first time rigging - tools and books suggestions

[Frank Burroughs]

I am only rigging the Charles W. Morgan plastic model kit now.  I am doing the Cutty Sark and USS Constitution 1/96 models this Winter.  Rigging has butterflies in my stomach!  How do you tie those little knots?  How do you keep the mast from bending?  And so on.  I have mild cerebral palsy.  My hands work well most times.

are these tools a good investment for both plastic and wood kits of sail and early steam ships?

What books teach you the simple how to rig and what books show you what rigging looks like?

[Jaager]

9 minutes ago, Frank Burroughs said:

are these tools a good investment

I do not see that these tools would be of much use.  I advise giving them a pass.

 

Tools and investment are two words that do not belong together.  If you could get a Jim tablesaw with all of its accessories into England, you could probably sell it for what you paid for it.  Consider most any other tool an expense.  

 

A GOOD quality set of ~5" tweezers (Dumont?)  - straight and curved  -  the cheap ones do not grip and hold all that well.

A needle threader.

A set of 5-6"  forceps ( hemostats - Kelly clamps ) good quality - straight and curved may be a help.

If you are using natural fiber rigging line - bookbinders pH 7 PVA glue.

 

Plastic is about the worst possible choice for spars ( masts, booms, yards ) Time and temp alone can have them droop from their own weight.

Split out and hand shaped fine grain, straight grain, high density wood should be substituted for masts and large yards.  According to the museum standards that we have, small brass rod should be shaped to be the small yards.  

If you stick with the polystyrene - Rather than use tension between tie points to keep a line straight,  use glue or shellac to make the line itself stiff.

[Frank Burroughs]

Excellent advice.

I had not thought about how bad the mast and yards are in plastic models.  The first three model just concentrating on painting and gluing.  The two after that are keepers.  Have not decided to do the 1/96 USS Constitution or 1/96 Cutty Sark next after that.  Both I would like to install better yards and mast.  Are they better  made or bought aftermarket.  Years ago I bookbound and carved wood.  I could make them myself.  What tools would I need?  Where to buy the material to use?

 

I ran the line through a hot crock pot of beeswax.  I'll try your advice also

[Roger Pellett]

Special rigging tools are not difficult to make.  Take the plunge and you’ll discover your limitations, then make a tool to overcome them.  Most rigging tools can be made from needles, wire, dowels, and alligator clips.  A trip to Your local fabric or sewing store might have some inexpensive tools that you could use too.  You might eventually want to buy a serving machine; see Syren’s Serv-O-Matic.  On the other hand, if you have some plastic gears, one of these is also not hard to make.

 

Roger

 

 

 

 

[Bob Cleek]

What the other guys said.  Don't waste your money on those "rigging tools." I can't imagine what they could be useful for either.

 

Particularly given your unsteady hands (a challenge many older modelers must overcome), you would do well to study, practice, master, and use surgeons' suture instrument knot tying techniques. YouTube has many instructional videos on the subject, most published by medical schools and surgical instrument companies for the medical profession. The use of surgical instruments and surgical technique will make model ship rigging much easier. If you can tie knots like a micro-surgeon, tying knots in rigging on a ship model becomes a piece of cake compared to trying to stich up aortic valves inside of a chest cavity! 

 

As for instruments essential to knot tying, the basics are:

 

A number of fairly good pairs of tweezers. There are a lot of cheap ones out there. Spend the money for at least a couple of not-so-cheap ones. Don't limit your selection to those short, stubby tweezers used by watchmakers and ladies plucking their eyebrows. For rigging tasks, long tweezers are far more useful and often essential for reaching hard-to-reach places. Get a few tweezers in the 6" to 12" long range. 

 

A selection of surgical forceps, hemostats, and needle holders, all of which are more or less the same thing for modeling purposes. As with tweezers, make sure you have some long-handled ones so you can reach "into" the rigging as you work. 

 

One or more "ear polypuses," buy the longer ones first and then expand your collection. The "ear polypus" is a unique forceps which permits you to reach into very confined spaces to grab line and tie knots. Surgeons use it to remove foreign objects inside patients' ear canals.

 

Ear polypus: Just the jaws on the tip open and close when the finger holes move:

 

 

There has recently come on the market a polypus that has a cutting scissor jaw on the end instread of a forceps jaw. I don't know how well these work, but they may be useful for cutting excess line in tight places after tying. I've never had any problem cutting rigging line in tight spaces with a sharp scalpel, though.

