Dr PR

Here is an updated version of the spreadsheet with the rigging definitions drawing embedded in the spreadsheet. Mast spar and rigging calculations.xlsx

Vince, Thanks for the reference. I'll see if I can find a copy.

George, Good idea. I didn't think of putting a picture in the spreadsheet.

Bob, Thanks. The Lady Washington had swivel gun mounts at several points along the sides. I suspect the two guns were mounted on the stern for show while the ship was taking tourists for a ride. People weren't allowed aft of the binnacle while the ship was sailing to avoid the swing of the tiller and the boom rigging. No swivels were mounted forward where the passengers were milling around. They were also doing "combat" excursions with the Hawaiian Chieftain at that time. They fired the guns on those excursions.

Here is my latest spreadsheet for calculating just about everything for masting and rigging. I have modified it to allow you to enter your model's scale to calculate the final values. And then the spreadsheet can calculate the number of packages of Syren rope and blocks you need and total the final price! (Prices as of 28 February 2021) Mast spar and rigging calculations.xlsx

Note: I have updated the spreadsheet to allow you to enter your model's scale for the final calculations. Mast spar and rigging calculations.xlsx

I have been puzzling over rigging dimensions also. I read every reference I could find and entered all the formulas into a spreadsheet. Basically all rigging diameter is based upon the mast diameter. For the lower mast this is the diameter at the partners. This diameter is almost always calculated relative to the ship's beam (widest part of the hull). From the mast diameter the circumference of the main stay is calculated, and almost all other rigging dimensions are based upon the size of the main stay. Mondfeld's calculations are in error as pointed out above. The main stay circumference is 0.166 times the mast diameter, or 16.6% of the mast diameter. This number agrees closely with Lees and other references that I have found. But the common rigging dimensions given in period references are for the circumference of the rope, not the diameter! But all the thread and scale rope is measured by diameter. So you have to divide the circumference by pi (3.14159) to get the diameter. To simplify all of this I have created an Excel spreadsheet that includes the formulas from Lees supplemented by Mondfeld's formulas. Just enter the model's main mast diameter into the green cell (C3) and all the circumferences and diameters will be calculated automatically. If you don't use spreadsheets I have included a PDF "print" of the spreadsheet that shows all of the formulas and gives example dimensions for a topsail schooner with a 20 foot beam. CAUTION: Schooner masts and spars were smaller and lighter than those of square rigged ships. Schooners did not carry as heavy a load of sails and spars as a square rigger. The masts were typically 4/5 the diameter of square rigger's masts (this took a lot of reading through a lot of references to pin down the relationship!). Thank Harold Underhill for providing this insight. This is borne out by the actual mast dimensions recorded by Mariester in the early 1800s for real schooners as published in Chapelle's "The Baltimore Clipper." However, the relationships to main mast diameter and main stay circumference used in the spreadsheet is the same for about all ships. Small boats may be different. If you want a spreadsheet or PDF that lists all of the rules for mast and spar dimensions for square rigged ships and topsail schooners, with references and examples taken from period ships go to this link: ****************************************************************** Finally, I have attached the working spreadsheet for my current model, a topsail schooner with a 19.9 foot beam. It is tailored to my needs, but it can be used for any model with a few modifications. Note: The cells with green background require you to enter the appropriate values for your model. This spreadsheet includes calculations from Lees, Monfeld, Fincham, Rankine, Cock and Hedderewick (the last four were actual period ship designers) for just about everything - masts, spars, standing rigging and running rigging, for square riggers and schooners. Just enter the values in the green cells for things like the ship's beam, line of flotation, etc. If you don't understand the terminology or the measurement read through all of my thread linked to above. Note: Rankine, Cock and Hedderewick calculations are for topsail schooners. Lees and Mondfeld calculations are for square rigged ships. Columns A through W give calculations based upon each rule set, so you can see the differences and similarities. Columns X and Y contain the values I used for my model calculations. Just plug in the actual ship dimensions used for your your model Columns AB through AH calculate the dimensions to use in your model. Enter your model's scale "N" in cell AG2. Column AI then scales these to 1:N. Then using these values as references check them over to see if they really are about right for the model you are building. Then in columns BD and BE enter the actual scale dimensions of the model you are building for hull length on deck, hull length between perpendiculars and beam. Then presto! Column BH (green cells) lists the size of everything on the (schooner) model for spars, standing rigging and running rigging. If you are building a square rigger you may want to add additional calculations - based upon the original calculations at the left side of the spreadsheet - for extra spars, etc. Note: Mast and spar diameters are for the widest part only. You will have to figure out the taper and such. Then the spreadsheet calculates the appropriate block sizes to be used with the rigging diameters. I have listed all the dimensions of Syren's ropes, blocks and hearts so you can figure which are appropriate for your model, And then you can enter the appropriate rope diameter/lengths and figure how many packages of Chuck's rope you need in columns BQ through BV, and you can enter the type and number of blocks and packages of blocks you need. The costs of each package are listed so you can calculate the total order you need from Chuck in column BW. I hope you find this information useful. If you need anything else you are on your own. Mast spar and rigging calculations.xlsx

