Fair American by JLong - Model Shipways - 1:48

[JLong]

More progress on the Bowsprit of the Fair American:

 

Now that the Gammoning is done, I've moved onto the Bobstay and shrouds. First I needed an eyebolt on each side of the bow stem. 

Just using some annealed steel wire to make little eyes. Once you get the hang of how to make these with the needle nose pliers, its not so bad.

I apparently forgot to mount this years ago, so I'm adding it now.  I also made hooks that will 'hook' the eyes for the shrouds.

The bobstay will be the first to be rigged. I made a long length of .018 rope, and served it, leaving the ends long so I have enough to trim and mount later. I have a bag of deadeyes waiting, so this is the first one, since i mounted the fore and main deadeyes to the channels and chain plates years ago.

 

Hard to see, but I wrapped the deadeye and tacked the ends close with CA glue, making sure to fold the ends over each other. 

Once they were tacked, I made a makeshift throat seizing with fine thread, then added two more short seizings mid way and at the end of the rope.

Afterwards, the thread gets trimmed close with a razor blade.

As shown in the plans, I made a little lanyard spacing tool to go through the hole in two deadeyes for a consistent distance every time. I measured the spacing from the plans a close as I could.

The other end gets fed through the hole in the bow stem (which I had also forgotten to drill until now), then back over itself to form an eye. I pulled this tight, and tacked with CA glue and pinched with tweezers to hold until it dried. Once tacked, finished seizing with fine thread and later trimmed.

For the lanyard, I made a sort-of figure 8 knot, as per the instructions, but added an additional knot so it wouldn't pull through the hole. I'm using .012in tan rope for the lanyard.

After the lanyard is reeved, using tweezers to add some positive tension, while I tacked some glue on the bottom side of the rope to keep it from unraveling. 

From Petersson's book: Rigging Period Model Ships, it has this really drawing of the deadeyes. I am using this as a guide for how I'm going to do mine.

So, after feeding above the deadeye, I made a few turns of the running end of the lanyard, CA glue tacked to stay in place, then seized the very end with black thread. Again, using tweezers to hold the rope in place until I'm ready to trim.

It makes a very nice little lanyard. I prefer the tan rope to the black for this part, and I like the contrast it creates. 

Now for the shrouds, I added hooks to the ends to the eyes mentioned earlier. 

I have to somewhat guess at the approximate space for the deadeyes to go, since the plans show only a side view, but it has some lateral orientation, so its actually longer than is shown.  

As before, once I had the deadeye seized in, I have the whole shroud ready.

Starting the lanyard and using tweezers to hold in tension while I tack with CA Glue on the underside.

And finishing the lanyard with a few turns, to make it look all nice. 

When I repeated on the port side, it must have been an 3/16" longer, and the deadeye on bowsprit shroud must have been a little twisted higher, when seized: the port shroud is higher and longer than the starboard. Its not horribly obvious, but and obvious mistake on my part. I would likely have been whipped for this, back in the old days but luckily this vessel will not actually be put to sea. 

As long as you don't look down onto the ship from 3ft above the fore mast, you can't see it. 

 

I have a lot of other details to add to the ship to get it rigged, so I will move on.

 

More pictures of progress soon.

 

- Jason -