vaddoc

Well Keith, the Yawl is I think next on line but at 1:10 scale it will be equally huge so the Deben needs to leave the shipyard first (and go where? I do not have the answer)

Thanks GL I used Beadalon wire, I think this is 0.65 mm. This is a great wire as it is encased in a plastic transparent wrap. It is served with ordinary black thread in my home made serving machine. Brass electric wire crimps are used for thimbles. The seizing in these is beadalon crimps blackened with black gesso, as they were made a long time ago but now I would use the smallest size fishing crimps wrapped in thread-this gives a more elegant result.

Regarding Stay Brite 1. Does it have gap filling properties or pieces need to touch as in silver soldering? 2. Do you use a torch or a soldering gun in high setting?

Welcome Marco, good luck with your boat!

I think maybe another update might be in order as I was allowed to spend quite some time in the garage. First of all, a photo of the finished belaying pins. They have a coat of Tung oil on but the colour of the wood barely changed. I also took a photo of my drill inventory-part of it at least. You can never have enough drills. I did an experiment with seizing the lines. This is wire rope, seized with black thread and encased in shrink tube. The crimps are fishing crimps cut in three. It looks ok I think. One side done. Note that the ropes are not touching but I think after the crimps have been seized with thread they will come closer together. I attached a piece of wire rope to temporarily hold the spreaders in place. The other spreader was badly attached so I had to remove it, fill the pivot hole and re-drill. A few more photos, the boat is large and is difficult to get good shots I also installed the forestay. The bowsprit had taken some nasty bumps over the last few months and I noticed it was loose. I glued it again but I must remember to be careful. With the bob stay on, it should be more secure. Suddenly it feels that the end is very close! A couple more photos

Thanks to all! Deuxey, the shafts on the pins were temporary to allow spinning of the heads for shaping. The pins now have very long shafts that will be cut to length later on Keith,making shackles is easy and actually fun! You will find very useful the thin grinding discs that Proxon sells to cut and shape the brass. Mark, I have drawn up the rigging (most of it anyway) except for the sheets for the jib and staysails-no idea how these will be. There is always the chance I ll need more than I have. I was not aware it is called "becket", learned a new word! Regards Vaddoc

Many thanks to all for your likes and comments. Like many we are not allowed to leave the house so plenty of time to work on the boat! I ve made lots of blocks, many more than these in the picture. I hope they will be enough, making blocks is very complex and time consuming and I would not want to go back to it. I also made two hearts for tensioning the stay sail. I had to make them 4 times before I was finally happy. I then made some belaying pins. I do not want to buy wood at this time so I used whatever I had. I found a 3 mm dowel in my stash, I think it is Birch and used also toothpicks. It was a bit tricky to drill and then shape it but I used a wooden peg which worked very well. I then made the reefing comb, again fully functional with brass sheaves. I then finished and install the spreaders and then attached the 3 pairs of shrouds with shackles I then polished all my shackles. I think they will not be enough but making more is easy and relatively fast. In the end I used CA glue to secure the pin Now, to attach the shrouds and define their length, the mast needs to be up and somehow secure in place. I used scrap wood to secure it in place. I then made some templates from scrap plywood to hold the eyes in a fixed position The (dreadful) figure is 1.75 cm in height. It looks a bit out of scale, I think I ll need to recheck things. On the other hand the Deben is about 7 m long so it is not a big boat. There will be pin rails on the shrouds and I roughly checked the height the need to be placed at for a comfortable reach I will use black shrink tube as Michael suggested earlier in the log, I think it is a very elegant solution. I also got some fishing crimps which I cut to size and should give a very tidy result. However I need a heat gun which I ordered. So waiting for the gun to arrive, I started work on the rails. These proved very fiddly. I need 8 and after I had spent hours making them, I managed to ruin them all by carelessly drilling at random places for the second rope to go through and not parallel to the first rope I realised my mistake after I had marked or drilled all 8 pieces and run out of brass rod. Next day however, I thought of just soldering a piece over and re-drilling. There will be more pieces soldered to the base so I think in the end it will look fine This was good progress and I think I should be able to do a bit more work this week

I ve done this in the past Mark and it can be excellent entertainment, especially in these times of self isolation!

Now these are great news, my very best wishes to you Dan! Vaddoc

Just spoke with a friend of mine in London, 47 y old, recovering from viral infection. Absolutely no doubt this was coronovirus. He is very fit and healthy. Started off with mild symptoms, got worse within a few days, chest pain, throat pain, intense dry cough, sleeping most of the day, fever. Now after two weeks is better, but still has a lot of cough. Mid way he called an ambulance as he could not breath, took 3 hours to come. By that time he was better. Crew told him that people do not get tested. Was not seen by any other health care professional. Many of his friends in London have/had pretty much similar symptoms, none was tested. I now see why mortality in the elderly is so high, this is a nasty bug. I almost envy him, he is now home free in regards to this.

How true Wefalck.

OC If you have a 3M half mask with dust cartridges for your modelling work, it is safe to use for the virus.

I don't think that social distancing is that well received in East Anglia where I live, not to the extend needed. Lots of people, mostly elderly, roll their eyes, point blank refuse or say it is impossible. Northwick hospital in London just declared critical incident as it has run out of ITU beds due to virus patients. Things are moving fast there. On the other hand, I heard an interview on the radio of a scientist leading one of the very many groups that are searching for a vaccine. They are progressing very quickly due to new technologies not available the previous years when it could take years for a vaccine to be developed. Human tests will take a long time though so unlikely to have vaccine sooner than 12 months. Also, reading various newspaper articles, it seems that some Asian countries have been able to control the spread of virus with very aggressive testing, tracing of cases, isolation of suspected cases and long term social distancing. Time will tell but here in the UK they are making 180 degree turn and are talking about increasing testing.

The world will not stop spinning and treatments will and actually are starting to appear. Due to the circumstances, they probably will be fast tracked without going through the full number of loops and hoops. This has happened before with bad diseases and actually, already in Europe I read somewhere that an antiviral drug that of course is not licenced for this disease will be compassionately given to very unwell patients. It helps also that money is not an issue. We need to buy time paying the smallest price possible

Many European countries have shut down, literally with the flip of a switch. In Spain, drones fly to police the roads. In France, you need to download and print a special permission every time you leave your house. In Greece, 3 days ago dozens of shop owners were arrested for opening their shops, they face lengthy prison sentences. Examples go on. Italy of course is further ahead in this journey. Indeed, the governments have huge powers but also the bulk of the population are cooperating.