I tied all the ratlines this week. This proved to be a bit tedious. The knot tying was easy enough, but the knots popped open as soon as I pulled them tight, so I had to use a combination of CA on the outside shroud square knots, and diluted PVA on the inside shroud clove hitch knots, to get them to stay tight. The diluted PVA gave me time to work with the clove hitch knots to position them correctly. Once the first three knots in a row were how I wanted them, I tightened the last knot with a dab of CA. Also, while the ideal would have been to have no sag in the ratlines, I made sure to tweak them a bit so at least all the sag was downwards rather than have some pushing upwards. All in all the ratlines were an interesting experience that I'm glad is behind me! I have no idea how folks have the stamina to do a three masted ship full of these things. Haha.

Erik

Looks similar to my lady nelson and I am around this stage of the build as well but having trouble cause it is too small

Looking good! The keyword is perseverance😉

With the addition of the topmast shrouds, topmast backstays, and topmast stay, I have finished Chapter 13 of the monograph. Since all the standing rigging is now complete and everything is tentioned correctly, I went ahead and glued down the belaying points with watered down PVA and then trimmed the rope ends. I left some of the gluing of the cleated rigging fore and aft for later. I did a quick dusting with my airbrush to blow out rope ends and dust. Now I'm ready to move on to Chapter 14, the last chapter of the monograph.

I had loosely assumed that the rigging part of the build would take as long as the wood working part of the build. Since the wood working part took roughly 2 1/2 years (not including the time taken out for a couple of multi-year breaks from the build), I assumed I had another couple of years of steady work to go. I've only been rigging for a little over a month and a half, and I don't have much more to go. It looks like I might have vastly misjudged how much time it would take to finish the build!

Erik

That looks great...you are in the home stretch now.

Following your build, Erik, has moved the Cheerful up in my to-build list. It's now sitting just behind the Medway. :-)

Thanks for the inspiration. You've done a wonderful job.

Superb work Erik and very clean rigging.

Yves

7 hours ago, Griphos said:

Following your build, Erik, has moved the Cheerful up in my to-build list. It's now sitting just behind the Medway. :-)

It's a great project, so it will be nice to see a new Cheerful started, when you get to it that is. Chuck's instructions are good, so it's possible to build Cheerful successfully even without the ability to reference all the build logs that were lost in the MSW hack. Glenn has a lot of useful photos in his recreated build log. I'm hoping Mike (Stuntflyer), who I noticed created a login here at DDM recently, at least uploads his completed Cheerful photos to the gallery. His build is exceptional, and his photos are a good reference source.

And thanks all for the likes and kind words. I appreciate the encouragement!

Erik

Thanks. I'll keep an eye out for those.

I ordered all the mini-kits today that Chuck had on hand for it, which was almost all of them.

What are you going to tackle next?

1 hour ago, Griphos said:

What are you going to tackle next?

I really have no plan for what's next. I honestly had thought the rigging would take me much longer than it will, so I didn't think I'd be in the market for a new project that soon. That said, I have some ideas floating around I'll throw out there when I'm closer to the finish line.

Erik

Hi Erik

seeing you finish you rigging has inspired me to at least think about rigging my cutter 'Speedy' build.

Tim

Thanks Tim. All in all the rigging has been a rewarding experience, once I got the hang of it.

I rigged the foresail halyard, the jib halyard, inhaul and outhaul, and made the lower yard sling. And I just finished the 6 eye seizings on the end of the stirrups for the lower yard.

My research indicated that the stirrups were typically 3 feet (1 meter) long below the yard, so .75" (19mm) in 1/48 scale. One thing I noticed is the monograph calls for 11/16" - .69" (17.5mm), but the plans have a measurement of .36" (9mm). This .36" would only be 1.5 feet (.5 meter) in 1/1 scale. That doesn't seem right to me. I'm not sure if this was adjusted on the plan for the way it looks, or if it was a mistake. At any rate, I plan to follow the dimension listed on the monograph.

Erik

That is really stunning work, I will use it as a reference and a goal to aim for.

Tim

As always, thanks for the nice comments and likes. I appreciate it. Just one photo for this update. I spent the last week or so rigging the yards. This was a bit tricky, but turned out OK. First I had to decide the lengths I wanted the stirrups to be. As I said in my last post, they measure on the Cheerful plans at .36" long, which is only 1 1/2 feet (.5 meters) in real life. That seemed too short to me. My research indicated the stirrups on British ships were typically 3 feet long (1 meter). The monograph states in the text 11/16", or .68" which scales out to 33 inches (84 cm) life size, so I went with that for the lower yard. I shortened it to .63" or 30 inches (76 cm) life size on the topmast yard. Maybe not a prototypical length, but I was going for what looked good visually. The next rabbit hole I went down was the hang of the horses (foot ropes) from the stirrups. I looked at tons of photos and settled on what you see here. Trying to go with a realistic sag. The stirrups were treated with 2 coats of a 50/50 mix of water and PVA, and the horses with 1 coat of the 50/50 PVA and water mix. This makes the stirrups more likely to stay straight, and the horses able to be shaped and hold their position. I realize the stirrups/horses will probably get knocked askew when I'm mounting and rigging the spars on the ship, but it should be easy enough to straighten things out again when the rigging is finished.

Erik

Stunning build Erik and your rigging to me is perfect.

Thanks Phil! The rigging has been a challenge every step of the way. As I get closer to the end of the rigging stage of the build, the finished results have definitely gotten closer to the way I envisioned them beforehand.

Erik

I'm getting ready to install the topsail yard to the mast and rig it. I've already finished with the installation and rigging of the main yard (I'll show some photos once the topsail yard is also mounted). There's a fair amount of rope prep at this point. As seen in the photo below, .012" cluelines attached to the yard. And then left to right - .018" topsail yard lifts, .025" topsail yard halliard with hook, .012" sheets with stropped 3/16" blocks, and .018" topsail yard braces.

It's hard to believe I'll be finished with the rigging in a couple of days. The rigging process went a lot more quickly than I thought it would!

Erik

Erik, not only have you completed the rigging faster than expected, it has been done to a very high standard.

cheers

Pat

Fantastic work. Everything looks so clean.

Looking great! I bet you will be a little sad when its done....but no worries, you will prob start another one soon enough.