michaelmys

The only experience I have of this rig was on a Brixham sailing trawler from the 19th century, which had been restored, and was sailworthy. At the start of raising the gaff, the take up tackle is in the extended, position and made fast, until the gaff is nearly completely hoisted. The peak is hoisted largely by the hauling end of the halyard, as high as it will go (At the same time as raising the throat, with the throat halyard). As the gaff nears the top, though , the mechanical advantage of the upper blocks is poor, and it's difficult to get the peak of the gaff to its optimum height. Once you've gone as far as you can go with the hauling halyard, it's made fast. The the take up tackle is used. this brings an extra purchase into play, increasing the raising power of the halyard by a factor of four in the case of your model. This gives significant extra power to get the top of the gaff in its optimum position. It's a manouevre known as "peaking up the gaff". The upper block is set quite high at the start of the hoist , because of the high mechanical advantage. You need to pull a lot of rope to move the gaff a little bit. On the boat I sailed on, once the gaff had been peaked up, the uppr block was between half and two thirds of the way down, depending on how hard the crew had worked with the hauling end of the halyard. Cheers! Michael

I absolutely agree with Ulises that two part epoxy is the only way to go. While what jud says is true, I think that, with the small size of the parts involved, the amount of expansion/contraction will be insufficient to disturb the integrity of the glue joint or that the forces involved will be insufficent to cause any significant distortion. I agree that the traditional method of mixing epoxy, by squeezing out two equal sized puddles of glue and hardener onto a surface and mixing gives rise to significant waste. I picked up the following "toothpick" method from a 1/43 scale car modelling site a few years ago, and found it fantastic at cutting down both waste and mess. It lets you mix up nano amounts of epoxy, with the result that 5ml tubes seem to last forever. You need a pile of tooth picks, and a decent sized mixing surface, as well as a suitable epoxy - I tend to use a 5 minute epoxy for convenience, although will use a longer set if maximum strength is required. I place the glue and a single toothpick on one side of the work area, and the hardener and the rest of the toothpicks on the other. Open both tubes, and squeeze gently until glue and hardener fill the nozzles of the tubes. Using the single toothpick scoop out just enough glue out of the nozzle to do the job, and trasfer to the mixing surface. Place both glue and toothpick back, and well away from the hardener. I Ihen dig out the equal amount of hardener from its tube with one of the tothpicks from the pile, and use that toothpick to mix up the adhesive. That tothpick is also used as the applicator. Discard the toothpick with mixed adhesive on it, and you're ready to go again. I recycle the glue toothpick, and use a fresh toothpick from the pile for hardener. Keeping track of the tothpicks is essential - introducing the mixed glue toothpick back into the glue tube, or the glue toothpick into the hardener tube spell disaster. With a bit of practice, you can easily mix up sub-millimetre drops of glue. Hope that's helpful. Cheers! Michael

Hi Jonny I was actually referring to the walnut ply box which the mortar sits in. It drops into the wide notch in the keel in front of the main mast step. I had to enlarge that slot, both in width and depth before the box would fit in snugly. If you attach the false deck before you check that fit, then you've lost access to the sides of the cut out, so you can't file them down, and will end up having to cut grooves in the side of the box, or otherwise thin them down somehow, which would be much harder. I'll try and take a picture later. Cheers! Michael

Hi Jonny I have a Convulsion also, started several years ago, but stalled at a pre-planking stage as family life intervened. The only critical gotcha I can think of is to dry fit the keel and bulkheads, and before you glue them, to assemble the housing for the mortar, and check its fit in the hull assembly. In mine the notches were a bit too narrow, and needed filed out a bit before the housing would sit comfortably in place. If you wait until the deck is laid before you try out the mortar housing, you are way too late to fix it easily. Cheers! Michael

Check out www.wires.co.uk They have a huge range of wires in all sorts of materials, and sizes down to 0.1mm, which is approximately 0.004 inch. They have posted to me in New Zealand, and the service was quick, and the shipping rates very reasonable (although I can't remember exactly what they were). It's sold by weight, so you get a ridiculous amount of the thinner wires. For example, a 125g reel of 0.1mm copper wire contains 1790 metres of wire! That should last for a few models! Cheers! Michael

Hi Alexey Could you possibly provide me with a price for the Prosak rope walk, rope server and mini disk sander, all to ship to New Zealand. With many thanks Michael Myskow