Thukydides

Thanks Glenn, The issue with the squaresail yard is it is on the horse so not directly on the mast. The spreadsail yard I did pin to the mast to help hold it in place.

Log #80: Raising the Squaresail & Spreadsail Yards Thank you everyone for all the encouragement. One of the nice things about this stage of the build is it feels like every time I sit down to work something small has been added to the model. So there is progress to see. I am continuing to pick away and slowly add to the rigging of the model. I made a small adjustment from my previous plans as I realized that all of ropes for the yards all need to belay down to the base of the mast. Consequently I am planning on raising them all and letting any braces hang loose until I no longer need access to that area. First up was to raise the spreadsail yard. This yard I pinned to the mast (though I didn’t use any glue) to help hold it in the correct place and allow me to put tension on the ropes. I also got the pendant for the topsail yard done. I belayed the fall for the spreadsail yard lift down to the bits and coiled some rope in the same way that I did for the inner tie. You may also notice from this picture that I have fixed the anchor cable in place. This was done with spots of super glue at various positions. I have decided in the end not to include any of the spare yards I made as they didn’t look aesthetically pleasing and the only place that made sense was the first shroud. However, my less than optimal job on the ratlines means that putting a straight yard against the first shroud accentuates the fact that it is not straight. Next was the squaresail yard. This rises on a horse and so I used one of the kit thimbles to serve as the guide. It is a bit over scale, but I didn’t feel like trying to find another solution so I left it as is. And below you can see the spreadsail yard with everything attached ready to go on the model. The horse caused me a huge amount of trouble as I kept making small mistakes that necessitated doing it all over again. In the end it took 5 attempts to get it right. The horse was made with a 0.6mm rope and I used the 0.2mm rope I have for the rose lashings for the seizing. I used 0.35mm rope for the lanyards. The deadeyes should really be a bit smaller, but I just used spare kit ones. I still need to figure out how I will ensure the yard creates tension on the square sail yard. It currently wants to lean to one side which I won’t be able to fix till I add the bowlines and the clewlines for the topsail run in front of it. The problem with this yard is it would be held level by the sail, but there is no easy way that I can see to hold it steady. I had previously considered adding the reef lines and then attaching them to the spreadsail yard as that is the approximate location they would attach to the sail. I will make a decision on this later.

Congrats on another fantastic build.

I like the idea of a ship in a bottle trapped by the ice. Sounds like a really cool project.

Fantastic. Wonderful work as always. I really enjoy how realistic you make the sails look.

Log #79: Rose Lashings I received some more rope in the mail. Ben made me some extra small rope for the lashings. With this now in hand I can finally finish the spreadsail yard. To help with the lashing I cut the end off of a safety pin and bent it till the ends pointed straight. I then used it to weave back and forth over and under for the lashing. Once I had three loops on each side I began winding the rope around through the gaps between them to create the rose lashing. after the final loop I brought the ends up through the lashing. Then finally I tied knots in the ends and used a very small amount of super glue to secure the knots before cutting the ends. I could get no clear answers on how the ends of the rose lashing were secured and so I decided to go with replicating the illustration in Lees. This was the better of my two attempts, the other doesn’t look quite as good, but from normal viewing distance it looks good enough that I decided not to redo. And with that I am finished with the spreadsail yard. I do still need to add the topsail sheet blocks, but those can easily be slipped on at any time and so I may wait on them a bit. I plan to pin this yard to the mast, but first I need to add a few more ropes that will run down the base of the back of the mast as once the braces are in place it will be hard to access that area.

It depends on the period. In the 18th century I think they are mostly made of a wood that looks very dark (can't remember the name). Lots of examples if you go to the RMG site and search for blocks in the collection. I think if you wanted to do working sheaves your best bet would be brass ones and blacken them, though it ultimately depends on your scale.

By this do you mean you just paint the flat of it so that the line shows once you glue them together?

