Thukydides

Log #90: The Bowsprit Shrouds Thank you again to everyone who has liked and commented. The end is in sight now. Now that I have all of the ropes tied off at the base of the mast it was safe to finally finish off the spreadsail braces. You may remember that the pendants for these were done a long time ago when I first raised the yard and I delayed finishing them to preserve my access to the base of the mast. For this I used 0.35mm rope spliced to a hook on one end and tied off a timber head after being run through a 3mm block at the other. I also decided this was the time to rig the foresail halyard. I gave this a fair bit of consideration as how to do this is not entirely clear from the Goodwin book, but in the end I decided to copy the arrangement used by BE. I used 0.25mm line run through a 3mm block hooked on to the stem and then through a 3mm block on a pendant which is seized to the mainstay. The line was then run down to a cleat on at the base of the mast. With that done, it was time to start work on the bowsprit. According to Steel the bowsprit shrouds are 5.5in diameter with 10in double blocks. Goodwin doesn’t show this part in detail and the kit uses single 3mm blocks which are a bit on the small size for the 0.6mm rope I used. So I decided to go with 4mm double blocks. At this time I also prepared the triple block for the end of the bowsprit. The serving of the eyes of the shrouds was a bit tricky as this had to be done on model, so what I did was serve a section as can be seen above. Then I spliced the ends together on the model and then sized over the splice manually. For the tackles of the shrouds I used 0.35mm rope and tied it off to the base of the eyebolt attaching the blocks to the hull. And here is what everything looks like at the moment. Things are a bit of a mess as I am waiting till most of the other lines are in place before I tie off the bowlines.

Good job on the gratings. That is some precise work you have done by hand there.

Welcome to MSW

Looking really good. Very impressive.

Great planking job. The garboard is looking really good.

Happy Canada Day / Memorial Day.

That is very kind of you to say. My goal with this build has been to figure out what I am capable of producing and though I have in some ways exceeded my expectations, there has also been a wide gulf between when I first try something and my later work (as evidenced by the above picture). My goal for the next build will be to hopefully bring up the quality of my weaker work so there is less variance across the build. I do hope other first time builders will be encouraged that even with limited experience you can push the boundaries of what can be produced with a kit. Granted having such a high quality kit as a starting point certainly helps.

I really like those

It is looking good. As with all skills you get better with practice. I find if you take your time and are not afraid to redo things that are not quite up to standard, you may surprise yourself with what you can achieve.

Congrats, great job.

I think the bow shouldn’t be too hard to change provided you are planning on painting it. You could just build up additional material. The biggest challenge I imagine will be the redesign of the stern and quarter galleries. If you get those three things right then I suspect it will look very close to the Christinia. For the gun ports I think they should be fairly easy to modify (just use the longitudinal pieces for the gun port framing, but place your own vertical pieces). Obviously this will necessitate you planking this area instead of using the laser cut pieces, but should be very doable. Overall sounds like a very interesting project. I approve of your decision to try and push your boundaries a little and make this your own. I will be following along to see how this progresses.

Log #89: Mainmast Finished Time for a minor update. I finally got round to finishing the topsail bowlines and so was able to put in the topgallant sheets. I am not planning on adding bowlines to the topgallant yard. For the topgallant sheet I used .35mm rope and for the topsail bowlines 0.25mm rope with the eyes served with fly tying thread. The topgallant sheets are belayed to the foremost shroud cleats. With that done, the mainmast is finished apart from the topgallant stay which will have to wait until I get to the end of the bowsprit. Then more rope coils. I feel at this point I have the hang of them and my latest jig seems to give me the right shape. Just two small spots of super glue to tack things in place, a blast from the hair dryer and then a coating of very thinned matt varnish to hold it all together. If you want a more detailed explanation of my process you can find it here and here. You can see below the progress I have made on these. The one on the rightmost cleat was my first attempt, the next was somewhere in the middle and the leftmost is the latest one using the above jig. And that is all I have for today. Not a huge amount of progress, but it has been a busy week so I only got a little time to work on the model. I now have to give some thought as to what order I will tackle the ropes associated with the bowsprit. Thank you to everyone who has stoped by to take a look.

Fantastic, I really like these.

I think they look great. Lots of nice details and folds to highlight and give depth to the models.

Great job, you should be proud of her.

Edit the title of the first post I believe

It does take a bunch of them to get the hang of it. My earlier ones are not good and even now I would say 1 in 5 I have to redo. I do them as I go along as I find it easier to access the belaying point when I am tying off the line. This also spreads out doing them.

