Thukydides

Great job. Your planking turned out really nice.

Log #81: The Topsail Yard Following up on the question of what to do with the bowlines I decided to go with the kit arrangement and belayed them to a double block at the bow and then to the pin rack on the windlass. These are just loosely in place so I can adjust everything once all the yards are fully in place. In the meantime I continue to work my way up the mainmast and next up is the topsail yard. This necessitated the stropping of a number of blocks. You can see below my new method for doing this. I simply serve a long length of line, use thin super glue to secure it at the appropriate length and cut to size. I then glue both ends to the back of the block forming the loop. If I am careful and do a clean cut you can barely see the line and this I have found seems to be the most secure way of doing this. Once the loop is on the block I can use the serving machine to do the seizing. I have found that I can now make the block right first time as opposed to my older methods which inevitably necessitated a number of remakes. I also made two blocks with eyesplices in the ends to be lashed to the yard. I then lashed them with a rose lashing. Now that I am starting to get the hang of them they are not that hard to do. The ends of the clew lines are secured with a timber hitch knot as per Lees. This is much less complicated than the arrangement shown in Goodwin. And with that the yard was done. For the clewlines I used 0.25mm thread and for the sheets 0.35mm. The blocks were all stropped using 0.35mm line sized with the fly tying line. The rose lashing was done with 0.2mm line as previously described. For the lift I also used 0.35mm line. All of the blocks on the topsail yard were 3mm. Ideally I would have used 2.5mm blocks for the clews, but I didn’t have any so I had to make do with the 3mm ones from the kit. I decided to hold off on the bowlines for the topsail as I found I can slip the loops on the yard easily and then pull them tight and this way I don’t have to worry about another set of ropes to snag. You can see below the yard hanging on the model. Nothing is permanently secured yet as I have clamps hanging from the falls to make sure everything stretches properly. As is my usual practice I will go back in a few days and start securing the lines one by one. I will discuss where I am belaying everything to at that time.

Fantastic, I really like your bottle builds.

Great job. You should be proud of her. Do you have plans for what you want to do next?

Looks great. One thing you can experiment with next time is putting even more blue in the shadows. If you look at icebergs in real life they look bluer in the shadowed lower portions and whiter on the top.

Great job, she is looking really nice.

Caruana does reference ADM 160/150, but it is a fairly large document with many tables that cover the pages. I have had it since late December and I only just noticed these details. The blocks for the guns are hidden in these tables and you have to do a bit of analysis to get the sizes based on seeing what guns and what blocks / breechings / tackles a given rate was assigned. There is no place that lists this size of block for this size of gun. So you could be right that it represents a change at this point or I could also easily believe that in the many documents he was reading he missed this detail.

Your best bet is to just get some milliput or similar epoxy putty and use that to fill the gap. The nice thing about milliput is you can thin it down with isopropyl to create a slury that flows into gaps. Also can use sprue gue (take some small pieces of sprue, put it in a old plastic glue bottle with plastic glue). I have used both to great success. In a pinch you can also do the super glue thing.

So this is a bit of a dangerous subject with more opinions than their are paint brands, but I will throw in my two cents as someone who has been painting miniatures for almost a decade and has tried many of the paint brands out there. When it comes to paint for models the most important thing is that it uses a small pigment size. Any of the major brands (Vallejo, citadel, army painter, kimera, two thin coats, P3, AK, etc…) all should do the job. I have never used Tamia so I can’t comment on it. All acrylic paint should be interchangeable, it just depends on which ones you prefer. So really it comes down to the individual paints. There are variations in thickness, flow, gloss vs matt etc… Much of this is personal preference. I have certain paints that I find are better in different brands. For example my favourite black is the vallejo model colour one, but I also love citadel’s incubi darkness for darkening red. AK has a really nice flat white, while the citadel one is awful. When it comes to citadel the main downsides are the price point ($$$$$) and those awful pots they come in (buy some dropper bottles and transfer the paint to them). But that being said at least half my paint collection is citadel because they have some really nice colours (I love their reds). All paints need to be thinned down (my general rule of thumb is 1 part water to 1 part paint, but it will depend on the brand), you can test this by painting a little on the side of your hand. If you can still see the lines then you are good, if you can’t your paint is too thick. Also make yourself a wet pallet (google it and thank me later).

That and only one block for the smaller carronades are certainly two of the more interesting things I have found in this document.

I use liquitex: https://www.liquitex.com/en-ca/products/professional-acrylic-ink-cerulean-blue-hue But I know some people also like daler rowney. They are essentially pure pigment, no binder so they go on translucent and are very vibrant. If you have an airbrush they go on really nice through them. But you can also use a brush or mix them with varnish.

You could also try inks. They give you very vibrant colours with little coverage.

Yes the sizes for both the tackle and the breechings are the circumference in inches. There is some info on the length of the breechings and tackles in some of the tables, but I have not gotten round to trying to reconcile them yet.

That's a really nice drop strake, well done.

