HM Armed Cutter Alert (1777) - Vanguard Models - 1/64

Gun Rigging Part 3


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Now that I had a method worked out I switched to production line working. The breeching was attached to five guns, they were all stuck down on the deck, the breechings were all tied to the bulwarks eyebolts ... and so on. It's an effective way to work and good for the skills too as the repetitions happen fast and it's easy to refine the techniques.

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You won't want to be bored with repetition so I'll just say I did the same as yesterday, more or less. I just did it all five times.

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I changed only one thing and that was to put the gun tackles on over the tidied up breechings instead of underneath. It makes a neater package. Did I redo the first one? No. That we arranged by a new gun captain who is going to get a touch of the rope's end when the armourer sees what he's done.

Once I regained my fluency with the thread and tweezers, I began to enjoy myself. This was much more fun that the little bitty jobs I've been doing lately and rigging, I now remember, is one of my favourite parts of boat building. It is a simple thing, weaving a ship, line by line, but it requires so much concentration and control that for me, it becomes a form of meditation. I think of nothing else while I'm doing it, for my mind has no room for other thoughts. I feel no impatience, I lose track of time, I'm calmed. Brilliant!

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The very last thing was to touch up the paintwork. That's the same little blob of paint from yesterday. It's 33 hours old and worked splendidly. It is gradually becoming thinned as it absorbs water faster than it can dry when the lid's on the box so I'll start a new blob tomorrow.

EDIT: Oops, I forgot the vent aprons. I'll do them all together when the rest of the guns are tied down.
 
This is education for me my friend, and loving every bit, completely new territory but fascinating reading.
Absolutely brilliant Smithy Thumbsup ;)
Are there vbooks on the um........."anatomy" of an 16th / 17th century gun ship ?
I reckon I could get into that :p

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You mentioned 'anatomy'. This series of books are standard works. They are usually abbreviated by me to AotS Endeavor or Alert etc. Different authors for different books but I find them very very good. Unfortunately there isn't one for Endurance. Again unfortunately, the print runs are small so they can reach silly prices on the second hand market. I buy any that I find at an affordable whether I'm planning to build a model or not. I've never done a scratchbuild but I think there's enough info in here for scratching a PoB at least.

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Contents

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Text example. You need a good maritime dictionary by your side at first.

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Lovely plans and diagrams

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Not quite enough info for scratch building PoF, I think

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Even rigging and sail plans.

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This is my favourite general book about how the real things work. It's invaluable to me and explains everything simply and with great little drawings.

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If I lost mine I would buy another copy for whatever I had to pay!

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Doubtless there will now be twenty other modellers lining up to give you their recommendations. Speaking as a one-time bookseller and another-time librarian I say "Buy them all!"
 
On a personal note, as I said yesterday, I'm enjoying my membership here very much. Slightly too much in fact. Just like in my first few days here, I find myself checking for updates a dozen times a day. I've been modelling very slowly while having one eye on the laptop. I feel myself becoming addicted to 'notifications' and 'likes'. I have that kind of personality I guess. So, I moved the laptop away from the modelling area (good to have more room to work), I stopped watching all but three threads (instead of 33), and I turned off all notifications. :eek:

I'll drop in here once or twice each day but I'll only post in the evening (how urgent can making a model ship be when they take years to complete?). Sure, I'll miss a lot of the fun and frolics of SoS but if I read everything there wouldn't be time for sleeping so it's just a matter of degree really.

With luck you'll get fewer posts from me but they will be longer and more betterishly wrote.

And than I tidied up.

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The sandpaper drawer is still a problem though....
 
This is my favourite general book about how the real things work.
No flies on this Cat mate, ordered it, looks just like the thing I could get comfy with a coffee and Nummy-Nums. Coffee-CupPopcorn
Forever curious about how things work, from quantum to the workings of a man o' war, its an inbuilt incurable need to discover and I really enjoy the journeys they take me. This forum has me hooked on not just the workings of a ship, but very much fascinated how man would have accomplished all these fantastic feats of engineering using basic tools and candlelight just never ceases to fuel my imagination.
I ponder how many sailors lost their teeth before "someone" suggested "how about we put a rope here, and through a block, then attach it to that, we could pull it up to here and anchor it........"

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very much fascinated how man would have accomplished all these fantastic feats of engineering

The highest tech in any period seems often to be related to transport. Odd that.

Quantum - well, I understand it and I don't understand it at the same time, I won't know for sure until they open the box - and nail me into it! ;)
 
Oh I couldn't resist a bit of dry fitting to see what she was going to look like later. The port side guns aren't all fully rigged yet - they lack their gun tackles, but all 12 of them now have vent aprons. at least.

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Ground tackle, tiller, channels, belaying pins, the galley chimney, various cleats and eyebolts and we'll be ready to poke a mast into her.

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I'm getting a little bit proud of her now. :)
 
Oh I couldn't resist a bit of dry fitting to see what she was going to look like later. The port side guns aren't all fully rigged yet - they lack their gun tackles, but all 12 of them now have vent aprons. at least.

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Ground tackle, tiller, channels, belaying pins, the galley chimney, various cleats and eyebolts and we'll be ready to poke a mast into her.

