Thanks Alan

Thanks Robin,
Now I know why you went for the Jo Tika version
Regards
Alan

Thanks for your kind comments Hans.
Regards
Alan

Hi all,
Has been slow going recently, busy at work and a holiday since my last post. Finally completed the rest of the running in tackles on the six quarter deck guns and the hammock netting on the quarter deck bulwarks.





Hammock netting constructed as before, the main difference with these ones is the height, only about half the height of the other nets, probably because they are on top of the high bulwarks.

Very nice work and loads of detailing, love it!
Steve

looking great mate

You are doing a good job Alan Kind regards Mike

Hi All,
As mentioned in my post #91, I've been doing some research, and work on the beak head area.
The first thing I did were the eyebolts on the fore castle front rail above the round houses that will be needed at rigging stage.
It seems that only the outside three on each side are used, but from photos I have seen, there are five on each side, so that's what I went with.



I used the smallest copper eyebolts I could find, 2mm. I do have some smaller photo etch ones but was concerned they would not be strong enough to take the pull of the rigging attached to them. They should be mounted a bit higher on the top ridge of the rail but looked too big up there so I fitted them lower, I think once all the rigging is in place it won't notice that much.
I also added two eyebolts on the outer edges of the marines walk that will again be needed at rigging stage.

Next I made up and fitted the rigging and tackles that attach to the knights head post eyebolts, that may prove difficult to get to at a later stage.
There are six attachments in all, three on each post, and are all part of the standing rigging. The standing rigging is used to secure and hold masts and spars in place and is generally black in colour as it was covered in tar to protect it from the weather and possibly give it extra strength. Unlike the running rigging, which is used to control the ship,
once fitted, it stays in position, but does need to be tensioned up every so often, hence the tackles fitted to it.
The standing rigging consists of various sizes of ropes that need to look proportionally different from each other to achieve an accurate look to the model. The smallest of the six I am dealing with are the three Martingales, on the real ship they are 4 inch ropes, at my 1/100 scale, that equates to 0.323mm, unfortunately, commercial scale rigging lines are not made in 0.3mm sizes, but 0.25mm and 0.5mm, do I go up or down in scale ? A bit of forward planning is needed.
The largest rope on the ship is the Main Stay at 19 inches, that conveniently equates to 1.535mm, they make 1.5mm rigging lines, so that will be spot on. Everything else needs to be proportionally smaller, so lets see how it would work. the Main Preventer Stay, 13 inches (1.050mm), great 1mm will do. Fore Stay and Fore Preventer Stay, 18 and 11.5 inches respectively, (1.455mm and 0.929mm) at this scale I think I can get away with 1.5mm and 1.0mm again. Now we come to the next sizes down, two of the ropes I'm dealing with, the Fore Topmast Stay at 8.5 inches, that equates to 0.687mm and the For Topmast Preventer Stay at 6.5 inches which equates to 0.525mm, for these I can use 0.75mm and 0.5mm respectively, the largest Shrouds are 11 inches (0.889mm) so I can get away with 1.0mm there and everything will look reasonably proportional. So good job I didn't go up in scale for the Martingales.
They will be 2.5mm. The sixth rope I'm dealing with here is the Fore Topgallant Stay at 4.5 inches, I think at this scale I can get away with it being the same size as the Martingales, so I've made my choices.
Sorry this has gone on a bit but it shows that you need to plan ahead,
I know most of you are following instructions from your kit build, but the Del Prado kit did not have very comprehensive rigging and this post may help others in the same boat, pardon the pun
Regards
Alan

Right, on to the tackles themselves.
The six ropes I'm dealing with had varying sizes and shapes of tackle blocks and a couple of different ways to attach the ropes to them.
Mostly they were seized around the blocks, that is, passed around the block and then the loop is held together with smaller twine wrapping round the rope to hold it together. Another method is the thimble, a loop made in the rope and seized as above around a wooden or metal ring that is then attached to the block with a hook.
I made the tackles in a similar way to the gun tackle described earlier in the build log, but as stated above used varying size blocks etc to best represent the descriptions I have of them on the real ship.
Below is the starboard side, where hopefully you can see the seizing around the blocks and the top tackle has the thimble method.



On the port side you can see the largest of the ropes, the Fore Topmast Stay (bottom attachment) that has a 24 inch (6.096mm) "long block" which, as far as I can tell was a large and smaller block attached together. To represent this, I used a commercially bought 7mm ramshead block and filed it down a bit.



As stated earlier these tackles were only used when the ropes needed to be tensioned up, and as in photos I have seen the loose ends were tied off around centre of the tackle ropes.
Regards
Alan