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Bedford

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  1. Bedford
    You reckon YOU need smaller fingers, how do you think I get on? When I buy gloves I need to find extra large! Looking good Robbyn and I know what you mean about the end being in sight and feeling a bit sad but there is another waiting for you and another after that and neither will give you the grief this one did! Steve
  2. Bedford
    Wow, it's been a long road to get here but good on you, she looks great ! Steve
  3. Bedford
    Yeah Robbyn it seems to me that you have just had a big break from everything but it was more hectic than normal life. You need a holiday to recover from your holiday. Kick back and take it easy for a while. Go back to her when you feel the desire to do so, that makes it a hobby, not when she calls you, that makes it a job. Steve
  4. Bedford
    That is just beautiful !
  5. Bedford
    Hi there Robbyn, I know what you mean about being over it, my first very nearly became a flying boat several times! Patience and perseverance. I think you have gone all out on this one and it is doing your head in. Perhaaps you need to accept the the first isnt going to be the best and be happy to look on it as what it has been, a huge education. Steve
  6. Bedford
    Magnificent !
  7. Bedford
    Hi, sorry I have not checked this thread for a while. I enjoyed working with the timbers in this kit although the walnut sections, keel, rudder, masting etc took forever to dry when varnished for some reason. The ply pieces that make up the deck houses are rubbish so I made solid parts and clad them in timber. Two of the ribs are mis-numbered but I forget which ones, you need to stack them on one another and work out the order in which they belong by how they match up. The sail fabric is just callico and I found it quite good, my ex had a good sewing machine with all the accessories needed to sew the sails nicely and I knew about making the top sails so that the curved hem to go around the mast step was on the bias so I could easily make the hem. Sorry, I built her before I joined this forum so there is no build log. Steve
  8. Bedford
    You are brave Robbyn and I admire your determination to get it right, I am sure the new rope will look so much better than the cheap crap that came with the kit. You will be able to rig it with your eyes closed !! In light of this I am sure the Syren will be beautiful ! Steve
  9. Bedford
    I think you have made a good decision Robbyn, if not for the SF, for the Syren, you want to get all the lessons learned before you start that one, although there will be different challenges with her too.
  10. Bedford
    Magnificent, very keen to watch the progress. Steve
  11. Bedford
    Very nicely done, must get myself a rotary table for the mill Steve
  12. Bedford
    See Robbyn, you are now the teacher, I like that cardboard template with the lines on it, I do it freehand but keep checking spacing etc. the needle seems to be a good tool as well. You say your shrouds are quite tight, as they should be, all mine are because I reason that they were on the real thing so as to brace it all. It will work exactly the same way on a model. You will find though that you won't be able to tighten the top mast shrouds as much because the "chainplates" for want of a better term will only be decorative. Model shrouds are nowhere near heavy enough to attach a deadeye chainplate to and tension it. Instead you have to glue the dead eye rope "chainplate" into the tressle so it takes all the strain. You can still apply reasonable tension but not too much.
  13. Bedford
    The thing is Robbyn, forget what the terminology is, forget the crap plans, you are making ladders. One climbs from the deck up the shrouds and onto the tressles or cross trees or if you will, crowsnest. The top mast shrouds, which are the ones above what you are doing now will tie off to dead eyes and via lanyards to dead eyes on the tressle and those dead eyes will have a rope securing them to the shrouds below, these are the uprights of the ladders so you need to be able to climb up the shrouds til you reach the ones that angle out to the tressle, you then climb up them to the outer edge of the tressle so this is where the ratline "ladder" has to go. Make sense? You can climb up the inside and come out onto the tressle through the "lub" hole which is where the shrouds pass through the tressle on their downward journey. If you did this though you would be referred to as a "land lubber" Steve
  14. Bedford
    To be scale perfect, I believe the shrouds should go up to the point at which the top mast shroud lower dead eyes are secured to the existing shrouds, as stated above in more technically correct terms, however, it is a small scale model and it may not be possible to get them looking right all the way up so just do the best you can. The ratlines look spot on !!