View attachment 481123

I'm getting a little bit proud of her now. :)
I am probably one of the odd ones, but I like gun rigging. Ratlines, however is another story. I will say that I follow the KISS principle all the way. So what gun tackle I can't see doesn't get added. full stop
 
Oh I couldn't resist a bit of dry fitting to see what she was going to look like later. The port side guns aren't all fully rigged yet - they lack their gun tackles, but all 12 of them now have vent aprons. at least.

View attachment 481122

Ground tackle, tiller, channels, belaying pins, the galley chimney, various cleats and eyebolts and we'll be ready to poke a mast into her.

View attachment 481123

I'm getting a little bit proud of her now. :)
Excellent result. Now the most interesting part - a million strings and knots))))
 
Gun Rigging Part 3a and Done!


There was so little left to do that it didn't justify a Part 4. I tied six gun tackles this morning and when my concentration wavered and my eyes watered, I invited my quadrupedal, Buddy out for a walk. I didn't expect him to want to check on ALL the interesting smells in Staffordshire as well as chasing seagulls until they, and he were out of sight. In other words we walked a very long long way, almost an expotition in fact, except that there was nothing to eat.

When we got back, my concentration and eyes were fine but I was a bit shaky from the exercise and from the "flu-like symptoms" they warned me about last week when I had my jabs. It's the first time in hundreds of vaccinations that I've ever had more than a slightly sore arm so it's quite interesting to be affected thus.

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One of the great things about getting old is the opportunity to think up ways of overcoming the ever increasing inconveniences. Today I found that shaky hands and aching shoulders respond well to piles of paperback books locked together and used as elbow rests. Fabbo! You can tailor the height to suit the job.

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Here's another hack. I discovered this watching a lady with her knitting. the bobbin in a bowl delivers the thread without falling off the bench and unwinding all over the universe. Taking the thread a coupe of times around something solid acts as a brake to the thread so that it doesn't all try to join in with the rigging at once. I was rigging each tackle direct from the bobbin and then cutting it free ready for the next one. I found one loose end was enough.

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Final hack of the day. Not everybody knows this, but dipping the end of your line in superglue and then wiping the tiny blob off between your fingers leaves a stiff end which is the same diameter as the thread and can be easily pushed through blocks etc. Five millimeters is my prefered length, any longer and it gets difficult to go round corners, much less and you'll find that your tweezers are pushing on the unglued thread behind the CA and making the thread go fuzzy. For really awkward threading you can make this 'superglue needle' curved or any shape you need.

So there we have it, eleven guns rigged one way and No.3 Stbd rigged slightly differently.

It was an accident at first to fit the gun tackles before tying up the breeching over that first gun. I could easily fix it in ten minutes but I find that I like this imperfection because it tells a little story to those who are able to hear it. The guns are tidied up for Captain's Rounds, the weekly inspection. Eleven gun teams have done it exactly as the Captain likes it - and one hasn't. The gun captain of No.3 will get a roasting from somewhere up the chain of command but the thing that interests me is the relationships of No.3 with No.2 and No.4. Why didn't they tell him he was wrong? Perhaps they did, in which case, why didn't he listen? It's a short story in three pieces of rope. :)

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With that little job out of the way and my appetite well whetted for more rigging, I spent some time putting all my rigging gear away and preparing for a painting session instead. I seized the opportunity to tidy up generally and made a start on the abrasives drawer! I got down a layer or two but didn't quite finish.

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So that's where the cook's knife was! And the dog's toothbrush!
 
You should put these in the "tips and tricks" section ? ;)

Do you think I don't already spend enough time bangin' on me laptop like a chimpanzee trying to write the works of Shakespeare? ROTF

Tips and tricks sections, are they worth the bother of writing? I don't know. I only ever refer to things like that when I have a big thing to learn, like hull planking, fitting pedestal bases, waterline dioramas etc. I'd google them usually. I'd never think of hunting through lots of unindexed pages to find the answer to "how can I stop my bobbin rolling onto the floor?" or "how can I make my cotton easier to thread?" I'd either work those things out for myself (superglue needle) or know from observation (bobbin bowl). I have found that a good many of the tips and tricks are written by people who haven't personally tested all that they claim. Look out for giveaways like "I once saw..." instead of "I did" and "You can..." instead of "I do..."

Also, most of the time we don't even know there's a problem to be solved - we just keep wetting the tread with spit or picking the bobbin up until we blunder on someone else's hack.

Also, more people will read build threads than tips and tricks pages buried in the basement of forums, as they usually are.

Also, many people will have read a book or two on modelling which will have given them most of the essential tips.

Also, I consider one of the great joys of modelmaking is solving for myself, the hundreds of problems that crop up. That may be why we value scratchbuilding over kits, which solve 95% of the problems of a build? Perhaps it was better in the old pre-internet days when we worked alone and didn't all copy each other? Just a thought...

Perhaps the 'secret' reason that we post these hacks isn't to help others but to boast about our own triumphs? In which case I prefer to limit my bragging however unconscious it might be, to my own thread. :eek:

Nah, I'm not going to write all these things twice. Let's rely on serendipity and initiative instead. :)
 
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