For British ships of this period it is a time of transition from the more colorful painted friezes to the simple yellow and black. This is also the period when ships start having their bottoms coppered (mass use of copper plates starts around 1776). However much of this depended on the ship in question and you might want to do some research into the specific ship. I took a quick look at threedecks.org and couldn't see much info on the protector. In general the wales and often the strake of thickstuff just above the wales were painted black. Often the planking below the wales was also painted black down to the waterline, but on some the white came all the way up to just below the wales (search on RMG for the frigate Amazon 1773). How much of this practice the American navy copied I can't say.

Sorry I should have been a bit more clear. I took a few more pictures to illustrate, but I think you have the idea. First I should note that I am using polyester rope and so that has dictated some of my process. If I was using natural thread I could use white glue to hold it, but that doesn't work on the polyester so I have to use super glue. If using natural thread you might want to experiment with alternative fixing agents. With regard to the super glue I use Bob Smith Medium super glue. It is pretty runny and I only use very small amounts. I really just use it to tack things in place so that they don't move until I can blast them with the hair dryer and then varnish them to fix them in place. If you use small amounts and you are careful to let it fully dry then I find it leave no visible marks other than a shininess. The matt varnish is both to take away the shininess and also to hold everything together. Note I thin the matt varnish with equal parts flow aid to make sure it goes on very thin. you don't want to have the rope looking like it has a coating over it. To apply super glue I put a bit on a yogurt container lid and then use pins I got from the dollar store to carefully apply tiny amounts precisely. These are really cheap so the moment I get much glue build up on the pins I throw them out and grab another. With regard to the actual process I have taken a couple more photos using a scrap piece of rope. You start with a length of rope cut to the approximate size you think you will need. You can see above where I have glued the first loop (A) and then flipped the second loop around and attached it to the first (B). Note that the direction of the first loop will depend on the direction you attached the line to the cleat or pin. You want this to simulate that the end at A is a continuation of your tied off line. Then you loop the rope around through the gap between the loops as many times as you want. D and E show where the pins would theoretically be. I have this upside-down in the picture as you want the glued loop to be the lower one. If you are wondering why my jig has the loops bent over the edge of the wood, that is because polyester rope is stiff and so I need to pre form the fact that the loops will not be on the same plane as the coils when it is hanging. Hope this helps.

Looks great, well done. See below for a picture of the jig I have landed on after trying a bunch of different methods. The two pins you can space further apart or closer together depending on how big you want the coil to be. I start by super gluing a small loop and putting it on the large pin. Then making a loop in the remainder and twist it and flip it over on the large pin (see below crude diagram). I then loop the remaining rope around the two smaller pins slipping it in-between the two loops until I have enough turns. Finally I super glue the end of the rope against the coil to hold it in place. I then give it a blast with the hairdryer and finally coat it in diluted matt varnish to help it hold its shape. Once all dry I pull out the smaller pins and pop it off and it holds its shape.

Can confirm, even the most tedious other tasks I liked at least somewhat. Ratlines were just something I needed to endure.

Great job, your model is looking fantastic.

Log #88: Hoisting the Anchors Thank you to everyone for all the kind remarks. Today I finally completed work on the anchors. I don’t have many pictures in progress as nothing I am doing in this post is particularly novel and given the limited wiggle room I had it was hard to get good pictures. I will note that for the small bower I tried making the rope coils first and then attaching the anchor to the cable. For the best bower I tried it the other way round. You can see below a picture in progress where I have attached the coil for the buoy rope while the coil for the lanyard is in progress. I am still not sure which method was better as they both had their advantages and disadvantages. For the shank painters I used 0.5mm rope and just secured the anchors to a timberhead. The coils are simply glued to the shrouds. I though about trying to actually tie them, but it was much easier to tie the coil first and you would have to look very closely to notice. The sizing for the cable was 0.25mm rope and though it is hard to see from the picture I followed the method of securing the cable to the anchors as depicted by Lees. And here is the final result from above. Now the anchors are out of the way I can move on to finishing the final mainmast lines and then it is on to the bowsprit.

Indeed she is looking good Glenn, Alert looks so small in the background :).

If it was me I would do it again, as every time I have failed to go back and fix something I have regretted it, but in the end it is you who will look at it the most so the question is how much does it bother you. These sort of problems are hard as it is not just a small simple fix. Whatever you decide she is look good. Those 24 pdrs at the front are very imposing.