A further updated to this: I found a really interesting list of blocks used for carronades at the bottom of a table. This table is from 1796 and it shows the number and nature of the blocks for the tackle. Of particular interest is the fact that it appears that 18 and 12 pdr carronades only had one block for their tackle: For Carronades Blocks for each Tackle { For 32pr 8 inch Double 1 Ditto Ditto Single 1 24 Ditto 6 ½ Ditto 2 18 & 12 5 Ditto 1 EDIT: See below for a table summarizing all the info I have found in ADM 160/150 on breechings, blocks and gun tackles per gun. This is a combination of lists from 1794, 1796 and 1798. Breeching Size (in) Gun Tackle Size (in) Blocks (Single) Blocks (Double) Size (in) Number Size (in) Number Guns 32 pdr 7 3 10 2 10 2 24 pdr 6½ 3 10 2 10 2 18 pdr 5½ 2½ 8 2 8 2 12 pdr 5½ 2½ 8 2 8 2 9 pdr 4½ 2 6½ 4 6 pdr 4½ 2 6½ 4 4 pdr 3½ 1½ 5 4 Carronades 32 pdr 7 2½ 8 2 8 2 24 pdr 6½ 2 6½ 4 18 pdr 5½ 1½ 5 2 12 pdr 5½ 1½ 5 2

Welcome to MSW Jay.

Congrats on a stunning model.

Another update, I found another list that I had not previously noticed in the document specifically listing the stores for carronades. Unfortunately the part which lists the breechings appears to be incomplete as it only list the stores for 100 and 90 gun ships. However extrapolating from their carronade armament earlier in the same list we can at least get the sizes for tackles and breechings for 32, 24 and 18pdr carronades. The list is from 179? (I can’t make out the last number at the moment, my current guess is 1798) 32pdr - 7 in breeching 24pdr - 6 1/2 in breeching 18pdr - 5 1/2 in breeching Edit: I just noticed that no sizes are given smaller than 5 1/2 in breeching so we could possibly infer that they were used for 12pdr carronades. See below:

Frankly there are a lot of question marks about the bowlines in general on alert, but as I am not doing sails the general convention is to rig them to the yard the sail would be on. I am going for a no sails, but as much running rigging as I can possibly include sort of asthetic and they also help to steady the squaresail yard which has very little else bracing it. As previously noted I am not going to be securing them for a while to allow access so I have lots of time to consider where best to run them to. Thanks for your input :).

Yes AOST. The bowlines for the topsail go out to the end of the bowsprit and then back to presumably the pin rack. However the bowlines for the squaresail are only shown on p107 with the line terminating on the tip of the cathead.

This stage of the build is hard as you do a lot but there is not a lot to show as finished. The more of the rigging you can do off the model the easier it will be and better it will look. It is just hard to resist putting it on the model so you can see progress. Good work.

I never thought to check Petersson, I do have his book.

So further to this discussion I am pretty sure the carronade breechings are not included in the above list of breechings. I was in the process of transcribing the list (see below). 100 90 74 64 50 44 38 36 32 28 24 20 18 Sloop Iron Ordnance with ship carriages complete 32pdr 30 20 20 24 28 26 22 18 30 20 26 20 28 26 12 42 40 22 22 26 9 10 12 10 10 24 22 20 6 6 6 6 4 2 18 4 3 ½ 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 Breechings 7in 60 56 56 6½ 42 52 44 5½ 63 105 42 39 33 73 42 39 39 4½ 27 18 9 9 15 15 9 42 36 30 27 3½ I found when I compared it to the establishment list for armament from the same document that the number of breechings pretty much exactly matches 2x the number of 32pdrs (7in) and 24pdrs (6.5in) and 1.5x all other calibres (18&12pdr 5.5in, 9&6pdr 4.5in). This suggests that they were not taking carronades into account in this list and so we are back to square 1. I am going to take a closer look at the second list as it differs a little in the number of breechings and see what I can find.

Log #81: Squaresail Bowlines Thank you again to everyone for all the kind words. As I have had the past few days off work continues briskly. I decided to tackle the squaresail bowlines next. After considering the matter for a while I decided to follow the diagram in Lees which shows them with a half hitch followed by a sizing. Technically there should be two sizings according to lees, but at the tiny scale we are working I felt that was bridge too far for me at the moment. To make sure everything was proportional, I did a lot of measuring and ratioing based on both Lees and Goodwin before I even started so that I knew the exact length of every piece I was going to make. First step is serve a length of line for the eye. Next I spliced the eye and served over the splice. This was done 4 times with 2 longer ropes for the falls and 2 smaller ones. Then I also added 2 lines with no serving on them. You can see both completed bowlines below. To attach them to the yard the method I came up with was to make the loops off model and then slide them onto the yard and pull them tight. Since the half hitch plus sizing essentially makes a noose that can be tightened as desired, it made the process of sizing and then positioning the bowlines much easier. This also enables me to adjust their positioning later to make sure they don’t interfere with the clew lines. And just for display I temporarily tied the line to a timber head at the bow. It is still not exactly clear to me where the squaresail bowlines are belayed to as Goodwin only shows them ending near the catheads, but doesn’t elaborate on what exactly they were tied to. I am going to do some more reading as they will be hanging loose for a while anyways to enable me to access the base of the mast. I still need to tie the second set to the other side of the yard, but this was all I had time for today.

Seems like a bunch of work for minimal gain. Removing the base is not hard. That being said if you ever go down this route I would say the way to go to avoid too many different versions would be to include a base as a separate piece that anyone who wants can then glue to the figure. That way you don't have to produce two different types of models.