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 -

 

 

[JLong]

Continuing to pre-rig the Fair American model ship.

 

Before the shrouds are rigged and in the way, I want to get as much on the masts and hull as I can.  There will be sails needing additional halyards, so I'm attaching those now.

 

The jib and main stay sails are first on the list....

For the stay sail halyard, I'll need a single block on an eye mounted under the main top....just a small one...

I bend these by hand using the ultra fine long needle nose pliers: wrapping annealed wire around the very end of the pliers, then close the eye and then bend the stem straight.

Trying to attach a block once the eye is in place will be near impossible to reach, so I'm attaching it to the eye first. 

Then it gets glued under the top, on one of the cross trees.

I moved on to the fore and main burton tackle pendants.  Based on the plans and estimating how much length needed to go around the mast head, plus some extra. I wrote the dimensions for Fore on top and Main under.

I used the serving machine to make the .030in rope needed. I'm now using the fine black thread for serving, but I still struggle to make satisfactory eyes without them looking bulky, like the right one.

After measuring lengths and taping in place, I'll cross over to form a middle eye, add some CA glue and 'tack' to each other. Then follow with seizing with fine thread.

The result, again, isn't as neat as I'd ideally like, but it'll have to do. I'm figuring this out as I go, with no clear instructions on how to do this work. 

When slipping over the top mast, I ran into a problem with the fore burton tackle. the chocks.  They were just wide enough to give me trouble sliding the eye down. I REALLY had to work on it, without breaking anything, but I got it down.  Used reverse tweezers to hang the ends so they dangle more naturally.

They're on there now!

Before I do the main lower shrouds, I'm going to need to have access to the gaff and main boom for the spanker sheet now. The throat halyard is in a particularly tight spot. I made a very crude drawing of what I'll need:  A block on the gaff jaws, and under the main top, a runner to another single block, with starting tackle for a double block attached to an eyebolt on deck, then belayed to the pin rail. Lots of lengths to get right, so I make sure to add in extra, just in case.

You'll remember from several posts back, about how I attach the running and standing rope end (tan and black respectively) to the same block. The reason is the running end has to START on this block and go down; the rope needs to be attached to the block ahead of time. 

Now I can feed it through the eye made in the gaff jaws for hauling (halyard) up the mast. I'll need to figure out how to do a parrel of some kind later on, because obviously the instructions make no mention of one at all.

Seizing the standing rope end over itself with a few turns, then trim close. 

That's as clean a job as I can manage. 

And on the after end of the main top, I added a single 4mm block, similar to the stay sail halyard block. This one was tied to the trestle tree and trimmed close.

Still working on halyards, and the burton tackle pendants had to attach/hook somewhere on the top. I made a crude schematic for that too.

Again, I won't easily be able to access or attach these blocks later on, so I'm making the blocks with running ends, and attaching to eye bolts and attaching the eye bolts to the top now.

I won't let the running end of the halyard just hang there, so as with other rigging, I'm coiling it up and labeling with painters tape for later.

Here is the finished result. You can see the empty eye bolts for the burton tackle ready to be hooked later.

These details are not shown in the spar plan, so I'm discovering these as I go. 

 

So it may not look like a ton, but making all the blocks takes time. Plus double checking the measurements and looking at books and the Niagara plans as a guide of how rigging is done takes time. These details can't be rushed.  I realize much of what I'm doing is probably not historically accurate, but rather made-to-work-for-me. 

 

Do other modelers have this much trouble knowing where everything goes, or is it just experience?  As a model ship newbie, I'd love to hear how others have faired.

 

Thanks for reading along.

 

- Jason -

[ERS Rich]

On 11/30/2025 at 10:12 PM, JLong said:

Do other modelers have this much trouble knowing where everything goes, or is it just experience?  As a model ship newbie, I'd love to hear how others have faired.

 

The short answer, Yes! You are doing good work!  At some point, something will be missed, and it will be a pain to add it.

 

My view is do your best, if something isn’t “historically accurate”, no big deal, it won’t be noticed by family and friends who admire your ship.

 

-Rich

[Knocklouder]

I am in agreement  with Rich, yep you might miss  something, it does get easier, but you always seem to miss something. 

  I would get yourself  some needle threaders like the use for beading, works slick for rigging,  much easier to poke a wire through the little holes then floppies ropes. 

 Great work,   

Bob  M.

[dvm27]

Rigging is like a chess match. You need to think 2 or 3 moves ahead. At full size, many of these rigging tasks are easy as humans can actually move nimbly around the rigging. At our scales, fingers are not nearly as nimble getting into these tiny spaces. On my current fully rigged three masted ship of war I am trying to pre-rig all the collars, blocks etc. that I can, but I'm sure I'll forget some. Adding sails almost doubles the amount of lines so your degree of difficulty is even higher. Some highly motivated modelers actually work out every line, its standing portion and falls before rigging in a neat little book. But that ain't me.

 

Great job so far Jason!