jdbondy

Sadly, no. I have too many other travel plans this fall, particularly during October. Have fun!

Before we get to the mainmast, got to deal with Chasseur, the ship’s boat. I created tie-downs for the boat that thread through holes in the cradle. I didn’t have any particular description of the tie-downs, so I just created what seemed to make sense. Uh oh, now I have a problem. There is a cleat along the port side rail where one of the backstays for the foremast ties off. With the ship’s boat in place, that cleat is very difficult to access. To make things worse, at some point the cleat broke off from the bulwark. Replacing it with the boat in place is impossible. Sigh. So those tie-downs were cut after I made a note of how I had made them, and the boat was removed. I had to create a hole to attach the new cleat. The old cleat had no firm physical attachment to the bulwark besides glue. So here I am drilling a new hole. I drilled a hole in the base of a cleat and glued a short segment of wire into the hole. This was used to create a more secure attachment point for the cleat. A small amount of paint was scraped off of the bulwark surrounding the hole, and the cleat was glued to the bulwark. The line is secured to the cleat in the proper configuration; later on a coil of line will be added over it. So now work begins on the main topmast. Blocks have to be attached to the mainmast cap, which are control blocks for the fore yard. This is the same technique used for attaching blocks in other parts of the rigging, with a double loop of Syren line that is then seized with fly tying line. Once everything is tightened, Flexament is applied to the seizing, and topcoat is applied to the block. I love being able to see what the seizing looks like up close using my microscope. I really need to get a camera attachment for the viewfinder, because getting this picture with my iPhone is actually very difficult to line up through the eyepiece. This seizing has not yet been treated with Flexament and topcoat. This is the topsail rigged to the main topmast. Since it will be modeled in a furled state, its overall shape doesn’t matter. This rectangular shape worked well for furling it into a nice tight bundle. The sail is being rigged to its mast hoops with line that will get all cleaned up once the seizings are secured with glue. For that step I was able to remove the sail from the mast and bundle it up, first with coarse black thread… …then more properly with tie-downs made with Morope. Very small reefing knots… Now it’s on to the main boom, which had previously been manufactured and cleats and jaws attached. Here I am attaching some footropes to the aft portion of the boom. Well, they aren’t actually footropes, but rather the attachment lines for the mainsheet blocks. This picture shows the relationship between these ropes and their respective cleats. These loops will serve as downhaul points for the reefing lines of the mainsail. Fly tying line was used to secure them to the boom. So here they are in place, giving some idea of where the reefing downhaul points are on the boom. This is one of the blocks for the mainsheet, which will get rigged to the black lines shown above. The mainsheet system consists of a single and a double block attached to the boom. The lines run from these blocks to additional blocks at deck level on either side of the ship’s wheel. Time to rig the mainsail to the boom. Ready to start securing the foot of the mainsail to the boom. Plus the same process for the head of the sail, attaching to the main gaff. And now, the luff is getting attached to its mast hoops. The usual technique, using a double loop of line that is then seized in the middle. Only these seizings are significantly longer than the ones for attaching a block to the rigging. A bit messy, but these lines will get trimmed off and things will look neater. Under the sail and its spars, I have some anti-skid material that is used under rugs. It’s great for keeping things from sliding around on the desktop. Will continue on the main mast in the next post.

My most recently completed model took over 20 years to build. Within it lie many memories, both good and bad. Mostly good, fortunately. I came to learn that the model is like a surrogate of my marriage: something that took much attention to detail to build; something to be very proud of; something that is very fragile and can easily be destroyed. I am hopeful that your model will remain with us so it can continue to serve as a testament to everything you have been through.

I saw on the news this afternoon that you had a spate of tornadoes. I assume that means you are working overtime...

While in Niagara, Ontario for a carving class, meddo and I got to go on a pilgrimage of sorts... To commemorate the pilgrimage, I picked up a souvenir: I am hoping to find a useful purpose for it very soon!!

