Santa Sofia by Ferrus Manus - Heller - 1/75 - PLASTIC - Another theoretical reconstruction.

[Louie da fly]

Good observation, mate. Here's a somewhat better resolution copy of the same picture.

 

And some others from the same series that might be of help.

 

   

 

Steven

[Ferrus Manus]

The bent sail and yard, and how they will be displayed on-ship:

I did something a little differently than usual. Usually, what I do is take a small piece of line, thread it through the hole in the sail, and tie it together at the top of the yard. This time, I put a knot between the sail and yard, and another one on top of the yard. The idea of this was to prevent the top of the sail from bunching up at the yard, and it worked about as well as I expected. 

I dunked all of the ropes needed for this sail in a brown paint/water mixture, and you can see some of them behind the stern castle. 

[Ferrus Manus]

Regarding gaskets: 

I have never seen permanent gaskets affixed to any yard on any Medieval ship in any of the artworks I have seen. However, from evidence, I could probably give you a good idea of how sails were taken in on a Medieval lateener. Realistically, lateeners and square-riggers were probably pretty similar when it came to taking in sail. 

I know of a couple of good pictures of men tying up sail, here is one of them:

Taking in sail on deck: 

 

Another good shot of a furled sail: 

My guess is that a sail was lowered to the deck and men would take short lengths of rope, climb on top of the yard, gather the sail by hand, and tie it up with the ropes. This would probably have been gradually replaced by permanently affixed gaskets. 

Edited Wednesday at 02:01 AM by Ferrus Manus

[Ferrus Manus]

I got the halyard and parrel lines rigged today. 

I based the parrel off of this image, which I'm assuming is from some Italian research paper: 

Yes Steven, I've been stealing your sources. 

Here's the parrel: 

And on deck, the halyard and parrel lanyards, blocks and knights: 

 

The sail provides excellent shade for the crew, protecting the men aboard from the blazing Mediterranean sun. 

The ship so far: 

[Ferrus Manus]

More progress on the mainsail: 

I recently rigged the braces, single vang, and sheet. 

I've recently adopted a more realistic modus operandi for displaying coiled line. 

I don't really want to risk ruining the work I put into making the sail material wrinkle-free by brushing it with diluted super glue and blowing it with a fan, as the amount of billow in the sail currently is realistic for a light wind. The issue is that this type of silkspan, while scale-accurate, is very light and not stiff in any way. This lends it to poor billowing in the absence of real wind. 

[Ferrus Manus]

I am now one with the ship. 

Somehow, in the process of hand-sanding the second spar for the mizzen yard, I nicked the tip of my thumb. 

In other news, the mizzen yard is ready to be assembled. 

Edited Thursday at 12:54 AM by Ferrus Manus

[Ferrus Manus]

It's time now that I run headlong into the only real problem with this kit- the mainmast placement. As I started to work on the placement of the mizzen yard, I realized just how little space there was to work with at the back of the ship. I actually intended on displaying both the main and mizzen yards in their fully upright position, but now I have some doubts. I quickly realized that the mizzen yard would be at a steeper angle than the main yard, which looks a bit tacky to me, especially in light of paintings of caravels. So, I am thus preparing to depict the mizzen yard at half-mast, in the process of being raised. 

Thankfully, the lee shrouds on the mizzen loosened up naturally on their own. As per Steven's advice, I wanted to depict the mizzen yard outside the shrouds, just like the main. 

You should now understand the problem here. 

The placement of the mainmast complicates this severely, as seen in the photos. The main halyard and parrel tackles both foul the mizzen port side brace, and vice versa. The main vang fouls the mizzen sail and potentially the mizzen sheet, depending on how I depict the sail- both of which are problems that would not exist if the main could be moved to about the middle of where the forward hatch is now. I realized this at the beginning of the build, and I just wasn't willing to scratch-build a new main deck. Belaying the braces on the relatively empty forward section of each main rail would severely limit the crew's ability to wrestle the mizzen yard to a different tack. 

My plan is to either suck up my pride and display the mizzen fully aloft, or keep all the mizzen lines, save for the halyard and parrel, slack. 

Edited yesterday at 12:52 AM by Ferrus Manus

[Ferrus Manus]

Small update, I have bent the mizzen sail to the yard and made the stand, which will eventually be painted and decaled. 

My solution for the mizzen yard and sail: