape. The idea is to set the run of all the planks above it to require the minimum of bending and fitting. Dressel suggests a simple way to create the shape. Run a strip of masking tape along the keel, starting at the midships bulkhead. Put the top edge of the tape exactly one plank width up on the bulkhead. Then stick the aft end to the stern bulkheads, pulling the tape taught to get a straight edge one plank width up from the keel. Then carefully press the tape to each successive bulkhead toward the bow, allowing it to fall in a natural curve all the way to the bow. Now cut the tape on the bottom edge to follow the line where the bulkheads intersect the keel. You can lay a plank over the tape and jam it against the keel to guide your knife. Pull the cut tape off and you have the shape of the inboard side of the garboard strake. Because this plank must be beveled on the bottom edge to fit against the keel the outboard side will be a bit wider. This will require a bit of fitting by trial and error. Or you can just leave the edge proud as in the photo below and then add additional material to the keel later. Note: This is a hull I built about 40 years ago, early in the learning curve! Experienced builders will not think this is an especially good example of planking because all the planks do not taper the same amount. But if you are planning on painting the hull it won't matter. Some kits and essentially all scratch builds will cut a rabbet into the keel along the bottom edge of the garboard strake. This is a groove that removes material from the keel for the lower edge of the garboard strake to fit into without having to taper it or add additional material. After you install the garboard strake all remaining planks will fit more or less parallel to the garboard strake. Depending upon the shape of the hull (streamlined bow or bluff bow) you will have to taper each plank a bit at the bow to get them to lay flat without needing to twist them. The photos show a very streamlined tapered hull where the planking was pretty easy. Here is a photo of the stern showing how a triangular "stealer" was used to fill in the gap where planks wanted to spread apart because of the shape of the hull. Here the garboard strake just has the parallel edges from the original plank. This is just the beginning of planking fiddly bits. Ideally no plank will come to a sharp point (less than a 45 degree angle) and there are nibbing and hooking techniques to eliminate these points. That is something for more experienced builds.

Just a guess. The topsail has a deep arc cut into it to reach up and over the stays. This opening would let a lot of air pass through. The course yard is hauled up just below the stays, and the top of the sail fills the gap in the topsail.

greenskin, I can't help you much here. I have no idea what the SIG 00 silkspan is supposed to weigh. But it is about 0.001 inch (0,00254 cm) thick, give or take a bit. 4 1/2 sheets weigh 1.3 ounces (38 grams) as measured on a kitchen scale (not a precision measuring device). That comes out to be 0.289 ounces (8,44 grams) per sheet. The sheets are 24 x 36.5 inches (60,8 x 92,6 cm) so the area is 876 in2 or 5630,08 cm2. The volume of each sheet is 876 in2 x 0.001 in = 0.876 in3 or 5630,08 cm2 x 0,00254 cm = 14,3004 cm3. So the weight is approximately 0.289 oz/0.876 in3 = 0.323 oz/in3 or 8,44 g/14,3004 cm3 = 0,59 g/cm3. I think the metric value is probably more accurate due to low resolution of the scales in Imperial units. **** There are several different materials sometimes called "silkspan" and some tissue papers that are similar weight. The actual silk products seem to fall into two categories - woven fibers and unaligned fibers. Real silkspan seems to be the later type with random fibers. That must be why it disintegrates so easily when wet. "Japan Paper" is a similar product, called "Papier Japoński" in Poland. There is a discussion of silkspan here: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/28459-what-is-silkspan/?do=findComment&comment=813999 **** Silkspan is very thin and translucent. Most modelers recommend painting the paper with a good acrylic paint to give it body, and this makes it opaque. As I mentioned in the edited post above, the material has a lot of small wrinkles when it dries after being painted. I ironed it with a dry iron (no steam) on the lowest heat setting and it smoothed out nicely.

