Thukydides

Thanks Alan, I always appreciate these sort of comments as it makes me stop and think about what I am doing. I should first say that my experience is fairly narrowly confined to using the polyester rope from ropes of scale and the lessons I have learned may not fully apply to other fibre types etc… You are correct on the twisting, I do use this somewhat for the larger rope sizes, however as things get smaller (below 0.5mm) this becomes harder to do. The problem is twofold. First seeing the exact space to open up and second actually untwisting that part. As you can see from the pictures in my post the entire splice takes place over a 2mm or less length and so fingers are not great tools for precisely opening up the right place. The polyester rope also has a tendency to resist being opened up and instead just wrap back on itself so that it just twists. Now you may find a better method than I could for precisely opening up the correct location, but I have found it is easier to just lay it on the table where I can get my head the right distance away for my magnification to work and slide in a sharp needle which does the job. Basically the necessary work to set up something with say quad hands might take longer than just carefully sticking a sharp needle into the rope gab. You can feel when you get it right because the resistance is much stronger when you go through the strands as opposed when you go between them. On the needle handle I was using needles, but I found the sewing machine needle with the eye at the front worked better and having a handle just makes it easier to manipulate (plus I don’t loose them as easily).

Log #78: Methodology for preparing small ropes Thanks to everyone for all the encouragement, I do really appreciate it all and it is nice to hear that you guys think the rigging is looking good. Sometimes when you have been staring at something trying to figure out how to make it better for a while all you can see is the flaws. In any case I think I finally have a method that works reasonably well for dealing with these small bits of rigging and the secret is essentially three changes to my methodology: No glue - One of the biggest eyesores is visible glue flakes. These catch the eye and are often readily visible with the naked eye. No matter how careful I was I found that inevitably something was put where it shouldn’t be so the solution is to pretty much get rid of glue. Twist - The fly tying thread I use for serving and seizing these small ropes is not twisted very tight and consequently has a tendency to lay flat. This has two problems, first there are lots of little hairs and threads hanging loose, second there is no visible rope in the serving. There should be a distinctive spiral of rope going round and this is actually quite noticeable even with the naked eye, though you might not know why one looked better than the other. Magnification - At the end of the day I realized that when working with the smaller ropes I need to use magnification. It is pretty much impossible to get it right without it as annoying as it is to use. This also has a side benefit that it slows the process down, but that actually helps matters as going slower also helps to improve the quality. See below for the glasses I use ($20 on Amazon). So with the above changes in mind, let me discuss how this practically works using the pendants for the spreadsail braces. These are made with .35mm rope and need to be served at both ends where they go round the yard and the block. The first step is to serve the two sections of the rope that will make up the loops. The only way to do this well is to measure carefully and since I inevitably got the first measurement wrong, I have just resigned myself to having to always do at least one do over. You can see in the above picture how I am twisting as I serve and so the distinct spiral can be seen. I also fasten it by using my needle tool (pictured below) to run the serving line through the rope and then along it to where the end of the serving will be (see A, blue). Then at the point where the serving should end I run it through the rope again, but then back out the same hole, essentially creating a loop with a thread I can pull to tighten it (the red point A, I meant to make it a B). I serve along till I reach that loop then cut the end of the serving line and pass it through the loop while keeping tension to make sure the serving does not unravel. I then pull the loop tight and everything is fixed in place. After serving both ends of the rope I loop them over and splice them into themselves. The method I have found that works best for this when covering it is to pass the whole rope through itself twice and then split off two strands which are passed through once. Care needs to be taken to make sure the rope is passed between the strands that make up the rope not through them. I then used a little bit of watered down fabric glue on this area. This is just to make sure that they don’t come loose while I am serving them as they need to be under a fair bit of tension. I then run the loose serving line ends through the rope and fold them back so they will be held in place by the serving that will go over the area. You can see below the problem with the glue. Even though I used watered down stuff you can still see at bit of discolouration where I am moving the rope around. This is why it needs to be restricted to places that will be covered and as little as possible. And finally below you can see the finished line. This is the first one that I am actually pleased with as though it still has a few issues, they are only really visible with the camera zoom. I still need to work on making sure the transition from the rope to the spice is smoother as that is the reason for some of the not so clean serving near the loops, but I think I have the general process down.

Thanks. Like most of this model it is a work in progress. The goal is to keep getting it neater to the point that the flaws can only be seen with excessive camera zooming. My latest iterations which I will show in my next post I think are getting closer. I have made some changes to my process which have seemed to help.

They are 20 in as per the steel tables. I made them myself, I discuss the process in log #52. The rest of the blocks I bought from either vanguard or crafty sailor, but they are no longer available as the supplier is located in Russia.

