HMS Pegasus 1776 by Moonbug - Amati Models - 1:64

[Moonbug]

  Hey Bob - my lathe is their most basic, the Proxxon DB250 - pretty common in these parts I think. It’s relatively inexpensive and works well for the basic stuff.  I do have the three jaw chuck adapter which is super handy.  
   I also have the Proxxon Jig saw which is pretty good. 

[Moonbug]

I realize it's been quite some time since I've been active on here. I've had a handful of business trips and a couple of not-business trips, so limited opportunities to work in the shipyard for the last month or so.  That said, I've still been plugging away at the yards. All the yards have been created and I'm not working on the metal bits (hooks & hoops, etc) before I move on to the blocks and fittings.

 

 

[Moonbug]

   Working on the hardware for the yards. The stunsail irons support the stunsail booms on the yards and sit at a 45 degree angle forward. There is an iron on the end of the yard then another support a few feet inboard on the yard.  I started by squaring off a brass piece.  The circular part of the support comes from small relatively thick brass washers that I filed down. To change the diameter of the circle, I snip the washer, tighten the diameter, then silver solder it to the square support. The pieces are trimmed after soldering, but left a bit long until I get the necessary specs.

 

 

 

The straps are made from extra flat strips of brass lengthened and shaped.  I filed the ends of the support squares to round them slightly so they'd fit flush against the straps.  It was actually quite difficult to line them up properly to solder.

 

 

 

 

  Similar process for the other braces along the yard. Flat brass pieces are shaped and soldered to the circles. Everything is sanded and smoothed then all the pieces are blackened.

 

 

 

 

 Finally, the stunsail irons are mounted on the yards with PVA glue. The strips are black card stock also glued with PVA.

 

 

 

 Also - an interesting milestone.  The yard picture above marks my 1,000th photo for this log / build.

[Knocklouder]

A picture is worth a thousand words, thank you so much for all those words  .  About the Fire boom I  tryed for several hrs yesterday to find an answer for you, but I can't

 But if I were to guess,  it was  stowed by the ships boat, with the spare masts.,just a guess.

  Thank you for all your pictures,  I for one enjoy them immensely ,Thank you.

Bob M.

Edited August 13, 2024 by Knocklouder

[Moonbug]

Hey everyone, remember me?

 

It’s been a heck of a year, but I’m finally able to get back in the ship yard.  Updates will be forthcoming. 

[Moonbug]

Still plugging away on the yard irons and other accouterments. I decided I didn't like the look of the black card stock for the stunsail irons. After trying a few different things, I finally settled on a unique solution.  I pulled out some of my electrician stuff, and found shrink wrap. I picked out a size that was a slightly larger diameter than my stunsail, then sliced off thing pieces.

 

 

 

The cool thing about shrink wrap of course, is that it shrinks.  So after fitting it loosely over the irons, you just run a lighter across it lightly a few times and it shrinks tightly to size.

 

 

And with that, I wrapped up the yards.  Next up, adding the blocks and starting the running rigging in earnest. 

 

[Knocklouder]

Great to see you back 😀.  Looking forward to seeing your  rigging.!!

Bob  M.     

[Moonbug]

I flirted with the idea of fitting out all the blocks on all the yards before moving on to the running rigging - but after doing that with the irons etc, I found it a little too tedious.  I enjoy the running rigging a lot, so I've decided to fit each yard that I intend to mount starting fore and working my way aft, then from bottom to top. This is essentially the order of the FFM.  I will say preemptively that I am taking a couple of (what some might consider) shortcuts primarily due to the scale.  I'm replacing some of the "eyes" with single blocks. For example, the jib guys. I simply cannot find a material or way to make thimbles that small and they end up looking sloppy. Similarly, these as well as the clueline blocks are supposed to be stropped with served line and a eye on each end that are lashed together.  At this scale, trying to use eyes lashed together looks like a clumpy mess, so instead I'm just strapping them to the yard, as (in my opinion) the cleaner appearance is a fine tradeoff of the bit of lost accuracy.  But I wanted to note those changes for those who may be working off this build looking for accuracy. I did try to maintain as much accuracy as possible throughout the rest of the spritsail however.

 

I started fitting out the Spritsail yard with the halliard where I did keep the served line eye (no thimble) using .30mm line. I started by looping the eye, measuring out the length of the strop then two more eyes that are lashed together. 