 

Dental and surgical instruments are some of the most valuable model-making tools, particularly for rigging. Some of these tools are offered for sale online by modeling and hobby supply houses such as MicroMark. Beware! The "hobby market" prices for inferior quality versions of these tools are generally far higher than medical instrument supply houses ask for the "medical quality" versions the medical professionals actually use. You will find an extensive range of dental and surgical instruments for sale on Amazon and, particularly, on eBay. The latter has a lot of listings for Indian and Pakistani-made instruments which aren't the highest quality but are certainly serviceable for modeling.  There are also many online retailers selling used surgical and dental instruments at perhaps the lowest price points for these often very well-made instruments. Many will correctly say that "you can't have too many clamps," and the hobby tool marketers offer a wide range of clamps for that reason, but keep in mind that you can often buy used hemostats and needle holders in lots on eBay for close to the same price as fancy clamps and have a much more versatile clamping and holding tool that is better suited for the shaky hands of old pharts like us!

 

 

 

 

Edited September 7, 2023 by Bob Cleek

[Roger Pellett]

If you have shakey hands like I do, try to minimize the number of moving parts.  I made a simple vice similar to those used by fly tyers.  It used an alligator clip to hold blocks, dead eyes, etc. while I stropped them.

 

Roger

[Frank Burroughs]

ear polypuses are my next tool.  $15 ain't bad. 

these are the tools i am starting with:

[Frank Burroughs]

The idea to watch surgical video is great

[Dziadeczek]

If you are asking about traditional rigging tools, it is easy to make your own, using a couple of large needles and fixing them into wooden dowels, or even a couple of handles from old brushes. See the attachment.

I am just in the middle of rigging of my French 74 gun ship model (1:48), [geez, what a pain!   😬], and constantly using my three DIY rigging tools - I find them indispensable!

Edited September 6, 2023 by Dziadeczek

[mtaylor]

Frank, I'd start using what you already have and then add what you find you need.  Basic rule of thumb is buy only what you need when you need it and don't buy "cheap".    Usually, buying "cheap" means you end up spending more as the old ones get replaced.

 

And Dziadeczek is right also.  One can make a lot of rigging tools one fly such as what he shows.

 

 

[Jaager]

7 hours ago, Frank Burroughs said:

I would like to install better yards and mast.  Are they better  made or bought aftermarket.  Years ago I bookbound and carved wood.  I could make them myself.  What tools would I need?  Where to buy the material to use?

There is a recent thread here about mast making.  A search should bring it up - and probably similar older ones.

 

A lathe is a cool tool and many here are stretching credibility in search of an excuse to buy one. 

The cold blooded bottom line is that if it for use on wood, a lathe is overkill  and unless you make a concerted effort to use it for jobs that can just as easily be do using simple tools, it will be an expensive door stop.

What a lathe is useful for is for making other tools - turning ferrous metals.  I bring this up, because a lathe seems like it should be an easy way to shape spars.  That impulse is a specious idea.

 

Using a dowel as starting stock for spars is the commercial choice - because it is both inexpensive and expected -  and  the common choice for individuals. 

The problem is in how dowels are made.   Essentially,  a cork borer eats thru a board starting at the end grain.  The grain of the board can and usually does go every which way.  Once the dowel is free from the board, it is wanting to follow the grain and forms a dog leg or something.  It is foolish to try to fight Mother Nature.   It is best to start with a board that has straight grain to begin with.  Split out a square stick along the grain.  That way the spar is already the way it "wants" to be. 

Square - to octagon - to whatever a 16 sided polygon is named.  A really good quality miniature hand plane,  and or a file,  a chisel if you are brave, scrappers,  sandpaper.  Simple hand tools.

You have the joy of getting the round - or oval - straight for ways, then tapering spar that the vessel needs.

As for the wood,  a lot of the species named are tropical - loved to near or total extinction -  If you are US based,  Hard Maple,  Birch  will get you there.

[Bob Cleek]

9 hours ago, Frank Burroughs said:

ear polypuses are my next tool.  $15 ain't bad. 

these are the tools i am starting with:

I"d suggest you get a longer polypus than the $15 short one.  Also, sometimes the cheapest isn't always the best, particularly with anything from the Chinese People's Patriotic Export Tool Manufacturing Collective! 

