Henry Grace a Dieu (Great Harry) by Louie da fly - FINISHED - Scale 1:200 - Repaired after over 50 yrs of neglect

[Louie da fly]

I'm slowly getting into the rigging, mostly using as my guide Anderson's The Rigging of Ships in the Days of the Spritsail Topmast, which, though it mainly deals with ships of 50-100 years later than mine, still has a lot of info that is relevant, and is often the only source apart from Mondfeld and contemporary illustrations.

 

Sheesh! So much to learn. My brain hurts. But if I take it slowly, item by item I expect by the end of it I may have advanced from a state of utter confusion to one of relative ignorance.

 

Here's Anderson's diagram of the rigging of the clew of the courses.

 

 

And here is what I've done. From the top, clewline block, tack and sheet block.

 

 

Note at 1:200 making actual blocks is basically impossible, so I've compromised with hearts which are simpler but carry out a similar function.

 

This was really difficult to put together and for the next three course clews I'm thinking of working out a streamlined method which ends up with the same result.

 

Steven

[druxey]

Rigging taken a whole is very daunting. But, as you say, line by line it ins't so awful. looking good so far!

[Louie da fly]

Thanks for all the likes.

 

Druxey, currently the main problem is getting my head around how everything fits together, and that's just for the courses. SO many lines and blocks, and I'm just hoping I don't paint myself into a corner, forgetting to put something in at the right time and having to somehow squeeze it on later.

 

Oh, well, back to Anderson again. I think the lifts are the next thing to look at. Pretty sure I've worked the halyards/tyes out. 

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

Ok, I've fixed up the mainyard.

 

I was just pushing a needle through one of the blocks to make sure the mainsheet would pass through, and the thread that held it to the yard broke. Though most of the existing blocks are made of wood, this block is one of the few I made by wadding up cotton thread with glue to make a sort of ball, and pushing a needle through to make a hole in the centre.

 

 

 

I had the choice of making a new one - either of wood or more balled up cotton (which I'd rather not do, as I'd like to keep as much of the original build as possible) or somehow replace the supporting thread. After a bit of thought inspiration struck. Thread through the body of the block (it's just cotton after all) and sew it on, through the thread that's already wound round the yard.

 

 

 

Note also I've added the blocks for the topsail sheets and the mainyard lifts.

 

The picture below gives you some idea of how I've been making my wooden blocks - drill a hole in a bit of wood the right thickness, then carve around the hole and sand smooth, finally cutting the block off the end of the bit of wood.

 

 

And here is the main course being sewn onto the yard. As I mentioned earlier, I'm following my original procedure of using a continuous thread, rather than separate robands (just too difficult at this scale). 

 

 

 

And complete - very long and laborious - I had to undo my stitches time after time, and the loop in the thread kept catching on things over and over again .

 

 

Now the old, brown, moth-eaten forecourse being separated from its yard. I had to remove quite a bit of fabric and thread that had inadvertently been glued to the yard.

 

 

Once I'd done that I discovered a break in the yard, so I had to repair it - just a matter of gluing up the break and holding it still until the glue dried.

 

And now, ready to begin sewing the sail to the yard. Note, the blocks for the topsail sheet are already there, but I do still need to add the blocks for the foreyard lifts.

 

 

This rigging stuff hurts my brain. I'm really not very good with getting a gestalt view of how it all works and inter-relates, and I have to plod through the procedure little bit by little bit - often going over and over the text to make sure I'd really got it. Slow, small steps.

 

Steven

 

 

Edited June 23, 2021 by Louie da fly

[druxey]

The teenaged version of you had done a very neat job of the original fore course, including the bonnet. The new robands look as if they are separate items rather than a continuous spiral. Nice!

[Louie da fly]

The course and the bonnet in the original were made from a single piece of fabric. The transition between them was done by pulling a number of threads out at the join.

 

It did seem to work, but this time I've made them separately and laced them together.

 

The "robands" were done the same way both times. The thread joining them is at the back of the yard.