  15. Bedford
    Oh Robbyn, Robbyn, Robbyn, the shrouds are the nice part ! There are hundreds and hundreds of knots to be done on the ratlines! In all hoesty though, there was a pic posted a while back when you were asking how the shrouds should go over the mast, it showed how to tie the ratlines Use the knot shown as it will look right and it will be easy once you get the hang of it. I use a long pair of angle nosed tweezers to pull the line through the knot and you end up doing an action not unlike crocheting. You can also use the tweezers to slide the knot up and down the shroud to get it nice and neat, just grab hold of the shroud with the tweezers ever so lightly and then push the knot by sliding them up or down accordingly. Cut the line to about two feet long, run it through the wax then start, I leave a bit at the last knot incase it comes lose so cut about an inch out. keep going up the shroud and when you have used up your two feet of line just use a tooth pick or similar to apply a small amount of pva to the outer knots, don't worry about the inner ones because if the outer ones can't come lose neither can the inner ones. When the glue has had time to set cut all the tails off leaving avery short tail.
  16. Bedford
    You may find the rigging is quite stress relieving, it is repetitive but not difficult, once you have it sorted you can just do it on auto pilot which leaves your mind free to relax but not so much that you can start thinking about other stuff.
  17. Bedford
    Robbyn, I am sure my first shrouds and very similar to yours, I would be well happy with them. Well done. As TMC said "not bad for a teacher" I may have left a bit of qualifying dialogue out of that quote but
  18. Bedford
    Good to see you back on deck. You know it isn't hard to make dead eyes and blocks, I have had to do a few. Use a stanley knife. Use a piece of mast dowel and form the dead eye by drilling the three holes into the end of the dowel and sand the end to the convex shape then trim excess diameter off the dowel with a knife ( careful now ) I lay the dowel on the table and press the knife into the dowel parallel to the end and as far in as it needs to be to give the thickness you need. Roll the dowel so the knife cuts a slit around the dowel. Now when you cut into the dowel from the end to reduce the diameter, you just take a little at a time, the blade will stop at the cut if you don't push too hard. When you have the diameter right sand it a bit if needed and then start filing the groove for the shroud or you can also do this by rolling the dowel under a knife although not as easily, rolling the dowel under the knife again, you will find that the knife will work it's way most of the way through the dowel to cut the block from the dowel, you will need to lightly sand the centre of the block but the knife will leave a very smooth finish on the whole. You can make blocks similarly but in that case you drill the holes across the axis of the dowel and form all but one end of the block before cutting it from the dowel with a modelling saw. I realise this is a bit late as you have already ordered replacements but worth keeping in mind for the next time. Steve
  19. Bedford
    I would stand correction, especially from TMC, but isnt the C in CA based on Cyanide?????? This is a substance to be avoided as much as possible. As for you having your own SYREN call, I guess you must, just look at all the sailors who have become shipwrecked in your build thread, there are heaps of us following your every move I assume the small bright shiny thing you mention is some kind of diamond cutting bit for use in making the Syren I hear what you are saying about not starting the rigging again or stressing too much due to colour but I will make this note. I have been aboard Endeavour, Bounty (the Australian one), Duyfken and Batavia and although I can't be sure of the Batavia's ratlines I can tell you the ones on the other three are NOT tarred. I have climbed some of them. They are an expendible and very easily replaced item and there would have been tons of short off cuts of ropes onboard ships sp why bother tarring them. Also if you think about it, sailing in tropical waters with tarred ratlines would have renderred the sailors hands sticky with tar, surely not a good thing.
  20. Bedford
    You know that feeling you get when you are helping a student and the penny drops, they get it! They appreciate your time! So do I One of the biggest things to remember with rigging is that it is part of a complex machine. It all has to work. The first ship is very confusing but the next will make sense and you will understand how it all works so it will be much easier. Think about what each line does as you attach it, don't stress if you don't understand it, without sails attached it won't all make perfect sense and given the quality of the instructions they will not be accurate anyway, but you will get a bit of an understanding. I have made three ships and the one I am planning now (you've seen the masts) has no plans or instructions, it is all out of my head except for hull profiles. I will rig it to my understanding of rigging and it will work. Remember that the ships were designed by naval achitects, not sailors. I would imagine that as soon as a new ship put to sea some of the running rigging was changed, relocated, to make it more user friendly so even the best plans from original construction could be wrong an hour after she puts to sea.