Time to tighten up the various forestays, of which there are five (!). There are two proper forestays, which terminate at the end of the bowsprit. The jib stay, fore topmast stay, and the fore topgallant stay terminate at the very tip of the jibboom. This end of the fore topgallant stay hangs down from the area of the dolphin striker, through which it has to pass before it can be rigged with its thimble. The thimble is then rigged with lines that are secured at eyebolts on each side of the bow (ie, no deadeyes), suggesting that it is not easily adjustable. All of the other fore stays are rigged to deadeyes, allowing for easier adjustment by the crew. The fore topgallant stay can be faintly seen hanging down from the dolphin striker. The jib stay and the fore topmast stay run alongside the dolphin striker. Also visible are the sheets associated with the jib, which run back toward the bow of the ship. The thimble for the fore topgallant stay has been seized, and its control line is threaded through it. The forestay and its thimble are blurry against the background in this photo. The fore topgallant stay has been put under tension, with the control lines running back toward their respective eyebolts. These are the deadeyes for the forestays, port and starboard. This series of pictures shows the deadeyes getting threaded and then secured, with the lanyard tied off with fly-tying thread. Then it’s over to the starboard side, where the corresponding deadeyes are threaded and tightened up. This lanyard is being held under tension in self-closing tweezers that are left hanging under gravity while the slack in the line is taken up and the lanyard is tightened. I had to be careful to make the forestay deadeyes spaced by about the same amount on the port and starboard sides. A detail added at this point was the additional footropes just aft of the bowsprit netting, on either side of the bowsprit. As mentioned before, the control lines for the headsails run back toward the bow, where they are tied off at the fore pinrails. These lines were laid out, then some disposable black thread was used to roughly secure them in the desired locations. They were then wetted with dilute glue to keep them in place, and to keep them from standing up against gravity. You can see some of the temporary threads securing the headsail sheets. Blocks for the jib halyard then were installed at the trestletrees of the foremast. I found that for rigging blocks, I liked using the Syren line. But when it came to the running and standing rigging itself, I preferred the appearance of Morope. (Sorry, Chuck…) This loop has been tied off with nylon fly-tying line. Some disposable black thread holds things together while the block is secured in place with more fly-tying line. These two particular blocks (one on each side) are rigged with a short pendant, so this took quite a few wraps of the fly-tying line. Now we are reaching the point where I have to secure the foresail gaff. But at what angle? Here is my protractor being used to estimate the angle of the gaff from the plans. And so the peak and throat halyards were tightened, and the gaff’s vang lines were installed so as to duplicate that angle. The vang lines are currently hanging free from the end of the gaff. We haven’t reached the point of snugging everything up at the pinrail yet, but it was at this point that I realized how excessively I had waxed some of the lines. The flakes of wax required careful cleanup, and from this point on, I didn’t wax any more of the running rigging. From left to right, the lines that have been belayed are the jib sheet, jib halyard, staysail sheet, lower yard lift, lower yard truss, foresail peak halyard, and foresail throat halyard. It may not look like it, but the foremast installation is essentially complete. Final tightening of the associated lines would wait until the mainmast installation started, because some of these mainmast components would need to be in place in order to allow final adjusting of the foremast rigging. So next up, moving on to the main mast!

No, using Chrome. I am not too worried about the problem; it just seems to come up every once in awhile. Usually I just retake the picture, downsize it again, and it will work fine.

Yeah Mark, I checked that, and the picture has been reduced to appropriate pixel dimensions. But it still won't load. This seems to happen to me occasionally with a random picture. Haven't made any sense of it yet.

Hey, it was she who evicted us from our backyard for the past four weeks. We couldn't go out there without her dive bombing us!

Today was the last day for Mama Robin to feed her chicks outside our window. They hatched 2 weeks ago, and today all 3 chicks fled the nest.

Dave, Mark, Vossiewulf, thanks for the feedback. Today I made a quantum leap in my table saw technique. I have installed the splitter and created a push stick. Each enables a much smoother pass of the wood through the blade. Unfortunately, my picture of the stock boxwood and the sheets I created is failing to upload. However, I experienced no binding of the blade when I was able to push the wood at a very consistent speed through the blade. I used each technique, one in which the sheet was created from the wood between the blade and the fence, and one in which the block of wood was pushed between the blade and the fence, with the sheet falling away to the left of the blade. Each worked equally well. I am finding the key is the smooth passage of the wood through the blade, at a speed that "lets the tool do the work". (Where have I heard that?) To which probably a lot of you will say, "Uh, yeah, just now figuring that out??" But I feel proud of having learned the lesson nonetheless. Sure wish my photo would upload...I get an error dialog box, and all it says is "-200".

Regarding my secondary issue described above where the motor slows down and the width of the cut increases, I have made a zero clearance plate with splitter out of cherry wood. The problem has improved but is still present, so I plan on adding a little bit of width to the splitter and hopefully that will resolve things.

Bob, I owe you a big thank-you. Your picture of the Keuffel and Esser instruments jogged a memory, and I checked with my mother, a pack rat who moved to the US with her family in the early 1950s. She was a medical illustrator and her brother had done some drafting work. She may be a pack rat, but she knows just where to go find it when I ask about something. A phone call produced this: The brand on the case is Staedtler, made in Germany. She also has this: The brand name on the case for this one is Riefler Nesselwang. She estimates this one may be substantially older than the first set, as it was used by her grandfather. Each set demonstrates corrosion. Any suggestions on who to start checking with on getting them cleaned up? My thought goes to my local Asel Art Supply store to see if they have suggestions. So glad I saw your post!

I'm not using the slitting saw blade, I am using the heavier duty blade that I presume is the carbide blade.

I started perusing this thread because I have been looking for a tutorial on how to properly use ships curves to join points smoothly. In the past when I tried using them, I ended up with some very un-smooth curves that were composed of several curves of different radii. Any suggestions?