 

Steven

[BANYAN]

Looks good Steven, and you handed me an 'English' lesson - had no idea what gestalt view [point] was, but am now the wiser  - from the internet:

Gestalt theory emphasizes that the whole of anything is greater than its parts. That is, the attributes of the whole are not deducible from analysis of the parts in isolation. The word Gestalt is used in modern German to mean the way a thing has been “placed,” or “put together.” 

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

Well, that's given me a lesson in German - I'd been thinking gestalt meant "the whole" of something (like holistic).

 

But of course, "whole" is ganze, isn't it? (as in the famous Richard Tauber song "Dein ist mein ganzen Herz" (Yours is my whole heart) or the even more famous "Diesem Kuss der ganzen Welt" (This kiss to the whole world) from Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

 

Druxey, this way of doing the robands is much easier and quicker than doing it properly, and I have the excuse that I did it that way before. Here you can see it from the back. The "joining thread isn't really all that obvious unless you look at it close up.

 

 

 

 

Steven

[Baker]

Very nice work. Especially on this scale.

Rigging these ships....  indeed, a complicated thing   

 

Gestald ( with a "d" on the end, same pronunciation).  Is Flemish

Ik heb mijn paard gestald   /    i put my horse in the stable 

 

Kompliziert 😉

 

[Louie da fly]

Latest activity;

 

I realised I was getting a bit ahead of myself - I should be dealing with the standing rigging before I put the spars, sails and running rigging on. So, first things first - add ratlines to the fore-shrouds on the port side of the model. Used the technique I learned on MSW for spacing the ratlines, though I'm gluing the ratlines on instead of using clove hitches (2 reasons - this is the way I did it back in the day, and the difficulties of tying clove hitches at 1:200 scale).

 

 

 

More to come, and I'll tidy it all up when all the ratlines are in place.

 

In the meantime I'm also getting on with fixing up the old yards. Here are the new blocks to be added to the fore-yard for the lifts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

About to remove the old main topsail from its yard, with the new one ready to be added.

 

The yard with the sail removed. Unfortunately the yard-arm broke off and had to be re-glued on. Seems to happen every time I remove a sail from a yard.

 

 

And the fore-yard with the new blocks added.

 

 

Note the loose ends from the strops. Unfortunately, when I trimmed these off, I also trimmed off one of the blocks and had to do it again. 

 

Fore-yard and main topsail yard all cleaned up and ready to go.

 

 

I've also removed the "parrel truck" from the main topsail yard for future re-use. (When I first built the ship I had no idea how a parrel truck worked, so I made something out of sewing cotton that resembled the one in the picture I was working from.)

 

Steven

 

Edited June 26, 2021 by Louie da fly

[BANYAN]

The completed  (repaired) model will look great with her new suite of sails Steven, you are managing to add some significant detail while remaining true to your very early efforts.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Rodolfo Bigoni]

Congratulations! You've done a super work, even considering that repairing is more difficult than starting from the beginning.

[Louie da fly]

Thanks everybody for the likes and encouraging comments.

 

In the process of gluing the ratlines onto the port side foreshrouds, I realised the technique I used has its drawbacks - the glue not only sticks the ratlines to the shrouds, but also the paper backing. I had to gently prize the backing off before I could go on. Then I stuck transparent sticky tape over the paper so the problem wouldn't recur. Learn something new every day . . . but making steady progress. I hope to have it all done by the next post.

 

 

I was re-using the old fore yard - I only discovered had a break in it after I'd almost completely finished attaching the sail.

 

I had to take the sail off, glue the yard back together (only took three attempts before I had success - ended up slopping CA on the join, as PVA didn't give the join enough firmness) and fix the sail back on.

 

 

And the re-used Main topsail yard also had a break - the yardarm snapped off -  also discovered late. Had to pull it apart three times to fix it - ended up fishing the yardarm to the yard with a sliver of bamboo (much stronger than mere wood). Seen from the front - you can see the broken arm with its fish at the right.

 

 

 

 

And from behind

 

 

 

 

And complete, seen from behind - sorry about the crappy photo.

 

 

 

 

 

And from the front.