Looking very nice. Great job.

Time for a minor update. I have been slowly picking away trying to improve my method for making the straps for the blocks. I have been experimenting with avoiding the use of glue as much as possible and this seems to help. I also have been giving the fly tying thread I am using for serving a few extra twists before I serve it onto the rope and that seems to help as well. In any case you can see below my latest attempt. Compared to my last one the area around the loop is less bulky though the left hand loop turned out better than the right hand one. I did make some notes on things to do differently and so I am optimistic that I will soon have a good process down. I decided this one look good enough to use and so below you can see it on the block. The new rope for the rose lashings should arrive soon and then I can get back to lashing everything to the spreadsail yard.

Good luck, I am looking forward to see what you accomplish here. I am also looking at a scratch build for my next one though maybe not quite as ambitious as a POF.

Fantastic work. I was wondering, are these braided stirrups just a feature of French rigging or would the english have done something similar?

pouring medium has a bunch more additives for helping the paint to flow. If you are using it as an adhesive I would stick with the matt medium. You could also look into acrylic matt or ultra matt varnish. I use that as a fixative sometimes and it works well. Look for a hobby store in your area (somewhere that sells Warhammer or other miniature related products). They will definitely have some sort of small bottle of matt varnish that won't cost that much. Your build is looking awesome.

Good job that is looking much better. Even though it sucks in the moment you won't regret going back and doing it right.

Yes you pretty much have it: Proofing - making sure the gun was structurally sound Saluting - for signaling or showing honor to the admiral etc, there was no shot used in this case, not sure if they included the wadding still Service - firing cannon balls Scaling - cleaning out the residue from inside the gun

I use sable brushes with acrylic paint and have some I have been using for years and they are still fine. I do know people who prefer synthetic, but I much prefer the natural hair brushes. I fine they keep their point better which is really what is most important when painting scale models. That being said I would recommend a beginner start with relatively cheap synthetic brushes as there is no point in spending money on brushes you will inevitably ruin through lack of care. Once you know what you are doing you can invest in more expensive ones. I still use cheap walmart synthetic brushes for tasks which don’t require precision to block in colours etc… Most important thing with brushes is learning to take care of them, invest in some brush soap and don’t ever let the paint rise more than half way up the brush. Rinse them frequently and take care not to damage the point.

Yes it would move back faster, but the force on it would be the same. If you remember your high school physics F=ma, so a lighter piece with the same force acting on it would accelerate back faster. I wonder if part of their problem was the recoil length. As the carronade was shorter it didn’t have as far back to go before running out of rope so to speak. I found the following piece of paper which shows charge sizes. Now it has no date so not sure exactly when it is from, but you can see that a 32-pdr carronade (which was what 38 gun ships were rated to equip) is equivalent to the charge for a 12-pdr long gun (inbetween the 18 and 9-pdrs carried by 38 gun ships). EDIT: Since I know @allanyed is going to ask this comes from ADM 160/150 as well.

Sometimes there are things I see on this site which inspire me because I think you know if I keep pushing myself and learning, maybe someday I will be able to do something like that. Then there are posts like this which frankly depress me because they are so much better than anything I can even imagine doing. Awe inspiring work!

For your purposes both tables say a 38 gun frigate carries 42 5.5 in cir breeching and 15 4.5 in cir. The second table states they have a length of 30 and 23 ft respectively. Obviously they would have needed spares, but it would be odd if the carronades were not included in this. I will take a closer look through all the tables and report back if I find any further details.

They are from ADM 160/150 (https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C2980865), a book of lists of proportions for ordnance, I have photos of most of the book. It has all sorts of lists regarding powder etc.. Most of it seems to be dated 1794, though there are a few loose pages dated 1781 and a few from early 1800s. I am working on transcribing some of it, but there is a lot to go through and so my work has focused on stuff that I immediately want answers to. One thought I did have, if I have the time is to look at the charge sizes for carronades vs guns. The size of the charge is what would determine the force since they were firing essentially the same size of cannon ball. That might give some indication of the relative size of the breeching rope.

That must be a relief. I only had a few to do on Alert and I did not enjoy even the little I had to do. It is looking great, she is very imposing.

You could glue them in place with some white glue and then remove it later with a little isopropyl.

