Thukydides

I am wondering if anyone is able to help me in interpreting the following lines in a contract. In particular I am confused as to what “live shivers mean.” I have included both the original text as well as my transcription. Mainsheet Blocks To have blocks with live shivers, let through the side against the mizzen mast on the upper deck for the mizzen sheets, or otherwise as shall be directed.

One tip if you decide to do a log is you don’t have to record in the same order you do things. I often was working on multiple parts of Alert in the background which I didn’t post on until I had some sort of result to show or I had a question I wanted feedback on. I suspect this is true of most logs. If you just take lots of pictures as you go along you can always go back and add words later. I keep an album in my online photo repository for each project I am working on. Plus I found posting helped to motivate me to make progress when I was bogged down. As a general rule when checking out other build logs I read well ahead of where I am on the build. It is always better to learn from others mistakes rather than your own :).

She is a really lovely model. If I wasn’t already committed to another project for the foreseeable future I would be sorely tempted by her.

That looks really nice. Great job.

I like it. Very nice.

It might be the coppering that made Christ move it to a 3, I would trust Chris' rating better than my very uninformed gut feeling :). That being said difficulty is not a one size fits all problem. You may excel at a task I struggle at. Some models have more complex rigging, others harder planking, others tedious copper plates:). So a clear eyed view of your own abilities plus reading lots of build logs is probably the best way to know if you are capable of completing the model.

My best advice would be to wait until you are closer to being done. What you want to do next may change and also your assessment of your skill level based on how the rest of your current model progresses. That being said Speedy would probably be the easier of the three examples you gave. Adder's planking at the bow is a bit more difficult and Granado is an older kit so more adjustments / interpreting of the instructions will be required. Read some build logs of your potential choices and then assess if you think you have the skills to do the build. Apart from that is really up to what subject inspires you.

Very nice Chris. These are a great addition to your line of boats.

I did a lot of very fine serving for my Alert build including serving eyes for 0.25mm rope. I used the syren serving machine for all of this. See below for a picture of a served 0.35mm rope used for the anchor buoy. Personally I am of the opinion that as much as possible you should try to replicate the full sized practice. I do notice the difference (not just in zoomed photos). That being said everything is a tradeoff between how much time you are willing to put in and what you are capable (e.g. how good is your eyesight). I detail some of the process in my log, but her are some things I learned: Scale matters - You need to make sure you are serving with an appropriate sized thread. For the above example I was using 10/0 fly tying thread for the serving. Magnification is essential - Without good lighting and some form of magnification (I use 3.5x glasses), it is impossible to be consistent and get a good result. By the time you notice there is a problem you are long past the point at which it occurred. Patience - For small examples such as the above I would say I made twice as many attempts as I got acceptable results. Mistakes happen, measurements on length are 1mm off and at this scale that stuff can make a noticeable difference. Get comfortable with doing things over until they are done right. Twist - Some thread (fly tying thread in particular) needs to have its twist tightened or it lies too flat. As I serve it onto the rope I twist it in the direction of the original twist. This is hard to describe, but when you do it right you can see the individual loops of the serving as opposed to a smooth layer of fibers. This obviously untwists the thread below where I am twisting so when done I just get rid of the fly tying thread I have untwisted. Thread is cheap so this is not really a problem. Knowing how much twist to add just requires practice. Tension - There is no way to show this, but an important part of serving properly is maintaining the correct tension and spacing (no gaps). This is much easier to do with larger ropes and much harder in miniature. This just requires practice. Limit glue use - I found glue at small scales is really noticeable. So as much as possible I would use tricks where I pulled the ends under the serving. This is a bit hard to describe, but essentially I was using the common whipping at both ends of the serve. Problems with securing the two ends of the serve were the most common reasons for having to redo things. EDIT: added a note on glue which I forgot to mention

Fantastic work. It holds up so well in those up close photos.

I will just add on the acrylic question, if you are using an oil based sealer you can paint acrylic over it, but you probably need to abrade the surface a bit and use some sort of miniature painting primer (e.g. Vallejo) or it will flake off.

Welcome to MSW. The advice everyone else has given you is great and I would heartily endorse it. Tweezers, sheers and maybe a small sewing needle are all you really need for sure. The only addition I would make is some sort of serving machine if you plan to serve some of the lines (e.g. the syren one). I will just add a few things that I learned rigging my first model: The hull will take a while so there will be plenty of time to consider the rigging as you get closer to it. I changed my mind so much on things over the course of the build that I think it is best to wait till you are much closer to actually doing the task before purchasing things. In general I have found a good rule of thumb is not to buy a tool until I have a task I am working on that I need it for. Don't buy tools to solve hypothetical problems. Everyone goes about rigging a little differently. There are lots of tips and tricks you can pick up from others, but some of the tools are a function of what you are trying to do. Fore example, I was doing a lot of false splicing and so created a small hand tool using machine sewing needles to help me do this. For me it was one of my most used tools for rigging (along with the serving machine), but if you are not interested in doing that sort of detail then it would be useless to you.

As others have said I would guess the tops as they could easily be replaced and thus the barrels reused. There are lots of references in the captains logs I have been reading to empty barrels being returned to the victualling ship. In terms of what was on the label again I can only speculate, but there are some clues in the logs. Take for example the following entry: It appears to me that captains were held responsible for the amount of stores they consumed as a significant portion of the logs are spent detailing what was opened when and how much it contained. From the above example we can see that here was likely some sort of reference number on the barrel (in this case N 212). I assume N refers to No or Number, but it is not clear if the N would have been included or just the number. Also it seems likely to me that there was some indication of much the barrel contained (in this case pork). The reason I suspect this is pretty much every time a food barrel was opened, he details how much was in it. I have tonnes of examples like these I could show you if you wanted to see them. In summary I would say if the barrel in question contained food, I would expect a label on the lid with a number (e.g. N212), the product in question (e.g. salt pork), and the amount of the product contained within. One final note is that it only seems to be the meat that was catalogued in such detail. The logs are much more vague with regard to other commodities being consumed though they do carefully not the number and types of barrels brought on board.

That is rough Alan, I feel your pain. That being said I bet the decks will look much better now you have learned all the mistakes the first go round.

Some of the fly tying thread is polyester, just much thinner than any guterman thread. I used it for serving smaller lines as any other thread was oversized. Probably overkill in the case of ratlines as you can get a properly scaled guterman thread, but for the seizing you need something smaller.