Jonathan_219

Plugging along on the rigging: Lots of rigging going in, it's hard to describe what's happening. Almost everything seems to be going by the book and plans with a few exceptions. I'm almost through page 17 of the plans which I believe is the next to last rigging plan when you're not adding sails. I had to add something to counteract the pull of the mainmast stays on the mizzen and bonadventure yards. There was just no way to get any tension to pull all the threads somewhat straight so I added backstays on those yards. I believe I've seen at least one other log where that was done. I've been using a jig which is just a flat piece of scrap with some different size dowels glued to it to make rope coils and falls and that's working out pretty well. I just coil the thread around the dowel and then use some 50% white glue/50% water solution to wet it down and then when dry just slowly work the coil up and off the dowel. Then I'll use some CA glue on the bottom if it needs a little holding together and trim and glue in place on the ship. Rigging is both easier and harder than I expected. Understanding what I need to do and getting thread and blocks in place is easier than I expected, helped immensely by the quality of the instructions. Tying ropes off is where it's extremely challenging. Getting the thread over and around pins and getting the correct twists in is something I'm having to learn. I'm trying different techniques but I suspect that no one technique will work in every situation and sometimes it's just a matter of getting lucky and pulling it in place as quickly as possible. Looking forward to getting the last bits of rigging done and then putting on the finishing touches.

Kirill4, thanks for the great information as always. I've seen the needle technique before but I like the look of the seized threads to the shroud, again the picture makes it look much bigger than it is in real life and it's pretty subtle when you view the real model, it works for me at least. For the bowsprit spar I just decided to lash it to the bowsprit. I can see from the picture you included that it's probably not historically accurate and something I'll improve on the next model I do. For this kit I'm not going to go too far away from the plans.

Finishing Mast Stays and Mast Stays Tackle: Finished up the rest of the mast stays, the mizzen mast stay has the rope fans that attach to the shrouds which I wasn't sure how I would do but they turned out to be fairly straightforward. I just seized three lines on the shroud and then working from inside to outside threaded the threads through the piece that holds them and then seized them in place on the shroud. Tying the seizings less than full tightness let me adjust the tension on each one to try and get that as even as possible. I would have liked to put a little more tension on them but that would have pulled the shroud out of place, there's a tiny bit not but not bad. The mast stays tackle was easy and I did my first rope coil expiriment which can be seen in the pictures below. I'll have to do a bunch of these as I continue. As I look forward to the next steps it calls for installing the yard ties for all the spars including the bowsprit and I can't seem to find anything that shows how the bowsprit spar should be attached, I'll start doing some research and if I'm still not sure I may have to start another thread in the rigging forum.

Update As I progressed on doing the ratlines I realized that I think I was tying the taught line hitches incorrectly. If done correctly the last loop or hitch around the shroud would reverse direction and come out going back to the center of the shrouds. So I switched to what I believe was a correct taught line hitch but the knots often came loose very quickly and I found I was relying on the glue to keep the knot taught, which I didn't like. So I then switched back to the first knot I had used which is basically a clove hitch with a double loop around the shroud on the first loop, I'm not sure if there's a name for this knot or it's just a clove hitch with an extra loop. I'm not sure why the correct taught line hitch had trouble staying tight after tied, it could have been the thread or possibly something to do with the what I stained the thread with a marker. A few of my ratlines have the correct taught line hitch with the end pointing in and the majority have the modified clove hitch with the threads pointing out. If the thread is trimmed properly it's pretty hard to tell which way it's facing so I'm just writing the minor difference up to experience. I'm including a picture with the shrouds facing the camera all done with the modified clove hitch.

Ratlines are done! Finished up the ratlines. I had stated earlier that I was using a taught line hitch on the end shrouds but as I was going and looking at the diagram of a taught line hitch I realized that I wasn't tying it properly, at least I don't think I was. Done correctly the last part reverses direction and the end of the line would come out pointing back to the center of the shrouds so I started doing it that was thinking it would be better to have the last bit of line coming out inside instead of outside. As I progressed on the ratlines using the correct taught line hitch I felt like the knot just didn't work well, it didn't stay tight well and I found I was relying on the glue to keep the knot held tight which I didn't think was good in the long run so I went back to my original knot which I think is just a modified clove hitch with a doubling of the first loop around the shroud. This puts the end of the line pointing out but I felt that this was better than having the knots come undone. It may have had something to do with the thread I was using or how I stained it with a marker, it's just what worked best for me. Other than that the ratlines went pretty well, don't know if they're the hardest part of the rigging but probably one of the most time consuming parts and I felt a bit sad as I was tying the last one, I sort of enjoyed this part once I settled on the knot and staining procedure. The tricky part is getting consistency with the placement and tension, or lack of, between each know and sometimes I'd be really good at it and sometimes it just seemed like I was all thumbs. I've also started putting in some of the next steps of the rigging when I just needed a break from ratlines for a while.