 

Nice collection of tools there. It looks like you've got the situation well in hand.  The side-locking tweezers are very handy.  So is the Castorviejo iris scissors, assuming it's from a quality manufacturer. (Knock-offs of the real deal are everywhere it seems.) If one has to cut corners on tools of these types, it is always best to economize on the forceps and needle holders (fine-pointed forceps) than on anything with a cutting edge. You want the best metal cutting edge tools you can find for cutting. They are a waste of money if they won't hold an edge. Unfortunately, good scissors are expensive. (My "Dearly Beloved" dropped about three hundred bucks apiece on a trimmng scissors and a thinning scissors for grooming her show dogs without blinking an eye. ... Ahem.) 

Edited September 7, 2023 by Bob Cleek

[Frank Burroughs]

2 hours ago, mtaylor said:

 

 

And Dziadeczek is right also.  One can make a lot of rigging tools one fly such as what he shows.

 

 

I like DIY.  I will keep my eyes open to what I can adapt.

 

14" Long Stainless Steel Alligator Forceps bought like the Ear polypus you suggested.

 

RIGGING PERIOD SHIP MODELS by LENNARTH PETERSSON

 Kindle Edition.

Picked this up to start my collection rigging books.  I soon, Spring, want to go to wooden kits.  Then to building from scratch.  You can never have too many books.  I do not know if that is true with tools.

 

thanks all!

[Dr PR]

Frank,

 

CAUTION! You are creeping into the rabbit hole! There are a lot of books on rigging! Here are a few I have found very useful:

 

1. Underhill's Masting and Rigging the Clipper Ship and Oceanic Carrier (Brown, Son & Ferguson, Glasgow, Scotland, 1972). It is an excellent book with a tremendous amount of detail about sails and rigging. It is mostly for British clipper ships, but it has a section on schooners. Most of what he writes about are rigs of the last half of the 19th century and early 20th century. It has perhaps the best and most inclusive index of any book I have seen, with links to descriptions of every part of the ship.

 

2. James Lees' The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War 1625 - 1860 (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, USA, 1990) is almost entirely about larger square riggers. More importantly, it tells how to determine the dimensions of spars, rigging, blocks and such based upon the mast diameter, and has lots of tables. The text can be confusing because he often fails to explain exactly what dimensions he is referring to. Mast and spar dimensions are usually diameters but rope dimensions are circumferences. Divide by PI (3.14159) to get the rope diameter.

 

The biggest problem I have had is all the nautical jargon these authors use, usually without any glossary. And different authors use different arcane terms for the same things. Some authors think a work cannot be scholarly unless it is written so an ordinary person cannot understand it, and use "five dollar words" where a "nickle" word would do just as well.

 

I have found three books indispensable for translating the nautical jargon into meaningful explanations:

 

3. The Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor by Darcy Lever in 1808 (reprinted by Algrove Publishing Ltd., Ottowa, Ontario, Canada, 2000) tells the novice officer or seaman how to rig a ship - every detail of how to put all the pieces of the masts and rigging together. It is essentially an illustrated glossary of nautical terms and a how-to book. But there isn't a lot about fore-and-aft rigs.

 

4. The Art of Rigging by George Biddlecombe  in 1925 (reprinted by Echo Point Books & Media, LLC., Brattleboro, Vermont, USA, 2016) is based upon David Steel's 1794 The Elements and Practice of Rigging and Seamanship. It has an excellent glossary and many illustrations. Again,  not much about schooners. You can find Steel's original book on line as a PDF file.

 

5. A good general reference is Wolfram zu Mondfeld's Historic Ship Models (Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., New York, USA, 1989) although it is oriented to square rigged ships and doesn't have much to say about schooners. But it has a tremendous amount of detail about all parts of wooden ships and a lot of the history of different configurations. It has lots of diagrams and text describing the parts of ships' hulls, rigging, sails and such. The book has tables for figuring the dimensions of mast and spars. It is one of the best references for sailing ship modelers.

 

6. William Falconer's Universal Dictionary of the Marine, 1769, is very useful for understanding the arcane and obsolete terminology used in many texts, especially the older works. You can find this book in PDF format on line.

 

****

 

I have struggled with all the nautical terminology and minuscule details. I posted a thread with descriptions and illustrations for rigging and sails for topsail schooners, but most of it applies well to square rigged ships:

 

https://modelshipworld.com/topic/25679-topsail-schooner-sail-plans-and-rigging/?do=findComment&comment=750865

 

But your best resource is right here, on the forum. If there is something you don't understand or can't find information about, just ask!