I decided to try to prepare some silkspan for sails. I followed Tom Lauria's YouTube procedure in Making Sails for Ship Models From Silkspan. It looked pretty simple. I used a buff color acrylic paint to color the material and give it some "body." I cut the 36" x 24" silkspan material in half and worked with 18" x 24" (457 mm x 610 mm) pieces. I spread the material on a large plastic sheet and sprayed it with water. Then I rolled the paint onto the material until it was opaque. I attached clips to the corners as Lauria showed and then lifted the sheet off the plastic. It immediately, ripped, disintegrated and folded over on itself repeatedly! When I tried to separate the folded layers it tore some more. Here is the result: The photo isn't in sharp focus, but you get the idea. Not perfect! The wet silkspan disintegrated when I tried to lift the corners. When I did start removing the material from the plastic it ripped everywhere I pulled. I ended up with a soggy mess. I think it was a bad idea to spray with water first. The silkspan Lauria used may have been a better quality than the SIG 00 material I am using. OK. If at first you don't succeed ... I tried again, but without the water spray. But I did add a few drops of water to the paint to thin it a bit. The second attempt came out much better! The acrylic paint I used dried to the touch in an hour or so. The edges are a bit wrinkled and the corners are shredded, but I should be able to get several good sails out of this. I will need another sheet to finish them all. I repeated the steps used in the second attempt and got this result. Disappointing! Again, the damp material ripped as I tried to remove it from the plastic sheet. But there is a lot of usable material and I should be able to get the rest of the sails and the tabling and lining material from this sheet. Murphy really got in his licks on this job! I think with the SIG 00 silkspan it would be a better idea to hang it or put it in a frame and spray the paint on with an airbrush. But if you are persistent you can get usable sail material. After the paint dried the material was easy to handle and didn't tear. When I smooth it with my hands on a flat surface the wrinkles smooth out nicely. I am hoping that a warm iron will smooth out the wrinkles permanently. NOTE: After the material dried over night I ironed it with a dry iron (no steam) on the lowest heat setting. The wrinkles ironed out nicely leaving very smooth sail material! The dried material measures 0.001 inch (0.0254 mm) thick. This scales to 0.048 inches (1.2 mm) at 1:48 scale. So it is a reasonable scale thickness for sail material.

It's made from tough football helmet plastic!"

Sigbjorn, Looks like you have already started a build log. Just add more posts to this thread as you go along. Take your time and enjoy this build. It is a beautiful ship.

I printed each sail to produce templates for cutting them from the silkspan. I have been around a while, and have used many printers, so I know that some of them do not print 1:1 accurately. On one HP laser printer I owned I had to set the scale to 1.0623:1 to get accurate print sizes. So I put a ruler in every CAD drawing to allow checking the size. To my pleasant surprise, my Brother laser printer prints exactly 1:1 when I set the print scale to 1:1. Here is a photo of all the sails laid out on a 36" x 24" (914.4 x 609.6 mm) sheet of silkspan. A quick arrangement takes half a sheet of silkspan. Wow! Up to now these sails have just been images on my computer screen and not all that large. But when I printed them out many were too large to fit on a 8 1/2" x 11" sheet (~A4) of printer paper. I had to tape two or four sheets together! This is the main sail (main gaff sail) with my hand for a size reference These things are big! It's a good thing I got several sheets of silkspan!.