Eric, I have been working on a topsail schooner model, and I have used the Dapper Tom kit instructions for reference for some parts. It is a beautiful ship (after all it is a schooner) and I will be following your build. I am especially interested in your plans to build it plank on bulkhead instead of using the solid hull in the kit. For you this is a bit premature, but I am to the point I need to start thinking about rigging the model. I found a lot of the information either confusing, inaccurate or incomplete, and the terminology impenetrable. After several months of scouring the literature I finally figured out how to rig topsail schooners - or maybe I should say many ways to rig topsail schooners. I decided to post the results of my investigations on the forum. Hope it is useful.

Navsoource has a lot of photos of CVEs, some showing details. https://www.navsource.org/archives/03idx.htm

Some wooden minesweeper hulls were planked in two layers. The inner layer was at 45 degrees to the horizontal/vertical and the outer layer was a more normal parallel to the horizontal. The frames were typical wooden ship design. I don't know if the deck planking was in two layers (I don't recall spending much time looking at the overhead), but the top layer was normal longitudinal planking.

There are always some tricky parts like this, and some always seem to be asking to be broken off! One thing you can try is using very fine wire or a wood sliver as a nail. Get a small drill bit slightly larger than the wire diameter. Use a pin vise to drill a hole through the piece and into the part it fastens to. Fill the holes with glue, position the part and insert the "nail." After the glue has set file the end of the nail flush with the surface.

Ian, If Underhill's very detailed "Masting and Rigging" doesn't say how the wire running rigging was secured, who would? Actually, he does tell something about this in an off-hand way. Chapter IX "Use of Tables and Formulae" describes the dimensions of wire running rigging, so it is clear he is talking about wire rope. Then in Appendix III and Appendix IV he lists the rigging for a full rigged ship, with line numbers corresponding to the folding plate No. 51 Belaying Pin Layout for a Full Rigged Ship. Most of the lines run to pin rails and are labeled "BP" (belaying pin). So at least we know that the wire rope was secured to belaying pins in some manner. I hope someone knows for certain how this was done! **** EDIT: Bob and Jim posted while I was making my reply. Thanks! Bob is certainly right about the broken wire ends and how you don't handle wire rope with your bare hands! The same is true for spring-lay nylon ropes wound with some metal strands and other nylon strands. They are easier to handle, and the wire prevents the nylon from stretching. But the "meat hooks" can still get you!

In the picture of the deck house (engineering space vents) in post #484, what are the things on either side just above deck level? Air filters? Rope spools? By the way, I was looking back through this thread and saw the picture of Khrushchev/Brezhnev 56 Chevy Bel Air (a Khrushchevy?). I drove one just like that (same color) to college in my freshman year (1963)!

Very nice (as usual)! That is a very simple - if tedious - method to make the chain. Using photoguestimation based upon a wire diameter of 0.8 mm I calculate the links to be 5.4 mm x 3.4 mm (0.21" x 0.13"). I don't know if I want to try it for my 1:96 OK City build. Wire diameter would be about 0.6 mm (0.26") and the links about 3.96 mm (0.156") long. I have the soldering skill but I don't know if I have the patience!