 

Edited September 7, 2023 by Dr PR

[DARIVS ARCHITECTVS]

Rigging tools are not complete without a razor sharp set of scissors which allow you to trim that line after it's belayed to the belaying pin on the fife rail.  These have served me so well, I bought a second one.

[Frank Burroughs]

Underhill's Masting and Rigging the Clipper Ship and Oceanic Carrier - $97, I'll wait on this one
The Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor by Darcy Lever - found on Scribd (monthly subscription)
The Art of Rigging by George Biddlecombe - Scribd
Historic Ship Models by Mondfeld, Wolfram zu - can buy used + shipping ~$6
An Universal Dictionary of the Marine By William Falconer - scribd

 

This is a grand start on the next phase of this model.  I do want Underhill's book.  Might be a Xmas gift for me.  I can watch hours of youtube, yet a book gives much more.

[Frank Burroughs]

Dr. Slick scissors was recommended by a fly tying friend of mine.    Fiskars Premier No. 5 Easy Action™ Micro-Tip®  Titanium Scissors will be on next month's credit card bill.

 

Reading in the forum I ran across "CA glue" used on the end of the threads.  CA refers to what?

[Bob Cleek]

4 hours ago, Frank Burroughs said:

You can never have too many books.  I do not know if that is true with tools.

"He who dies with the most tools wins!" That said, if you think you can never have too many books, just give it time! You'll get to that point soon enough.

 

Speaking of which... I'd encourage anybody who is building a reference library to buy real books instead of e-books. There's nothing like reading a real book and you'll find you will want to have a reference book at your elbow at your drawing board or workbench and a computer screen just doesn't work as well. 

 

As for Harold Underhill, buy anything he ever wrote and you won't go wrong. His two volume work Plank on Frame Models and Scale Masting and Rigging is an incredible basic text on scratch-building. I'm surprised it's going for $125 (or $75 used) these days, but that's a good example of the value of building a good reference library. I got my set fifty years ago from the old Dolphin Book Club (anybody remember them) for something like fifteen bucks if memory serves. That said, eBay has an entire section of nothing but Underhill books and you can find a copy of the Plank on Frame Models set for fifty bucks there. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=harold underhill&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-34002-13078-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=102&keyword=harold underhill&crlp=_&MT_ID=&geo_id=&rlsatarget=kwd-76965989210900:loc-190&adpos=&device=c&mktype=&loc=43893&poi=136333&abcId=&cmpgn=395402853&sitelnk=&adgroupid=1231453229593206&network=o&matchtype=e&msclkid=fac4ea45a5a5170f4c298ebcdf27ca39

 

Stick with the "classics" for openers and stay away from anything with "made simple," "simplified" or "from kits" in the title.  There are a lot of books out there that are basically compendiums of previously published works. They may be helpful, but they don't stand the test of time. I'd put Zu Mondfeld's Historic Ship Models in the same category. As many copies as are out there, they are dirt cheap, so you won't be wasting your money if you get a used copy for less than ten bucks. It does have a very broad scope of information. I think he claims to cover somewhere from 3,000 BC to the present, but, hey, putting than information between two covers can only provide a very cursory overview. 

 

If you find books with good coverage of modeling techniques, grab them. (e.g., The Techniques of Ship Modeling by Gerald Wingrove.) The same goes for books that have good ship plans in them. Any book by Howard I Chapelle will be worth having in this regard.

 

Sadly, the days of spending hours picking over the offerings in dusty used book stores to find a treasure or two are long gone. Buy used books for the best value online if you must, but don't get carried away. It's easy to end up with well over a thousand volumes. Don't ask me how I know this.  

Edited September 7, 2023 by Bob Cleek

[Jaager]

Cyanoacrylate   - Super Glue  -  it is an 11 footer for us crusty traditionalists.  

The stuff is toxic when in a gas phase.

The stock bottle does not like its content being exposed to the atmosphere.  Water is the catalyst - even water vapor.

It reacts quickly.  The bond is strong against perpendicular forces and weak against horizontal (sheer) forces.

 

 

I found that PVA dried quickly enough to stiffen the end of a line.  Shellac works quickly.