I looked through Steel's book and it is mostly what Lees said. And of course it talked about sails for an English square rigged ship. The British Admiralty was very conservative, and resisted any changes to the way things had always worked. American topsail schooners were rigged more "aggressively" than British ships - until the Brits figured out they couldn't catch them with the smaller British top hampers. So the dimensions given in Steel and Lees don't always work for Baltimore clippers. Here is the fore topsail. It has the basic features shown in Steel and Lees, but configured for the schooner. The rough dimensions were determined by mast height and the length of the fore course yard and topsail yard. The actual width at the head was 13 24" cloths wide, with a 2" overlap at the seams. Tablings (gray) on the back of the sail were 3" wide on leeches and foot, and 4 1/2 " wide at the head. Linings (gray) were on the front of the sail and were one cloth wide on the left and right leech, and half a cloth wide at the foot. The center cloth had no grommets (holes) at the top for robands to tie the sail to the spar. Then the next outer cloth had two holes, then one, then two, and so on. Each corner had a grommet/cringle for lines to attach the sail to the yard arms and to the clews and sheets. The fore course was more complex and similar to that on a square rigged vessel. The dimensions were determined by the mast height and fore course yard width. The yard was suspended below the trestletrees 1/10 the length of the fore mast from partners to hounds. The center of the foot of the sail was 7 feet above the fo'c'sle deck. The sail is more or less rectangular, 19 cloths wide. The tablings were 6" on the head and 3" on the leeches and foot, on the back side of the sail. The linings were on the front side and were 1 cloth wide on the leeches and 1/2 cloth wide at the foot. The grommets for robands at the top were the same arrangement as with the topsail. Some authors say there were two grommets in each cloth and some say only one. There was a horizontal middle band half way down the sail that was 1 cloth wide. The reef band was up 1/6 the height of the sail at the center from the bottom. It was 8" wide, and had two grommets for reef lines in each sheet. Some authors say there was only one grommet per sheet, either in the center or at the seam between sheets. The bottom of the sail was curved down 3 feet from the buntline grommets outward, and straight between the buntline grommets. The configuration of both of these sails is somewhat simplified, with fewer linings and reef bands than sails on larger vessels. And it is similar to what Lees and Steel say for sails from about 1811 through 1845. There were differences in other periods.

I found a possible answer to this puzzle: This definition is given in Steele's The Elements and Practice of Rigging and Seamanship, page 87" "HEADSTICK. A short round stick with a hole in each end, strongly sewed to the head of some triangular foresails and jibs, to prevent the head of the sail from twisting; the head-rope is thrust through the holes before it it sewed on the sail." Here is a drawing (Plate 25, before page 129) of a "sloop's jib" from Steel showing the "head stick". " ... the rope on the hoist put through the holes in the head-stick; then served with spunyarn, and spliced into the leech-rope. The head-stick is seized round the middle to the head of the sail, and a thimble seized in the bight of the rope."

George, Thanks for the reference! I will read it and check my calculations. Better to discover a mistake now before I have cut any material! But you are right about the variability of sail design. In one sail making text I read it said the sail maker got the dimensions of the yards/spars and about where they were positioned on the mast, and from these dimensions fabricated a sail. Drawing on the lore and normal practice the cloths were cut individually and sewn together. The resulting sail actually determined the final positions of the yards and spars relative to each other. So sail plans were just used for guidance, and the final result may be different. I'm sure that is what will happen on my model!