Thanks, I think the first picture was so close up that I think it may have made the ratlines look bigger than they really are, and the knots did look like they were going to come apart which led to my looking for another way to do that and came up with the taught line hitch for the ends.

After posting a thread on the Rigging forum and getting some ideas for the knots on the ends of the ratlines I decided to use a taught line hitch on the ends and of course the clove hitch on the middle shrouds. I think I'll continue to use the thread supplied in the kit for the ratlines even though it might not be the perfect size. Just working through and getting all of them done now.

Thanks for all the information and ideas. I've decided to put a taught line hitch on each end and the clove hitch on the shrouds in the middle. Here are my results so far.

Tied a test with the taught line hitch and it seems much better, like that a lot, thank you. I believe I have the taught line hitch correct.

I also wondered about that, the instruction diagrams very specifically show them starting right above the deadeyes, in the seizing so for the trial at least I did it that way. It would certainly be easier to start above the seizings as one of the clove hitches fell right on the edge of a seizing knot and really tended to go up or down.

Starting the ratlines on my 1577 Revenge and I've found a lot of information on how to tie the clove hitches on the interior shrouds but almost nothing on how the ratline would be attached at the first and last shroud other than just more clove hitches. For testing I've put a clove hitch on the first and last rope but for some reason it just doesn't look right to me (not that I'd know) and the pictures I've found of period reconstruction ships just don't show enough detail for me to see how it was done. It seems to me that a clove hitch on the end would come loose pretty easily so I feel that has to be more to it than that. Some information seems to show the ratline seized in a loop around the first and last shroud and that makes some sense to me but I though I'd ask before plowing ahead. Any ideas/information would be greatly appreciated. Picture of my test ratline included.

Starting Ratlines: All my shrouds are in and I added some of the mast stays just to be sure everything was firmly in place and I'm ready to start the ratlines. I read several forum threads about the color of the ratlines trying to decide between the natural and black and finely decided that neither was what I wanted and that I needed to color the natural thread a bit darker and see how that looked. I tried several things to stain the thread but nothing really worked like I wanted it to until I tried using a Prismacolor marker. I took a Light Umber marker and the best method I found was to take the broad tip and place it against the top of my table with the thread in between the marker tip and the table and slowly pull the thread through. I've taken that thread and tied one ratline with no glue to see how it looks and I think I'm happy with it. Now I need to decide what glue I'll use to fix the knots, I don't think I want to use CA glue as it leaves a shine and the wood glue I use is too thick so will have to do some experimenting to see what will work there. Hopefully the picture will show the color of the black, natural and my stained thread.

The bowsprit is off center. Since it passes by the foremast my assumption is that it had to be. Thought that was an interesting detail as well.

That's good to know and makes perfect sense. Thanks.

I have considered that and when I start my next kit I will probably get one. I'd also like to get some clamps specifically for the hull planking but will need to look into what's available and which ones would work best for me.

kirill4, your english has been fine, no problem there. I did what you suggested and the pictures are below. I think it looks very good, now I'm not even sure what I saw that made me do it the other way. I will probably just tie the futtock shrouds off where they are, it really doesn't look that different from the other side since I made a similar loop around the staff just with smaller thread. I will probably be able to live with the difference and just use this method going forward. Many thanks to you and xodar in helping me understand what is going on here.

kirill4, I will try to get pictures like you've requested when I start on the other side of the foremast, right now I'm just trying to soak up all this new information and see how I'm going to move forward. Currently I use CA glue on the rigging and have a medium thickness with an extra fine dispenser and I try to get glue where it won't be seen as much as possible as it does make a slight change in the look of the thread. As for magnifier glasses, I am blessed/cursed with extreme nearsightedness and when I take my glasses off I can see tiny things really well. I've been meaning to say something but keep forgetting but possibly the best upgrade I've made to my building area was an adjustable bright LED lamp, the difference a well lit area makes is incredible. Not enough can be said about good lighting. xodar461, great information as always. I had seen some mention of the thickness of the rope based on the mast in some of the things I've been through as I try to absorb as much as I can building and learning at the same time. My initial plan was to just go ahead and follow the instructions in the kit as much as I could and get at least one full rigging done and try to build on that for the future. I do think that what is completely accurate and what works best on a scale model aren't always the same thing and how those decisions are made just depend on the personal preference of the builder. I confess that I lean a little to the look good over total accuracy camp a bit. As I've been learning and seeing more models, pictures and paintings what I see as best for a certain situation has been changing. Again, I really appreciate you taking the time to share this information, sometimes I find so much on the web it can be hard to separate the important pieces but specific details like the ones you've pointed out are a great help and really help focus on the practice for a ship of this period.