  21. Bedford
    Just to confuse, sorry, clarify things 1 attach and sieze shrouds to mast 2 insert wire jig into SHIP dead eye 3 wrap shroud around top dead eye 4 locate top dead eye onto the other end of the jig 5 adjust shroud around top dead eye 6 secure shroud in place, if cord is waxed heat from fingers under pressure will suffice. 7 remove jig and sieze top dead eye 8 align dead eyes so the three holes in them form arrows pointing up for the top and down for the ship mounted one 9 introduce the lanyard, tie a knot in one end and pass the other end through the side hole of the top dead eye from the deck side 10 run lanyard through side hole in ship dead eye from the sea side 11 run lanyard through middle hole in the top dead eye from the deck side 12 continue till you have it through all dead eye holes then run back to the top of the top dead eye and tie off around the shroud
  22. Bedford
    This seems to have become confusing, I don't know where you are up to but - the two corresponding dead eyes should be as shown in waynes pictures so the three holes in the top dead eye should form the three points of an arrow pointing UP, the three holes in the corresponding dead eye below should form the points of an arrow pointing down. In other words when you look at the finished product the three lines of lanyard should be short - long - short. The lanyard is the "shoe lace" if you will, that ties and tensions the two dead eyes together. The wire jig is placed through a hole in the dead eye attached to the ship then after you have done the seizing of the shroud around the mast take one line down and around the upper dead eye which you now put onto the wire jig so you can pull a little tension on the shroud as it goes around the dead eye and heads back up itself. Then I sueeze firmly with my finger and thumb on the two sections of shroud that have now been brought together above the shroud dead eye while removing it from the wire jig. The squeezing and heat from my fingers makes the wax hold the lines together until I can get a knot around them and start the sieze. Then do the second one as you suggested but I only tension one on each side at a time to help keep the strain even. If there are an uneven number then as suggested by someone above, just run it over the lot and back down to the other side, trust me, no-one will ever realise you did that and it will look fine
  23. Bedford
    Excellent tutorial Wayne. The only thing I would add is that I bend a piece of brass wire that will fit through the holes in the dead eyes into a U shape such that I can feed it through a hole in the bottom dead eye and another in the top dead eye. This holds them all at the same height when you are setting the length of the shroud. Do it with the dead eyes the wrong way up so the single hole is at the top on the shroud table and the bottom on the shroud, ie two holes closest together, that way you only need a single brass wire to locate, if you try and do it with the dead eyes in the correct orientation you need two brass wires twisted together and exactly aligned to hold both dead eyes by two holes to stop them rotating as you apply tension. Remember when bending the brass wire that when you rotate the dead eyes back to their correct orientation the gap between the two dead eyes will increas marginally. Make sense ? As for building a pinnace, all I can say is when telling your pupils, and friends for that matter, be very very concise with your pronounciation.
  24. Bedford
    I was going to mention the rigging "FUZZIES" because I could see it in the photo. The diluted glue sounds good to fix what is there. I use bees wax and run all cord through it before attaching to the ship. It works quite well. I even had black wax for my first build to give that tarred effect to the standing rigging but have not seen it available since. I tend to knead it first to soften it and then wrap it around the cord and squeeze hard whle drawing the cord through it. Gee Robbyn, all the tips that are comming to mind now that you have started rigging, sorry I didn't think of them before. I have been told to wet all the cord and hang it out to dry with weights on it to take any stretch out of it but I only did that on my second build and since the first one, "launched" in '97 has not sagged yet I have not bothered on subsequent builds. The wax or something simmilar is really recommended though to defeat the fuzzies, not candle wax though, you need something pure and acid free. As for the fuse wire, yes it has become obsolete here too, no fuses in any house built in at least the last 15 years or more. Being an electrical fitter I have a reasonable amount of it lying around that I was going to throw out until I discovered its usefulness in ships. It is not copper, it is a resistance wire which has a shiny coating and is a single strand. I would imagine there are still old houses in the US with fuses, maybe ask a sparkie. (electrician) but I would think a very fine galvanised tie wire would work the same way. For that matter you could use a brass wire and a product I have seen on here but can't remember the name but it blackens brass.
  25. Bedford
    Talking of securing blocks to masts etc. It's too late for this build but you can do it with subsequent builds. I buy household fuse wire and wrap it losely around something outside and leave it there to weather. I gets very dull and rough looking. I use this as a faux rope, I bend a length of it into half then twist it together to form a rope leaving a small loop at the start to attach to the mast etc. This then wraps around the block and back onto itself with another twist. I find it perfectly acceptable to look at and very easy to do. Not sure if the weathering process can be accelerated with heat or something but even if you use shiny and new, it will dull off in time. Steve

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