SAILS I have pretty much developed the sail plan for the ship. Here I will talk about the fore-and-aft sails, and I will deal with the square sails in another post. I plan to follow the procedures in Tom Lauria's YouTube video Making Sails for Ship Models From Silkspan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_m_VWzk4w8 However, because this model is 1:48 scale I will add the boltropes (to be described later). NOTE: The first thing I did was measure everything on the model (mast heights, stay lengths, etc.) and made sure my CAD model has the correct dimensions. Some things had changed since I restarted this build four years ago! NOTE: The dimensions and proportions shown here are about right for the first quarter of the 19th century (1800 - 1825). They were slightly different for other periods. I consulted half a dozen books to learn the "rules" for sail design. Most were really interested in large square-rigged ships, but I have some books specific to fore-and-aft rigs. As usual, no two authors agreed on the details, but the general ideas were there. The main sail - the gaff rigged sail on the main mast - is the largest and contains all the elements of the remaining sails. Here the forward edge (luff or forward leech) is on the right side of the drawing and the leech (or after leech) is on the left. The length of the head (top) and foot (bottom) are determined by the length of the gaff and boom. The forward corners attach to eyebolts on the gaff and boom. The after corners are forward of the gaff/boom ends to allow rigging to a block or sheave. The height depends upon how high the gaff is rigged. The angle of the top of the sail is determined by the angle of the gaff - it ranged from 25 degrees to 30 degrees on schooners. Here is it 25 degrees. The sail is made up of "cloths" 24 inches wide, running parallel to the after edge or leech of the sail. From the 15th century on the width of these cloths varied, but was often 27-28 inches. By the 18th century in England and the Americas the width had become 24 inches. Each individual cloth was sewn to its neighboring cloth with a 2 inch overlap. I do not intend to sew together individual cloths, but will mark the seams with light pencil. Around the edges of the sails is a second layer, on the starboard side, called the "tabling." Some authors call this the "lining." However, other authors reserve "lining" for the additional pieces added at the corners of the sails on the port side. In addition, there is a reef band 1/6 up the forward edge or luff of the sail. Larger vessels could have up to 4 reef bands. All of these pieces are shown in grey. I also show a possible downward curve in the bottom edge (foot) of the sail. I am still trying to determine how common this was, how deep it ran, and if it was commonly used on schooners. In this case the sail will not be lashed to the boom, but will be attached only at the clew and tack. Different authors describe different widths for the tablings. I have used tablings that are 3 inches wide across the head, leech and foot of the sail. Some authors say 2 inches wide at the foot and leech and 3 1/2 inches wide at the head. The forward edge, or luff, has a strip made of a 24 inch piece doubled over to 12 inches wide. The reef band is 12 inches wide (maybe it should be 6 inches). The linings are 24 inch wide pieces attached to the port side of the sail. They extend about 3 feet from the upper (peak) and lower (clew) corners, but where there are reef bands they extend up to 1 foot above the highest reef band. At the lower forward corner (tack) the foremost cloth is doubled. I have drawn two holes or grommets per cloth across the head of the sail. Some authors show only one hole, in the center of the cloth. Some show one hole, positioned at the seam between cloths. Another says there should be a single hole in a cloth, two in its neighbor, one in the next, two in the next, and so on. Take your pick. The forward edge (luff) has holes positioned at the spacing of the mast hoops around the mast that the sail is attached to (not to be confused with "mast hoops" that fit tight around the mast for structural strength). Spacing was generally 24-30 inches. The hoops were at least 1 1/4 the diameter of the mast so they could move along the mast smoothly. Some authors say the sail had two holes for the hoop lacing to pass through, but others said only one hole. I have chosen to use one hole. However, some authors say sails had cringles (short pieces of rope) laced to the bolt rope for the attachment points instead of grommets or holes. Now let's look at the other sails. In all of these drawings the cloths are 24 inches wide and can be used for scale measurements. The fore gaff sail (left) is similar to the main sail. Perhaps it should have a reef band (to be determined). The fore staysail (right) is triangular, and the construction is generally the same as for the trapezoidal (4 sided) sails. However, the rules for the size of the triangular sails are more complex. The side laced to the supporting stay (head of luff) was sometimes called the "stay," if for no other reason to confuse as to whether an author meant the stay (rope) or the stay (leading edge of the sail). The stay/luff of the forestay sail was supposed to be about 4/7 the length of the forestay (rope). But what is the" length?" Is it from the lower end of the stay to the mast head, or up to the mouse or seizings forming the loop around the mast? I chose to use the length from the bowsprit to the mouse, because the sail cannot extend up beyond the mouse. Starting at the lower forward corner, the tack, I measured up the forestay the required distance. The leech extended down to the height of the bottom center of the course. The foot length was calculated as a "little over" half the width of the course (to be described later). The clew (bottom aft corner) of the sail was to be cut at a right angle, so I used geometry to determine the configuration with the proper foot and leech lengths coming together at a right angle. Next the jib and flying (outer) jib. These two sails are very similar, the jib on the left and the flying (outer) jib on the right. The stay/head of the jib is 3/4 the length of the jib stay/preventer (ropes). Again, I used the distance from the lower end of the stay (rope) up to the mouse. The leech is 3/5 the length of the jib stay. The foot is about the length of the boom, or in this case, the bowsprit. The leech should be about 1 1/2 the length of the foot. These calculations varied over the years, so check the date of your model. The flying (outer) jib stay/luff is 4/7 the length of the flying (outer) jib stay (rope). None of the calculations for the leech or foot worked to complete a triangle shaped anything like a jib (either the leech and foot ends would not meet or the sail was ridiculously narrow from clew to stay. So I made the foot about as long as the jib boom, ran the foot a bit below horizontal fore to aft, and connected the peak to the clew to get the leech. It looks like the flying jibs in drawings of topsail schooners. Note: The foot of the triangular foresails should be about as long as the bowsprit, jib boom, or flying jib boom. It doesn't have to be exactly as long, but about the length of the associated spar. When in doubt, this is a simple rule to follow. This leaves the two fore-and-aft topsails. The main gaff topsail (left) was four sided, but almost triangular, with the topsail spar almost vertical behind the mast in the American version. On European vessels the spar was closer to horizontal, making a trapezoidal sail. The dimensions are determined by the length of the gaff and the topsail spar, leaving enough space for the corners of the sail to attach to the spar ends or running rigging for the sail. The tack extended below the gaff. The leading (luff) edge had a 12 inch wide lining for added strength. The main topmast staysail (above) rode on the main topmast stay (rope) between the main topmast and the cap of the foremast top. It was attached to the stay with hanks (robands) or with a lacing, depending upon the vessel. The length of the sail stay/head was shorter than the stay (rope) enough to allow rigging to the foremast and the main topmast. The leech extended down to where it was rigged to a block on the main mast top cap. The foot was long enough to fill the space between the foremast and main mast, with allowance for the sheet and block at the mainmast head. Two of my references for this were Lees' Masting and Rigging and Mondfeld's Historic Ship Models, but these just had the rules for square rigged ships, and they sometimes didn't work on the schooner. Marquardt's The Global Schooner provided some rules, but not enough to actually design the sails. So I blended information from all sources to arrive at these sail designs.