See below for an excerpt from ADM 160/150. The dating on this is hard as there are not dates on every page, but seems to be around 1794. I forgot to copy the headings over but they are the same as the next picture I will show. There is also this table which occurs right after a table of carronade sizes: The problem is that the size of the ropes doesn't seem to necessarily vary with the size of the gun. For example in a table in the same document a 28 gun ship is listed as having 24 9-pdrs and 6 4pdrs, but it is listed as only having one size of breaching rope. They are also listed in another table in the same document as carrying 4 24-pdr carronades, but the only breeching rope size listed is the same as for the 24 gun ships which carried 18-pdr carronades. To confuse matters more the 44 gun ship appears to have exactly the number of the smallest size of breeching rope for the 6 6pdr guns it would have carried, but none of this size is used on any of the other ships that carried them other than the cutters. I am wondering if possibly they tried to carry as few sizes of breeching ropes as possible and so they just used oversized ones on their smaller guns in some cases to simplify the supply chain for the ship.

She became the HMS Hussar for a couple years, but there are no plans on RMG that I could find. She was sold in 1803. Just so you don't get confused there are plans for an HMS hussar of the samish size on RMG, but they are for Hussar 1804 and Enterprise class ship which got the name after the American capture was sold in 1803. https://threedecks.org/biyun/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=4821 Note according to three decks protector was 26 guns, now their source would have been Winfield which I have found to sometimes not be completely accurate in the details. A quick search of the national archives turned up these entries: Capture of Protector https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C13507396 Hussar Captures other ships: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C13508024 https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C13507757 I couldn't find any captains logs, but there might be something if you go digging.

Great job! Your persistence and patience with this is paying off.

Thanks Alan for taking a look. I also have been digging into this more. My first thought was to take a look at Steel. There are a number of plates in the elements and practices of seamanship which may shed light on this question, for example see below. But all of the images like this one are not high enough resolution to really say for sure. Once you start to zoom in you can’t quite tell if they are served or not. I did some more reading of Lees and he has the following to say on p162 after noting that these things have not changed much since the early days of sail: Now what constitutes a large strap is up for debate, but I would guess based on this that Lees would recommend serving all of the straps attaching blocks to the yards. This does make logical sense, but as of yet I have been unable to find any primary sources which confirm this. On the balance I think I will probably serve them as I have already served most of the blocks I have been attaching to the mast and yards using a single long strop and logically if I was doing it for them, this shouldn’t change for using a lashed strapping. However, if anyone has any sources the can point me to which either confirm or contradict this line of thinking I would be interested in looking at them.

Thanks Alan. This is also your scale so all of this is in your future 😄. The image in question is just showing how the block is lashed. Separately Lees mentions that all ropes which could experience rubbing were served. I interpreted this as meaning that I should serve these blocks as they will experience chafing on the yard. That being said I don't know this for sure and would be curious if anyone can answer one way or another. It is on my to-do list to do some more reading of primary sources on naval seamanship to try and better get clear in my head what should be served, what knots to use when etc... Edit: It would certainly be easier if I didn't have to serve them. Edit2: Part of the reason for me assuming they were served is that Goodwin depicts them as such in his illustration of the topsail clew blocks. Now this is not the blocks in question, but if the clew blocks were attached using served line I would imagine the sheet blocks which are under much more strain would have been too.

Log #77: Experiments in Lashing Thank you to everyone for your kind comments and encouragement. I have succumbed to feature creep once again. I was doing some investigating on how to lash the blocks that run the falls of the topsail sheets to the spreadsail yard and realized that I could make significant improvements to how I attach blocks to the yards. Though I am unwilling to go back and redo my past work, I figured since the yards will be a fairly prominent feature of the model I might as well do it right going forward. Also I have always thought of this build as an experiment and frankly there are parts of the build which are at a much lower standard than others. The above image from Lees shoes what I am trying to achieve, a loop on each end of the block strapping which are seized together around the yard. The first step was to try and create the small loops. This is easier said than done at this scale and in particular since I am trying to serve the entire length. After about 7 attempts I got one that was passable. First I served two short sections on the rope where the loops would be. Then I spliced them into the rope as can be seen in the picture below. I secured the splice in place with fabric glue and once that was dry I served the rest of the rope. It was then fairly straightforward to size the rope to the block. As you can see I still have some ways to go, but the above example is at least starting to look the part. One thing I have discovered is that I need to be really precise with both the amounts of glue I use and also how the ends of the serving are secured. Small issues become quite visible on the loops. Next up was the question of lashing the two ends together. I started testing this out, but realized that the 0.25mm rope I have was too thick. I have since ordered a smaller size of rope from Ben (the same size I used for the ratlines, just in a tan colour). Once I get that I can start to experiment with this more. But you can see a WIP version below where I attempted (with only partial success) to create a rose lashing. Well that is as far as I have gotten. I still have some tests to do and also I need to wait for the thinner rope for the lashings to get here.

That is looking much better. You will be glad you took the time to do it right.