I've taken a few photos of the work today and I think I have enough to treat you to a step by intermittently faltering step guide to the
Smithy Method of hanging out the shrouds. It's not the correctly perfect way of achieving authentic replication of something that no-one's laid eyes on for 250 years anyway - it's my way of making my model. You are welcome to copy what I'm doing but after a caveat like that, don't you dare come back and say that I led you astray.
These are the shears I'm using today. They are larger than the silver ones I showed you a few pages back because the cord I'm using for the shrouds is so much thicker. The idea is to make a single clean cut rather than hacking the line into a bushy end so it's handy to be able to apply a bit of power. I use shears not scissors because I can use these with either hand, at any angle, and the cutting edges always stay firmly on contact with each other, unlike scilly scissors.
Every line I use gets the CA aiguillette treatment both ends even if it's just a knot with little threading to be done. I dip the end in superglue and then wipe it in and off between two fingers, moving fast so I don't (often) glue my fingers together. Sometimes it's unneccessary but I like to keep things simple and if I do every one I don't have to answer the question, "Will this need a threading point?" each time. It does no harm and takes only seconds (unless you are slow to wipe
)
These photos are from several shrouds so don't be surprised that I flash from side to side and front to back. The sequence of operations is the thing that matters, not the particular story of a single piece of thread.
This is the middle of a double shroud. It goes up from a deadeye on say, the port side, loops around the mast where it's seized on securely and then returns to the adjacent deadeye on the port side. A single shroud goes from deadeye to mast and ends there. Doubles save space at the top of the mast.
I'm lucky to have a son who wanted to make me a serving machine which made it easier to wrap the centre section of the line, as shown above. However, before I had the machine I did this by hand. It takes longer. Tie the serving thread to the shroud with a half hitch, dab on a tiny drop of CA to lock the knot, trim one end off and wrap the other around the shroud (which is stretched between two clamps) ten times, apply a dot of Ca, another ten, another dot... At the end, a half hitch and a final dot, trim the end with shears and it's ready.
I wrap the centre around the mast and hold it in place with a lightweight rubber-faced clothes peg/pin. (Actually, it's neither a peg nor a pin, is it?)
Personally, I don't care whether my lines are the right diameter. I'd bet a week's pension that they varied greatly in service. This was 1777, and although industrialisation and mass production was getting underway, standardisation was still some way off. Interchangeable parts were still a hundred years off and the idea that ropes were made to anything better than "yeah, that's close enough for Admiralty work." is absurd in my opinion. Other opinions are available and surely welcome
on other threads. 
All I care about is that the serving is a bit thinner than the shroud. I did one with the same size lines and it looks absurd in my opinion. See below.
The seizing closest to the mast is the absurd one, far too clumsy as well as far too long. Too late to change it now though.
The shroud pair closest to the camera shows the beginning of the seizing. It's a half hitch with the short end tucked up out of sight in between the legs, a trick I learned from a drag artiste one wild weekend in Singapore.
The shroud pair in the middle shows a completed seizing. Ten times horizontally around the outside and then two turns of vertical frapping to tighten it all up. Is the frapping authentic? I've no idea. I think I've seen it on one of the How-To books but I was first taught it by a soldier one wild night on Salisbury Plain when we were doing interesting things with pine poles and blank ammunition. I may be remembering it from there. Either way, I think it looks fabulous.
I've been tying on a starboard side shroud and then its mirror image and then arranging them smartly against the mast before allowing some CA to seep into the fibres and lock everything into place. Don't do that. It would be better, I now think, to get them all tied on loosely and
then arrange them all before locking them in place. It's only a little thing but it looks better when it's all hanging straight (as the drag queen said...)
Now then, let's go downstairs.
I want the deadeyes to be in a
roughly straight line. I don't want them perfectly straight because they are a mechanism for adjusting and equalising the tension of each shroud, rather like tuning a guitar, and deadeyes, turnbuckles and tuning pegs do not line up exactly in real life. That said, I don't want one to be overhauled (the two 'blocks' touching) and the next set ten feet apart. When the shroud ropes stretched or shrunk to that extent the seizing which attached them to the deadeye would be removed and the shroud refastened back in a neutral position. That's why they are seized instead of spliced onto the deadeye.
To get the roughly straight like I use the simple twisted wire jig you see here. It's a few second's work to make one in a suitable length and though it's capable of being improved in a zillion high tech ways (3D print, lathe turned, laser aligned, digital readout, beam me up Scotty...) why bother?
The first seizing is a vertical one where the shroud crosses over itself above the deadeye. Why? Because a horizontal one would require the heavy rope to be bent too tightly, which would snap fibres and weaken it.. The vertical seizing also leave a handy triangular hole which we will make use of later.
Tying a thin line around that crossing is either impossible or very easy depending on how many hands you have. I used all five of mine. Robot Duck held the loose end of the shroud whose upper end is of course held up by the mast. Wire jig held the deadeye in place, roughly. It's pulled out of plumb by the vigorous duck who thinks he has been given a worm, but as long as I do the same thing with all of the shrouds, it won't matter much. Probably.
That left one flesh type hand for the seizing line and...
... the other for these beautiful tweezers stolen from a biology lab many years ago. They have been inside countless rats and frogs and now are perfect for knot tying at a distance. It's the bent end that does the trick, improving access by the simple rotation of the tool. The milled edges grip the cord well and the accumulated bio-hazards make the ends slightly sticky and smooth over the sharp edges of the milling. When not in use for rigging they are excellent for removing stray fragments of eggshell from my breakfast and pulling those strange wandering rib bones out of fish.
Step one.
Step two is another simple 'half hitch and glue', being careful neither to stick the shroud to the deadeye (yet) nor to block that little triangular hole.
Does this picture need words? I start at the bottom and tie three seizings with a little whipping at the rope's end. (Another wild Saturday night comes to mind...)
Note the self-locking pliers holding up the droopy end. I like these things and have about twenty pairs. I use them lots when rigging, mostly for pulling lines taut by the weight of the metal. They are also very handy for holding pieces for airbrushing.
[Aside] Stop your spool rolling off the desk or otherwise tangling with a clothes (not a) pin or peg.
I line up the seizings by placing the end of the line against the first shroud. I see that the cheeky little jig was just about to fall out of the deadeye as the shutter clicked
.
That's the whipping about to go on.
All of this work looks like a riot in a macrame class when macro-photo-zoomed-in-on-your-giant-monitors but in the world of Smithy's flat and seen through his worn out old Mk1a eyeballs, it is beautiful. Mi amore. Je suis mucho pleased.
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I'll do another update about lanyards later but I must include this last picture. It was to be captioned "I stop after threading the lanyard through both deadeyes once to confirm that I'm working in the correct direction from the bow to stern, and the the loose end of the shroud is always towards the bow." I then carried on and made an entirely new mistake. Can you guess what I did?
Hubris in action.
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p.s. Is this kind of step by step update of value to you, the reader? I’d appreciate some feedback please. Thanks.