Is this a display model or R/C? Choose your materials carefully if it will be outdoors and exposed to direct sunlight. Wood doesn't expand much when heated. Metals expand a bit more, and plastics expand a lot! A fellow in Australia built a 1:72 R/C carrier with a wooden hull and plastic (styrene or Plexiglass) flight deck and hanger sides. In sunlight on a hot day the flight deck buckled upwards and the hanger sides warped and pulled loose. A two meter (6 ft) long piece of acrylic will expand about 5 mm (1/4 inch) in length with a 20C temperature rise!

Piotr, I am happy that you find my posts helpful. I have learned much from other members of the forum! I have posted general details of topsail schooner rigging here: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/25679-topsail-schooner-sail-plans-and-rigging/?do=findComment&comment=750865 I describe each spar and sail and how the running rigging connects to them. In some cases there are several options Another thread talks about belaying options: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/30234-topsail-schooner-belaying-plan/?do=findComment&comment=862302 This is just a preliminary plan for the model I am building. I have made a few small changes while creating the actual rigging, but the general ideas apply to all vessels. Figuring out how to run all of these lines without tangling them is very difficult to imagine on paper or computer. In the long run you will have to work it out on the model, as they did on the real vessels. And no two ships will be rigged exactly alike. I am just starting to measure each sail and plan how to make them. As I rig them I will post pictures and descriptions. It will be interesting to see how close my original plans made on the computer match what I finally come up with! The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley. Robert Burns

I have had little trouble with Duco (nitrocellulose in acetone) type glues on models. There are not many stresses involved if the parts are shaped correctly. However, I have seen two types of failures: 1. With soft wood (balsa) I have seen broken joints where the glue adhered well to one side and the wood broke away from the glue on the other side. This left the glue with bits of wood embedded in it. 2. I used to plank hulls (single layer planking) by applying glue along the edge of the plank being installed - to join with the neighboring plank edge - and to the bulkheads. I have never seen a plank break away from the bulkheads, but because of swelling and shrinking of the planks due to temperature and humidity changes gaps have appeared between planks, even on painted hulls. The best solution I have found to this problem is to paint the entire interior surface of the planking with thin epoxy paint, also covering the join between planks and bulkheads. The epoxy soaks into the wood creating a tight bond between all pieces. I have been doing this for about 40 years and have never seen a crack develop between planks on single layer planking.