It was the size of the futtock shroud wrapping around the staff that bothered me. My eyes are admittedly very untrained and new to this so they could have been perfect and just looked wrong to me. I'm still mulling over what I'm going to do for the second side. I could also try and fake the loop around the staff on this one but haven't come up with a good plan to do that yet. It's a challenge for me on my first go through rigging as I'm learning so much as I go along that several of the things I did earlier I now know aren't correct or don't look right but I'm not sure how much I could correct without just tearing down and starting over which I don't really want to do. I really appreciate you taking the time to show me how you've done things and the knowledge will be applied. BTW, your ship looks amazing.

Kirill4, thanks very much for the information and pictures. From looking at the instructions I was pretty sure that I was probably doing it wrong and that the futtock shrouds did need to make a loop around the futtock staff but when I tried to do that it just looked wrong or bad, at least to my eyes. I think it might have something to do with the scale of the rope used for the futtock shrouds, maybe I should have tried to go down one more size for that rope and things would have looked better. I could probably fake the loop by using some thread and gluing it in place like it was looped around the staff, I'll have to think about that. Every step of the rigging is such a learning process for me. Sometimes it's hard to know when to move forward and when to just go ahead with the best you can do at the time. I think that I'll probably consider this side a learning process and see if I can improve the result on the other side and then decide how to match things up.

Futtock Shrouds? Moving forward to what I think is called the futtock shrouds. This has been a pretty tricky area as I just haven't been able to visualize exactly how everything is going to go together at the end so I just started and am seeing what I can get. The first issue that gave me pause was the bar that goes across the upper part of the main shrouds, the instructions say to use the 1mm wire but no matter how much I straightened or worked it with my pliers I just couldn't get it straight enough to look right to me so I decided to use a piece of wood instead. Just trimmed the corners off a 1x1mm strip and then sanded round, considered painting it black but decided to go with just staining it instead. My fairly shallow stab at researching whether these were made from wood or iron in the 16th century didn't turn up anything and I felt black just blended into everything else black there. First step was to glue the piece to the shrouds and I lightly taped a piece of paper to the shrouds to use as both a height and straightness guide which seemed to work ok. Just used a dab of wood glue on each shroud where I wanted it to go and then used tweesers to push it in place and then held it in place as long as I could to let it set enough to hold while the glue finished drying. With 7 main shrouds and 3 upper shrouds I decided to alternate shrouds to tie the upper shroud to and took the intersection of each shroud that wasn't going to have an upper shroud tied to it and tie the wood piece to the shroud with an X showing in the front. Some of my X's look ok and some of them are a bit pinched as can be seen in the picture. Then tied the three upper shrouds to the main shroud and pushed the knot right up under the piece of wood (really wish I knew what to call that). The instructions seem to show the upper shroud wrapping around the wood piece before continuing up to the deadeye but every why I tried to do that just didn't look right to my eye so I just passed the upper shroud behind the wood piece and after it was attached to the deadeye I tied a knot across it to hold everything in place. One of the upper shrouds is a bit loose now but I don't think I'll have a problem once I add the tension from the back, and if it's still loose the upper shroud should pull any last looseness out of it. Working in this area makes my eyes go a bit crazy with all the black threads in that area and I really have to concentrate to keep focus on which thread is which and not pull or trim the wrong thing. Once I finish the other side I'll add the tensioning rigging between the two sides and see how that all worked before moving on the the main mast.

Main and Foremast Shrouds: No significant issues putting these shrouds on. I did my best to keep everything straight and level. Only thing I changed from the first two shrouds I did on the mizzen and bonadventure mast were on those first two after adding the shrouds on the masts I attached and tightened the deadeyes alternating sides 1-2-2-2-1 where there four on each side and I switched to doing two at a time, always doing the two that had the shrouds lowest on the mast so I wouldn't be pulling them tight over a rope that hadn't been pulled down yet. This just made more sense to me, not sure it made any real difference in how things laid together where all the shrouds come together. At first I thought I'd be doing the ratlines on these lower shrouds but after looking closer I believe that it would be best to go ahead and install the upper shrouds first and get what I think is called the futtock shroud rigging in place first. I've looked at how the metal bar will go across the shrouds and then get pulled together slightly and I'm still working out exactly how I'm going to do that. It seems like there's a lot of potiential to screw things up with that so I'll try to be slow and careful. The plans don't show exactly how the bar is attached to the shrouds so I'll be doing a bit of research there and see what others have done. Everything has been easier than anticipated so far thanks to the quality of the kit and instructions. A lot of learning to do but very enjoyable.