If you have questions about the rigging you might want to look here. I have been puzzling over topsail schooner rigging and have posted some of that I have learned.

Beautiful work! I think you are having too much fun! Phil

How you rig the back stays is another question. Often they were rigged to deadeyes at the aft end of the channels, similar to the shrouds. Sometimes they were rigged as shown in the drawing, but they would interfere with the swing of the boom and mainsail. To get around this the stays were rigged with a gun tackle or luff tackle at the lower end, with the lower block hooked to a ring bolt in the deck close to the bulwark. The back stay on the lee (downwind) side was slacked and unhooked and led forward out of the way of the boom. The windward side stay was tightened to take the strain of the force of the wind on the sail. When the wind shifted (or the vessel maneuvered) the stays were rerigged on the windward side and slacked on the lee side. Same thing on the stays for the fore mast. For more information about schooner rigging and sails see:

Don, Curvature along the center line length of the ship at the deck level is called "sheer." Typically the bow is higher than midships, and sometimes the stern is higher than midships. The curve at the deck from side to side is called "camber." A ship's keel was straight when the ship was new, but the bow and stern tended to sag with time, especially on wooden ships. This is because the lift from flotation is proportional to the cross section (side to side) area of the hull. The narrow bow and stern did not have as much lift as the wider midships section. This curvature with drooping bow and stern is called "hogging." If the bow and stern bend upward relative to midships it is called "sagging." Long ships experience some hogging and sagging as they ride over large waves and into the trough between waves.

Bob, I have seen rigging diagrams and photos of both ways to rig the topping lift. In the drawings the mainsail outhaul ran through a small block attached near the end of the boom and the lift ran through the sheave in the boom. I agree with you that the way with the lift passing through tackle at the mast top makes more sense to me. I have also read at least one account saying the the foot ropes were duplicated port and starboard, and I have seen this arrangement on the Lady Washington replica. They are called "boom horses" on the Lady Washington sail plan. The rope had an eye spliced in the aft end and the two parts ran parallel up to a point inboard of the taffrail where the lines looped over the boom and were spliced. Wooden cleats on the boom held the foot ropes in place. Maybe they are doubled for safety? Maybe it was just easier this way? Here is a photo. To me this is just another example of how there is no one "right way" to rig a ship. Also notice that they used two sheets instead of one riding on a metal horse behind the rudder as on some vessels. And notice the clever way they locked the tiller to the rope- and could easily unlatch it when they wanted the tiller to swing free. The ship was underway and motoring out of harbor against the wind and tide, so this is the operating configuration.

Most ship modeling books recommend against gluing the masts in place. If they aren't at the proper angles you are stuck with it. If the mast fits a bit loose you can correct the angles with the rigging. I visited the Bounty replica used for the Marlon Brando movie but I don't remember a lot about it. It was built oversized to create room for the camera trolleys to move freely along the deck. Somewhere I have a bunch of 35mm slides. Did the masts have any rake (angled back toward the stern) or were they 90 degree vertical from the horizontal? If there is a rake it can be tricky to get the right angle through the wedge ring. I would file out the wedge ring to accept the diameter of the mast rather than trying to reduce the diameter of the mast. Since you are building from a kit you will probably want to use the supplied masts. But if you are really anal about details and want to create your own masts from scratch I have attached an image of a spreadsheet I prepared for my current project (a topsail schooner). It contains the masting rules for ships from Lees and Zu Mondfeld. Ignore the Fincham and Rankine rules - they are for schooners and the masts were much smaller diameter and longer than for square rigged sailing ships. The numbers are for my model of a ship with a 20 foot beam. Just about all the dimensions are based upon the beam of the ship (the widest breadth midships). The mast and spar lengths are in feet and diameters are in inches, and for the real 1:1 scale ships. Just figure out the real dimensions using the Bounty's breadth and divide them by the scale of the model you are building. And if you want to replace the kit thread with scale ropes I have posted spreadsheets for rigging here:

Here is a spreadsheet for calculating rigging diameters. I have included an Excel 2010 file and a PDF printout. Enter a value for the mast diameter in the green cell and all rigging sizes will be calculated. I label the mast diameter as "Model mast diameter" but you can also enter the real ship mast diameter. Use English (inches) or metric (millimeters) and the resulting calculations will be in the same units. The mast diameter 0.320 inches is for the 1:48 scale topsail schooner model I am working on. CAUTION: The last three calculations for gun carriage rigging are based upon actual cannon bores in inches, and calculated for a 1:48 scale model. You will need to recalculate these for a different scale or if you want to use metric units. All of these values are based upon Lees' formulae. They will work for ships or schooners. Everything is based upon the mast diameter. Rigging calculations.xlsx Rigging calculations.pdf

Dart, Sorry, I didn't understand your question. "Tack" is the name of the lower fore corner of the sail, and the gear that is attached to handle the sail. It also means changing course. I have photos of ships with the lower corner of the sail (tack) on the windward or leeward sides of the gaff, so they didn't try to raise the sail tack over the peak halliard for the gaff. Either way the sail caught the wind. However, on some schooners with flying topsails (the luff is not attached to the topmast) there is a brail attached to the sail tack and run through a block at the sail peak and back down to the deck. This brail allows the sail tack to be raised over the gaff peak halliard. But for this to work there must be port and starboard tack lines to haul the sail tack down on either side of the gaff and gaff sail. This would be purely a matter of preference for the vessel's captain or owner, and they might change their minds occasionally and try something different. With the American style gaff yard topsail there was no interference between the vertical yard and the mast when tacking. For the European style gaff yard topsail (with the yard more horizontal) they may have lowered the yard when tacking and then raised it again on the lee side. The main idea behind this type of sail was that it could be rigged on deck and then hoisted aloft quickly, and then dropped to the deck again to "furl" the sail. No one had to go aloft. **** I took another look at the drawing of the Russian clipper. It has gaff sails on all three masts! Does this make it a three mast fore and main topsail schooner? It is another good example of the ambiguity in assigning names to individual ship rigs. **** I didn't mean to say that gravity and time alone were responsible for the curvature of the boom, and your 1886 photo of the 1884 schooner shows the curved boom on a relatively new schooner. But gravity would add to the curvature of the long narrow boom, and I would suspect that with time the boom would continue to sag more from the constant influence of gravity. But it looks to me that the primary cause might be the opposing forces of the lift and sheets. One other thing I am trying to understand is the cut of the gaff sail. Why doesn't the sail hold up the center of the boom? Some references say some sails were made with a curvature ("gore") to the foot to increase sail area. From your photo of the Mary G. Powers it looks like the foot of the sail is curved to match the curvature of the boom. So there is no attempt to cut the sail to provide extra lift to the center of the boom.

Dart, That is a "European style" spar gaff topsail. I described the rigging in an earlier post #16 in this thread for the Main Gaff Topsail. The halliard raises the spar. The tack pulls down to stretch the sail vertically. The sheet spreads the sail horizontally to the end of the gaff. The "American style" typically had the spar oriented almost vertically, but the rigging was the same. It depended upon the cut of the sail. Does this answer your question?

I think Bob makes a good point. In some cases the topping lift attaches to the aft end of the boom and runs through tackle attached to the mast top and down to the deck. However, in some cases the topping lift is attached to the mast top and runs through a sheave near the aft end of the boom and back to tackle near the mast. In either case the lift pulls up on the boom end. The boom sheets are usually attached to the boom about 2/3 of the boom length (give or take a little) from the mast, and these pull down/in on the boom. With the topping lift supporting (pulling up) the end of the boom and the sheets pulling down closer to the middle of the boom the forces would tend to bend the boom down. Another reason for the curvature would be gravity and time. With the boom supported only at the ends gravity would eventually cause the middle to sag. Schooners typically have lighter mast and spars than larger square riggers, and the main boom on schooners is much longer that typical for the spankers on square riggers. So schooners have long booms of relatively small diameter, and this would allow them to flex more.

I have spent weeks looking at rigging rules for ships and schooners. I have created a thread with general discussions of rules for masting and rigging of topsail schooners. It will eventually include the rules for lengths and diameters of all masts, spars, booms and gaffs, plus rules for determining circumference/diameter of all standing and running rigging.