 

 

 

A little frustrating but slow and steady progress.

 

Steven

Edited July 4, 2021 by Louie da fly

[egkb]

Nice Fix Steven ... Reading what you said about having to repeat the fix reminded me of a time many years ago when I built plastic sailing ship kits.. I had one completed when my small doggie managed to knock part of the jib boom off.. I super glued it back in place but had to hand hold the piece.. 30 seconds later I went 'Ta Da', and whipped my hand away.. Yup! whole model was stuck to my fingers and ended up on the floor .. Back out with the Super glue! .. Am not a little embarrassed to admit I did another 'Ta Da' but  this time my finger was glued to a stray piece of rigging and the build was back on the floor ..  needless to say I wasn't smiling 🤣 (I can now though)  .. 

 

All The Best

 

Eamonn

[Louie da fly]

1 hour ago, egkb said:

Am not a little embarrassed to admit I did another 'Ta Da' but  this time my finger was glued to a stray piece of rigging and the build was back on the floor ..  needless to say I wasn't smiling 🤣 (I can now though)  .. 

 

Aaargh!

[BANYAN]

Nice recovery and fix Steven, these frustrations are sometime so close to making you want to .....

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

Well, the aliens have visited again. Here's the main topsail yard - with the old sail on it and the new sail ready to be added:

 

 

And here is the yard off the sail and being cleaned up.

 

 

And fully cleaned up, ready to go (it's the upper one)

 

 

And I got ready to put the new sail on the yard last night, and could I find the yard? Of course not! The aliens had taken it. I've turned the workshop over, taken everything off the desk and swept it down, searched under the desk with a flashlight, swept up everything that may have fallen underneath - NOTHING!

 

I really don't want to make a new yard to replace the old one - one of my main goals in restoring the ship is to keep as much of the original as possible. But where is the rotten thing? The only other explanation I can think of is that I must have put it in a safe place. Which means it'll be found when they go through all my effects after I'm dead . . .

 

In the meantime, every now and then I feel I have to take my hat off to my seventeen-year-old self. I'd thought I'd made the tiny (1mm) blocks by rolling up cotton thread into a ball and gluing it together and shoving a pin through it when it was dry to make the hole for the thread to go through. I did do that with a couple of them, but almost all turn out to have been made of wood, presumably the way I'm doing it now. And if anything, they're even finer than the ones I'm making today!

 

 

(The circular thing on the left is a parrel truck I made back in the day just out of cotton thread - I have no idea how I did it.)

 

Steven

 

 

 

 

[Baker]

5 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

The only other explanation I can think of is that I must have put it in a safe place. Which means it'll be found when they go through all my effects after I'm dead . . .

I have the same problem.
You have no idea what all I've put away too safe, and find no more.

 

Ver nice work, now (and 50 years ago) 👍

[egkb]

Dang Aliens !! 🙄

 

Eamonn 

[Farbror Fartyg]

10 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

 The only other explanation I can think of is that I must have put it in a safe place. Which means it'll be found when they go through all my effects after I'm dead . . .

"I'll make sure to always put it in the same place, so I'll know where to find it" = it's behind the telly.

 

"I had it just a second ago ..." = it will never be recovered. Quantum effects have sent it into a black hole.

 

"I'll put this away to work on it later." = If you sacrifice to all the Gods of the underworld, the item in question MAY be in one piece/the same place when you go to retrieve it.

 

/Sam

[Louie da fly]

Well, as Effie in the TV series Acropolis Now would say - "How embarrassment!" 

 

No alien abduction - just a senior moment on my part. I had the yard all the time, but the fact that I'd cut the topsail too big (to allow for the sail to "belly") meant it didn't line up with the yard, so I thought it must be for another sail. Going back to the original picture I'm working from sorted that out, and I finally worked out what went with what. 