Mizzen and Bonadventure Shrouds: As I prepared to start the shrouds there were two things I really didn't know how I was going to do; get the correct angle on the chainplates and get the deadeyes even when rigged. I read bunches of build logs of Revenge and other ships and both ended up to be much easier than I thought. For the chainplates I went ahead and put the shrouds on the mast and then just help the shroud where the center of the hold for the deadeye was and then marked where it continued on the wale, that seemed the best way to ensure that the chainplate continued in a straight line from the shroud and seemed to work well. After marking I drilled a very small hole for the pin so as not to split the wale when placing the pin. One minor issue that popped up was that the chainplate was pulling away from the wale when tensioned with the shroud so I had to apply a tiny drop of CA glue behind the pin and chainplate and then hold the chainplate against the wale as it dried, this seems to have stopped the issue but I'll need to keep checking. I'll probably add that glue as I install the chainplate from now on just as a safety precaution. To keep the upper deadeyes even I just installed the first one at the height I wanted and for subsequent shrouds I went ahead and put the first siezing on the shroud and then was able to manually adjust the height of the deadeye by either pulling up the loose end or grabbing it and pulling it sown a little. This let me set the height very precisely and when I thought I had it right I would lock it in place by clamping the shroud with hemostats and then double check, if everything was right then a spot of glue went on the knot and everything was finalized, i tried to leave them just a little bit higher than where I thought it should go anticipating that the tension would lower it a bit. The additional seizings were then added and the two deadeyes rigged together. At first my shroud seizings were pretty ugly but I finally got where I could make them look decent, still getting better at that. Thinking about the way the seizings got better as I went along made me decide to do all the shrouds before starting the ratlines. It seems that if I do one thing then at least the result is more consistent as opposed to switching back and forth. I think the ratlines may get a bit tedious but I'll just put on some music and plow through them when I get there.

Stage 1 Rigging - Mast Tackle: Full speed into the rigging and the first step is the mast tackle. Pretty straightforward except I didn't understand how the lines were attached to the mast at the top but I posted in the Masting, Rigging and Sails forum and got a great answer very quickly which was that they are done just like the shrouds so I could proceed and get them done. I feel like this will be the easiest stage of the rigging to do as there is still wide open spaces to move around my hands and not a ton of ropes. Everything went well and it's great to finally see this part start to take shape. Forgot to take a picture until I had done the first shroud and deadeye pair. This will probably be a long step with all the shrouds and ratlines to do. I'm considering doing one mast at a time to break up the ratlines as much as possible, but I'll have to see how things go before I know if that will be possible. I did rig the main yard lift after doing the fore yard, it just seemed like there was so much more space now so it's finished as well.

Mast Tackle and Foreyard Lift: Started on Stage One of the rigging which is the mast tackles. Seems pretty straightforward so far but as I was working on one side I began to look at some of the things that would be inside this rigging and could become more difficult with it in place. Specifically the main and foreyard lifts, especially the foreyard lift. I wanted to get the foreyard lift done since it goes through the opening in the grate and my plan has always been to rig it to the knighthead out of the ship inside the hole in the grate and then glue the knighthead in place but I know that sometimes plans don't always work that way in reality so I wanted as much space as I could get to do that. First attempt at rigging the lift rope to the block and knighthead was just holding the knighthead in my hand and during the times when I had to let go of it it much have twisted or something as when I finished all the rope was tangled up and not in the proper places so I realized I was going to have to hold it in place while I threaded the rope. Used a couple of clamps and set those on a small box to get it close to the proper height and then was able to thread everything and keep it straight. Then holding the knighthead in my pliers I was able to glue it in place. I was a little concerned that the friction in the knighthead would be too much to pull the slack out but once the glue had dried I was able to slowly pull out the slack one bit at a time. I kept the end taught by clamping a hemostat at the end and letting gravity keep tension on the end as I slowly worked out the slack. One tight I was able to tie and glue the end and place the grate in place and it appears to be fine. It's nice when what you planed on three months ago actually works. I'll probably go ahead and do the main yard lift although it should be much easier since the knighthead is out where it can be worked and then finish the mast tackles. After that will be the shrouds and deadeyes which should be interesting.

Wonderful, thank you so much.