 

 

 

 

 

As I mentioned above, the clueline blocks and strops as well as the jib guy pendant blocks (all shown in place below) are all strapped to the yard without using eyes. The clue line blocks are 3.5mm blocks and the jib guy blocks are 3mm. From there I hung the stirrups which are 2" tarred lines that scale out to .25mm. They stirrups are wrapped around the yard 3 times with an eye at the bottom to hold the horses. Once again, I'm using an eye but no thimble. Once the stirrups are hung, I coated them with diluted white glue and let them hang to dry and stiffen a bit. 

 

 

 

Yard lifts, yard standing lifts, and yard brace pendants are added as well. There is a change here as well - though the yard sling shows a block here, I ended up switching to a deadeye - which I'll explain a bit later. Meanwhile, the horses are added - 2.5" lines which translate to .30mm - using an eye splice at each end that slips over the ends of the yard braced on the stop cleats. The inside of the horses are wrapped agains the inside stirrup. I measured everything using one of my crew members as a guide. 

 

  

 

Next up - spritsail yard installation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 2 by Moonbug

[Barbossa]

Hi Bug, 

Nice work (as always).

It is a pleasure to follow your progress as I like the way you combine evident explanations with pleasant photos.

Non native english speakers ( such as I ) are in debt.

Keep up the good work and a happy 2025 !

[Thukydides]

Nice job on the tiny served eyes. They are not easy to make look that good.

[Moonbug]

Thanks very much Christian and Daniel, I appreciate the look in and comments.  That's quite a compliment Christian, thank you.

 

Daniel - The smaller served eyes are a challenge indeed.  I like to whisk by them quickly with a lighter to clean up any frays. The Gutermann poly thread I use to make my rope doesn't produce much in the way of frays, but a few. The down side is that if you don't perfect your method and timing with the lighter, the whole thing will go up in a ball of flame very quickly - ruining the time spent before you know it!

 

Happy 2025 to you both as well!

[Moonbug]

Rigging the Spritsail yard begins with the sling. The sling is about an18' length of 3.5 inch served line, which translates at 1:64 to a .45mm diameter line and I used about 70mm for the full length. In this case it is important for authenticity to keep the eyes and wraps as they are imminently visible on the ship. I started with the eye on one end, looped the length under the yard inside the two sling cleats, over the bowsprit, down under the yard on the opposite side (once again staying inside the cleats, then back over the bowsprit to pass through the eye and seize to itself. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both ends are again seized together to tighten the grip on the yard. Also, obviously important to orient the spritsail yard with the halliard eye facing forward. The yard is still pretty loose at this point, which is necessary to allow for movement during the rest of the rigging process. 

The next step is the rigging the sling with the halliard blocks and strops. The two blocks are 7" (3mm) of which one contains an eye and both contain hooks. One end attaches to the eyebolt under the bowsprit cap and the other to the halliard on the yard. The standard rigging setup attaches the blocks then reaches back to the first starboard timber head.

 

 

 

 

From here, I rigged the spritsail yard fully then went back to and took images of each of the steps in the process. 

The spritsail standing lifts are 2.5" (3 mm scaled) lines that run from about the third quarter of the yard to the bowsprit cap. According to the FFM, the majority of the time these are attached to the cap with two sets of eyes/thimbles that are strapped together with a laniard providing flexibility.  However, because of my issues with thimbles, I'm using an alternate method and instead pulling them together with small deadeyes. There is some evidence of this method in Lees' The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War on page 100, so I don't feel as though I'm completely abandoning accuracy altogether.

 

 

 

Note here (as with all the rest of this rigging) that I'm leaving all of the lashings and ends loose until later when I'll properly situate the yard, tighten all the rigging, and tie off all the loose ends. 

 

The yard lifts are 2" (.25 mm scaled) lines that begin with eye splices that are looped over the end of the yard to the horses then run forward through the thimbles at the end of the jib boom and back down aft and belay to the bollard timber heads.