I like the setup, it has some heft to it and fits nicely between the flag lockers. In terms of the use of them, it does seem to be a bit of a mixed bag. There are examples from the 1790s of ships both with and without the ensign. I suspect it probably was based on the views of the commander though I have noticed that earlier contemporary paintings 1770s tend to have more of them than the later ones post 1800s. Now this is just a qualitative assessment based on the limited pool of ship paintings I have been looking at.

great job

That is a lot of belaying pins to make.

Looking good, she does have really nice lines. It is a great moment when you get the shrouds and stays in place, I feel it is the moment they start to look like a sailing ship. Slow is good on the rigging, lots of skills and tricks to learn. By the time you are done you will finally start to know what you are doing 😄.

She is looking good, I like the patina, very visually striking.

I have been working on the other pendant and trying to be more precise, add more twists to the serving line and using even less glue than before. I think I am finally at the point where the flaws are not visible with the naked eye. Once everything is under tension on the model I will give it a coat of watered down matt varnish to make extra sure everything stays in place.

You are making good progress Glenn, great job. I suspect that with regard to the fiddle block it is just a compromise on the part of the kit. For alert the fiddle blocks for the running backstays are also represented in the vanguard kit as two blocks on top of each other. This is one of those things that is not super noticeable unless you are looking for it and so I suspect Chris decided it was an acceptable compromise. This will always be the case with a kit and those of us who care about such details can easily fashion a fiddle block ourselves.

Slow and steady is the way to go, you are doing great. One further minor comment. The ring bolts on deck look like they are sticking up more than they should be. Technically the "circle" should be partially submerged in the deck. At the very least there should be no part of the "stick" showing.

Just as a note though my gun tackle process was fine, I would not recommend following my method for the breeching ropes. I realized after I was done that it would have been much easier to rig the breaching ropes not on the cannons themselves. So don't attach the ring bolts to the carriages, just slip them on the breeching ropes while rigging them and then glue them on the carriages after the fact. That way you can easily do the seizing to the bulwark ring bolts and make sure they are all the same length. I did not do this and regretted it. You could make a jig to do this, see the below drawing illustrating what I mean.

Are you planning on serving your foremost shroud / stays? Also are you planning on serving where the shrouds loop the masthead? I ask because if so it will be much easier to do so off model and then slip them over the top. So if it was me and I were serving things I would build the mast up as I worked my way up. For a much simpler version of this you can see how in my alert log I have been slowly building up the mainmast as I rig my way up it.

Thank Andrew, As with Alan, I appreciate the suggestions. I should give matte medium a try, however I have been using acrylic matt varnish which is essentially the same thing with a bit of resin in it (so a bit stronger). With the polyester rope the issue is that it doesn’t bond to glues as well as cotton rope does and so if you need the bond to have strength then I have found that I generally only trust supper glue or fabric glue if the joint will be under tension. I did a test a number of posts back where I tested the strength of various glues to hold a knot and fabric glue came out the winner. I then just add watered down matt varnish over to remove the shine (to be fair I coat everything in matt varnish once it is fully secured on the model). With larger ropes the visibility of the glue is not a problem as it wicks into the gaps and you don’t see it, but with the tiny ropes it is hard to ensure that not too much glue goes on the surface. The other issue is the amount of bending that happens in a given area. Larger ropes (by virtue of their size) have much more gradual bends as I am working with them (sticking needles into them, getting them into place etc…). In a perfect world if I use the correct amount of glue, at the correct dilution and don’t bend the ropes much afterwards then there is no issue. The white stuff comes from either too much glue or the glue has been separated in some points from the rope leaving an air gap. I have found that with smaller ropes this is pretty much inevitable. The picture I showed was the worst example of the 4 I did just to illustrate the point (also in this particular case the area was going to be covered so I wasn’t being as careful as I would have on an area that could be seen). This is all to say that it is totally possible to use glue and not have it look bad, I have just been removing it as much as possible as particularly on tiny dark ropes which I need to serve, the chances of a slight error leading to a bit of white stuff is really high. Also if I don’t use glue then it is easier to undo work that I don’t think is good enough without having to completely start over.

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.