 

One problem I've been hitting is that the threads holding the old blocks to the yards have got brittle over the last fifty-plus years, so they often fall off and have to be re-attached - which in turn involves stripping the strop off the block and doing it all again. Also, so far I've only had one existing yard that didn't have a break in it - and this one is no exception. So I had to fish the yard at the very end. (See below - the fish is at the right-hand end)

 

So here's the yard, with all the blocks attached. First with the new strops uncut

 

 

and trimmed to length

 

 

Sail with yard

 

 

And "robands" in place holding the sail to the yard. From the back

 

 

And from the front. 

 

 

Now I can go ahead with the next part of the build. Sigh.

 

Steven

[mtaylor]

Looks good and don't feel bad about the "oh rats" moment, Steven.  We all have them and usually a red mark on our face from the facepalm.

[BANYAN]

Nice work Steven.  You should add a ruler to one of the shots to remind us just how small this work is.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

  Steven, your build log is a tonic since I think back to my 14 year old self trying to tackle the first edition of the Billings Wasa in 1:100 ... The solutions you show are instructive, as well as many ideas and techniques seen in other builds.  I'm likely to incorporate many forum methods over the winter in what will be the best 'compromise' build of my dusted-off project - pictured in a log I started after finding MSW.  I'm happy to consider this sort of work as an art form one learns as one goes.

 

Fair weather !    Johnny

[Louie da fly]

Thanks everybody.

 

Pat, I usually add a matchstick (the wooden one, not the pastry)

 

    

 

to the picture for scale, as a lot of people (me) have trouble with mm or inches, and matches seem to be a standard size throughout the world, unlike coins etc.

 

Working on the topgallants next. As far as I can remember, this (the Anthony Roll of 1545) is the earliest representation of ships with topgallants.

 

 

Steven

 

 

 

 

Edited July 15, 2021 by Louie da fly

[Louie da fly]

Actually, Jean Jolivet's map of Normandy of the same year also shows a ship (in this case a galleon) with a topgallant, but in this case only on the main mast.

 

 

[Edit] And are those reef points on the forecourse? At a time when bonnets were all the go? Hmmm . . . [/Edit]

 

Steven

Edited July 16, 2021 by Louie da fly

[Old Collingwood]

Have you asked them over at the official  Mary Rose  site   for  details  of her sister ship.

 

OC.

 

https://maryrose.org/

[Louie da fly]

1 hour ago, Old Collingwood said:

Have you asked them over at the official  Mary Rose  site   for  details  of her sister ship.

To be honest, it never occurred to me.

 

But really, my main concentration is on restoring the model I built way back then, which was based on the theoretical reconstruction in Björn Landström's book The Ship,  published before the Mary Rose discoveries. I admit I haven't been consistent with this - I've changed things and added things reflecting my current state of knowledge, but mostly I've tried to keep it as close as I can to the original idea rather than to bring it up to date.

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

And on to the topgallants.

 

For a change, the main topgallant yard didn't break while I was working on it. I think that's the only one that hasn't, so far. And (just for Pat ), a matchstick for comparison.

 

Front view:

 

 

And rear view. Sewing on the "robands" is in progress. If you look carefully you can see the blocks for the lifts at the yardarms and for the clewlines attached to the yard. The fuzzy thing in the middle is the parrel truck, made entirely of cotton thread way back when I was 17 and had no idea what they were or how they worked. And at the lower corners of the sail, the blocks for the clewlines. The sheets will be added later, when everything is ready to be put in place. 

 

 

And complete.

 

 

Fore topgallant:

 

I started putting the blocks on for the lifts and - surprise! surprise! the yard broke. But being experienced at this kind of thing now, I added a fish (the lighter coloured strip attached to the yardarm)

 

 

And glued it back together

 

 

Once that's dry and secure, I'll trim it to shape and add the blocks for the clewlines. Then sew the sail to the yard.

 

Very slow and fiddly, but the result is worth the time and trouble.

 

This is the last of the square sails, and all the yards for the lateens are newly made, so I shouldn't have problems with them breaking because of age and brittleness. 

 

Steven

 

 

 

 

[BANYAN]

Thanks Steven - awfully big matches you have (are they the BBQ long ones?)    

 

Seriously though, you are making great progress and those sails look great.

 

cheers

 

Pat