In case anyone wants to give this a try – I am re rigging an old Billings Cutty Sark. As I understand it, the shrouds and stays (apart from the upper stays) are fully served wire. I had the idea of using guitar strings. From the ‘g’ string down, they are steel, fully wound. After a conversation with a slightly confused guitar string specialist, I plumped for a pure nickel fully wound G string. He advised that it would easily take and retain a ‘hard’ turn. The picture shows a trial deadeye fitting. It was surprisingly easy. First nip it round a piece of dowel of the same diameter as the deadeye – take it off, slip in the deadeye and give it a final nip. I seized it with .3mm copper wire. Again, all very easy to do. There is no need to keep tension on the wire whist seizing as it is quite rigid. Equally the copper wire keeps its tension whilst winding on. Although the photo doesn’t show a vertical turn on the middle and upper seizings its very easy to add one – just start the seizing by putting the wire THROUGH the two arts of the shroud. After the windings, just wind the end up and around. One only is probably enough to scale.
I came undone however trying to get the wire to sit properly around the mast. There is the bend round the mast in one plane, and another bend in a different plane when it comes over the tops or cross trees and down. On reflection, I think a pair of small clench pliers would have done the trick. In the end I didn’t follow it through and used rigging thread – but I did stick with the copper wire for seizings which made doing the three separate seizings a lot more bearable
I came undone however trying to get the wire to sit properly around the mast. There is the bend round the mast in one plane, and another bend in a different plane when it comes over the tops or cross trees and down. On reflection, I think a pair of small clench pliers would have done the trick. In the end I didn’t follow it through and used rigging thread – but I did stick with the copper wire for seizings which made doing the three separate seizings a lot more bearable
