Rigging - First Block and Serious Revision
I said it was my first time for about two years and I could tell. I have a separate tool set for rigging and when I opened the box today my first thoughts were, "What's that? What's that for? Is that mine?" I creaked into action like a slug heading for a saucer of beer and gradually memories began to surface. I took many photographs and composed this 'dissertation' as a way to revise and relearn not only what to do but why. I remembered some of the many mistakes I made last time and swore (like a sailor) not to repeat them.
The kit instructions begin the blocks and string part of the build with the fitting some blocks to the extreme ends of the deck. This will probably be because when they are needed, the locations will be blocked by other stuff, so I'm tamely following instructions.
I also wanted to know what these particular blocks and their tackles were for and what they are called. I referred to Peret Goodwin's Anatomy of the Ship - Alert.
This one at the stern is the boom sheet tackle which controls the outswing of the boom that runs along the bottom of the sail. It's going to be a heck of a job hauling that in against the wind.
The kit instruction manual doesnt give it a name but specifies a single block at the bottom. It occurred to me that this wouldn't give much mechanical advantage so...
Let's have a look in this excellent reference book based on the authors study of contemporary models in the museums of Eu-rope. (Eu ROPE!
)
We are now calling it the mainsheet and it uses TRIPLE blocks. I'm not particularly clewed up (
) on block and tackle physics but I think that gives a seven to one mechanical advantage to the people on the free end. I have some triple blocks but not many and in 1/64 scale I think it's possible to overcomplicate rigging to the point of absurdity. Most of the rest of the boat is simplified in some way so I'm going to split the difference between a single and a triple block and use a double instead. (I'm also aware that in these hands of mine a triple tackle can instantly come to resemble the can of worms found in an angler's
tackle box!)
The instruction book tells me that the block in the bows is a double but curiously, it's not used for any mechanical advantage at all but simply takes the bowlines around a corner to make them easier to haul on. As the song, or rather the shout has it, "Haul on the bowline, the bowline haul!"
So I need to prepare two double blocks. Simples?
Here they are. The long dimension is 4.36mm. A mistake I made on Le Renard by Artesiana Latina, the first and only model boat with rigging that I ever finished, was to imagine that the blocks were ready for use straight out of the packet. That assumption made the work difficult and the result look awful. Last winter I toured the RN museum at Portsmouth for three days and learned that blocks, like every other wooden thing, were rounded off. In fact most of them look like well used cakes of soap.
"Sand down the blocks, boys. The blocks sand down!" For this operation I recommend a pair of nose hair tweezers. You can get a really good grip with those and unlike pliers, they won't crush or mark the wood - or your nose, for that matter.
There's that cake of soap look I was after. I have almost lost the grooves that the running ropes slide against as well as the bigger groove that circles the block for the strop to rest in.
The strop groove was recut with a triangular file and the others,
which stop at the holes, were restored with a razor saw. By now the holes, which were quite ragged to begin with, were full of dust and 'peened over' with ragged edges. Passing line through there would be awkward especially as they are going to be in inaccessible locations.
This tool is called a broach or a reamer. It's a long long square pyramid with an extremely sharp end which fits right inside your thumb with the minimum of pressure. The edges are 90 degree corners and remove wood in a scraping fashion when you rotate the broach while gently pushing it through the hole (or your thumb). The result os a smooth and slightly wider, straighter hole.
The one at the bottom is before broaching and the other is after the operation. (And the stitching to the thumb.)
The final part of Smithy's block prep routine is to give the thing a good polish with a medium toothbrush. That gets rid of the last of the splinters.
That's the full tool set used so far. Broaches come in sets - I used the third from the left.
In a bigger scale I'd probably be shellacking the block or oiling it but I'm going to leave it bare at the moment. When the rigging is all done, it will be easy enough to poke some varnish at the blocks if I change my mind but as far as I can remember none of the blocks I saw at Portsmouth had any finish applied.
Right, that's the blocks ready. I'm going to have some apple pie now and tell you about stropping the little chaps when I'm refueled. (My goodness, I don't half go on!)