 

 

[Frank Burroughs]

Just now, Jaager said:

found that PVA dried quickly enough to stiffen the end of a line

That I have plenty of.  Bookbinding leather journals was my gig for many years.  Thanks for your answer.

[DARIVS ARCHITECTVS]

9 hours ago, Frank Burroughs said:

Dr. Slick scissors was recommended by a fly tying friend of mine.    Fiskars Premier No. 5 Easy Action™ Micro-Tip®  Titanium Scissors will be on next month's credit card bill.

 

Reading in the forum I ran across "CA glue" used on the end of the threads.  CA refers to what?

CA = cyanoacrylate, commonly known as Superglue.

[Roger Pellett]

More random thoughts:

 

Your model building plans involve building three very different models:  A late Eighteenth Century warship, A mid Nineteenth Century whaling ship, and a late Nineteenth Century merchant vessel.  The rigging of each of these will be different.  First, like everything else, rigging was affected by the industrial revolution.  Cutty Sark will have much more iron rigging elements than Constitution.  Cutty Sark’s owners also had a financial incentive to operate their vessels with small crews, unlike Constitution that required large crews to fight the ship.  This resulted in changes to the rigging, the most obvious being splitting of the large top sails in two on merchant vessels built in the second half of the 1800’s.  And, of course, as a specialized vessel, Charles W. Morgan would have rigging peculiar to her trade.

 

Unfortunately for you, there is no one rigging book that will work for all three projects.  Underhill deals with later Nineteenth merchant ships.  I would recommend Steel’ Masting and Rigging for Constitution.  You should be able to find an affordable reprint.  There has recently been an ongoing discussion (maybe you?) on MSW about rigging sources for Charles W. Morgan.  I would call, not email, the Mystic Seaport bookshop to see what they might have.  Underhill can wait until you actually tackle Cutty Sark unless you can find a used bargain somewhere along the way.  If building accurate ship models is “your thing” books are a lifetime investment.

 

I personally like lacquer, not acrylic, clear nail polish for a rigging adhesive.  It comes in a little bottle with the brush in the top.  It is cheap convenient, and quick drying.

 

Actually, CA is an abbreviation for Crappy Adhesive! 😀. I don’t use it.

 

Roger

 

 

[Frank Burroughs]

2 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

If building accurate ship models is “your thing” books are a lifetime investment.

it is!

 

2 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

personally like lacquer

Any particular kind?

 

2 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

Steel’ Masting and Rigging for Constitution

Steel the author?  Looking for the book, but can not find it.

 

The first three models are give away.    I am just doing them for experience.  The USS Constitution and Cutty Sark are keepers.  I will replace what I can afford to make them better models.  I do want to improve my work to suit this website.

[Frank Burroughs]

Steel's Elements of Mastmaking, Sailmaking and Rigging (from the 1794 edition)

Steel, David

Is this the book for the USS Constitution?

[mtaylor]

Steel's book, if I recall correctly is basically English ships.  American rigging may have been close.  I think there's an Anatomy of the Ship book available for Constitution but I'm not sure how deep it goes into rigging.

[Frank Burroughs]

Just now, mtaylor said:

Anatomy of the Ship book available for Constitution

on my amazon wish list for next month

 

[Roger Pellett]

Yes, Steel’s book is English but it details rigging practices for large warships in the late 1700’s- Early 1900’s.  It Is a Primary Source as it was actually written at the time that you are concerned with.  The Anatomy of the Ship book mentioned above is a Secondary Source.  It was written a few years ago by a German author living in Australia.  Chances are, he based any rigging details on Steel or a book like it.  I am unaware of any book written in the late 1700’s- Early 1800’s that details American rigging rigging practices.

 

Nail Polish - just go to any store selling cosmetics and buy the cheapest lacquer based clear nail polish on the shelf.

 

Roger

[Frank Burroughs]

Well, tonight the last paint touch ups, then I start rigging this simple model.  I'll remember how easy it was when rigging the 1/96 scale kits.  Thanks all for giving me a good start.

[BETAQDAVE]

On 9/7/2023 at 12:25 AM, DARIVS ARCHITECTVS said:

I heartily agree with his recommendation, as I have three of them.  I have very limited grip strength due to muscular dystrophy which makes their spring assisted easy action a blessing and the open handles (as opposed to finger holes) allow me to use all of my fingers to handle it.  The micro-tip can get into very limited spaces and the blades are quite sharp!