Model Ship Update: Spanker

I think these updates might start coming a little faster now. The second of the eleven sails is now rigged up, the spanker. Also added are two windows for the captain's mess (I think it's obvious that it's just pained black behind the frame). Cutting out the trim for the window was tricky without doing damage. I may end up replacing some of this trim later.

Just to switch it up, I'm trying to get some pictures from some different angles that look like they may actually be taken from deck level, hence the last two pictures. I think I'm getting better at coiling the lines. I'm glad I decided to do it this way rather than just tie them off. Though, I'm still a little disappointed I had to glue down the coils making adjusting the rig not possible. I can also see I need to do some varnishing on the quarter deck - you can see the rough spot in the last picture. There was a glue spill here that I sanded off.



Mike

Model Ship Update: Spritsail

Well, I've affixed the first sail - the spritsail. It is not actually glued or tied to the bowsprit, but held in place (rather rigidly) by a system of four lines. If you compare the second image with the one from the kit a couple of posts ago, I think that you'll agree that I did the right thing in moving the chain and bowsprit stays in order to fit the sail properly. Now it looks like this thing would actually work.


In the third pic you can see how one of the braces is made fast to a belay pin. I've spent a bit of time on a real tallship (not too different in size from this one), and I attached and coiled the line correctly (or, at least, the best I could with tweezers). I've been going back and forth on whether to leave the running rigging "running". This would allow me to adjust sail trim, which I thought would be pretty cool. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that the thin thread wouldn't stay coiled and I ended up putting a bit of glue on the coil making the rigging not adjustable - oh, well.

The last pic is the view from about half way up the formast. You can see in this picture that I added a footrope below the yard. The kit pictures didn't have one, but this is what the crew would stand on while they were adjusting the sail. So I figured I would added it in.

Mike

The Perfect Desktop

http://howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-ubuntu-studio-8.10

My laptop really belongs to my employer and our home computer is run by the kids, but I gotta say, if it were just my machine, this is the way I would go with it.

Mike

Ship Update: Standing Rigging Done

It's been a while since the last update - partly because it was a busy term and I couldn't work on it as much as would have like, but also because there was a lot to do in this stage. This was lengthened by adjusting some things I had already done. The forstay blocks on the bowsprit were moved so the forstays ran reasonably close to parallel (they look like hell otherwise). Also, as shown in the pictures at the bottom, I had to do some other jigging with the bowsprit rigging to leave room for a boom and sail to be added on later.



As you can see, the masts are now fully assembled and (I believe) all the standing rigging is now up. Next would be assemblying the remaining spars and sails with their associated rigging.

In an earlier post I mentioned that there was going to be an issue with attaching the bowsprit boom. The first picture on the right (from a few months ago) shows the problem with the orientation of the stays and chain under the bowsprit leaving no room for the boom. This was done as per the picture in the assembly book (which is nothing but a bunch of pictures). The second picture shows one of the solutions that came with the kit. Here they moved the blocks for the lower set of stays further aft, leaving room for the boom, but, as you can see, there is no room for the sail to hang down. The assembly book had a different solution of completely removing this set of stays, but that still means the sail is above the chain. There is no way this would work in real life. I ended up pulling out my DVD of Master and Commander (the Russell Crowe film) and scanned along until I came to a good shot of their bowsprit. The correct way now seems pretty obvious with the stays moved foward and the chain aft leaving room for the boom and sail, as shown in the last picture.
PS: I'm putting my photo collections on Flickr from now on. They have better services and I don't like how Orkut makes you sign up in order to view the pictures - sorry Google. The model pictures are now there, and the rest will soon follow.

The Book of Genesis Through Facebook

The Facebook of Genesis

Personally, I'm not a big fan of Facebook, but this is pretty funny.

Mike

Cold - What Cold?

Well, our sailing season has officially come to an end. I got my last sail in Tuesday. The air temperature was a few degrees below zero and I didn't last long before my hands gave out (I've gotta get better gloves), but there was a good blow and I had to take advantage of it.

The above pick is my oldest from last week during the first snow of the year.

Fun stuff!

Mike

US Candidates As Trains

Long time - no post. Busy - busy. I haven't even been on the Internet too much, but this made me laugh today.