 

 

 

 

The brace pendants are long strops that are eye spliced around the yards at the stop cleats then fitted with 9" blocks (3.5 mm at scale) at their ends. The pendants help secure the yard braces which are quite long and run up the fore mast and back down to the ship and help control the turning of the yard. The center of the braces hitch around the fore stay just below the most. Each end runs down through the pendant, then back up through the inner sheeves of the outer most double block just under the fore top. They then travel down toward the deck and belay at the timber head near the belfry. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Jib Guy Falls start with two 8" blocks (I'm sticking with 3.5 mm here because they're easier to manipulate) on of which is hooked into an eyebolt on the cathead. The 1.5" (.15 mm) fall line is belayed to a timberhead at the fo'csle and runs through the two blocks in the usual way securing them.  Another .25 mm line then runs from the outer block up through the jib guy (remember I'm using single block instead of a thimble) to loop around the end of the jib boom then back down the other side of the ship mirroring the blocks and fall line on the other side. 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, the jib traveler outhaul is spliced to the ring of the jib traveler and runs up into the sheeve at the end of the jib boom just under the triple block (or triple thimble if you rigged that) and down back aft to belay to a suitable timberhead on the starboard side. It's worth noting here than when I installed the jib traveler, I put the dang ring on the inside of the jib stay and hook, so I had to remove it, realign it, and re-rig the jib boom. Something to avoid for others. I'll make an edit note of this in my previous post (#340) regarding the traveler.

 

 

 

 

And with that, the Spritsail Yard is rigged to the Peg. As I mentioned, all the ends are still loose so they can be adjusted.  This will also come in handy if I need to make any adjustments when the fore main yards go in and I need to avoid any potential fouling of lines.

 

 

 

 

 

[Moonbug]

Adding all of the accouterments to the lower yards is another classic example of "not very many photos for quite a bit of work."   It's well documented in a number of places, but the fore and main lower yards are the same and are both affixed with the following blocks according to the FFM.

 

Jeer Block - 1 x 20" (8 mm) single block double stropped

Quarter Blocks - 2 x 14" (5.5mm) single

Clueline Blocks - 2 x 9" (3.5mm) single

Tricing Line Blocks - 4 x 6" (2.5mm) single

Buntline Blocks - 4 x 8" (3mm) single

Leechline Blocks - 2 x 7" (2.8 - I went with 3mm) single

Yard Tackle Blocks - 2 x 15" (6mm) Violin blocks

Brace Blocks - 2 x 8" (3mm) single

Topsail Sheet Blocks & Lift blocks - 2 x 12" (4.5mm) Shoulder blocks with 2 x 9" (3.5mm) seized to them

 

 

 

I'll note here that I did permit myself a couple of "shortcuts" as I did with the spritsail - in that I did not use served line for the inner blocks only the yard tackles and brace pendants.  As I both read and discovered on my own, order ends up being pretty important here. I started in the middle with the Jeer, quarter, and inside clueline blocks. I'll also say that getting the ties and knots clean at this scale is a little challenging as well.  The Jeers are .50mm line, the quarters are .40mm line and the inside cluelines are .30mm.  As show the quarter blocks are snug inside the cleats and the cluelines are just outside.

 

 

Next up for me were the smaller inside and outside tricing lines, for which I used .15mm line. I did these next so that they would give me a good frame of reference in terms of distance. Buntline blocks were up next using .25mm line - same for the leechline blocks. As noted above, these should be slightly smaller than the buntline blocks, but to such a small degree that it wouldn't be noticeable at this scale - so I used the same size. Note that the tricing lines face aftward while the bunt and leech blocks face up.

 

 

 

The stirrups and horses are up next these need to be placed as they fit against the outer cleats inboard of the yards, braces, and topsail sheets. The stirrups are 3.5" (.45mm) and the horses are 2.5" (.35mm) both rigged the same as the spritsail yard with the stirrups wrapped three times around the yard and the horses seized at the ends and running through the stirrups.  As with the spritsail, I did not use eyes here only seized loops. I forgot to take a picture of it - but after mounting the stirrups and horses I lathered them with diluted white glue, hung clips on them, then let them dry the same way I did with the spritsail yard.

 

 

Yard tackles are .50mm served line that end in the violin blocks. I had premade violin blocks for the fore yard, but connected and sanded to single blocks to create a violin for the main yard. Lees suggests that the Yard pendants are about 13' while the brace pendants (ending in a single block) are about 14-18'.  I have to be honest here - I basically eyeballed them just making sure that the brace pendant was a bit longer.

 

 

Both pendants are seized around the yard at the end cleats with the yard tackle inboard of the brace pendant. Outboard of those are the topsail sheet block and lift block combo.  The topsail is a shoulder block, which is a typical single but carefully sanded with a pin file to create this 'notch' shape. The Lift block is then seized above it.  

 

 

As mentioned, the main yard is rigged the same as the fore yard. Both now ready for rigging to the Peg.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 12 hours ago by Moonbug

[Thukydides]

Looking great. Yes getting the knots right on all of these tiny blocks can be very fiddly.