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

[Smithy]

Hi Smithy
Probably too late at this point but I just now found the following rigging warrant for the Alert 1777 at RMG. There are two pages of detailed information.
The dimensions for the ropes includes circumference in inches and lengths in fathoms.
Allan

Rigging Warrant for Kite (1764) and Alert (1777)
A sheet folded in two recording handwritten details of the rope thicknesses and lengths for the various rigging parts, as well as the type and size of the blocks for rigging Kite (1764), a 4-gun Cutter, and later used for Alert (1777), a 10-gun Cutter (later classed as a sloop but still cutter-rigged).

Rigging warrant for Kite (1764) and Alert (1777) | Royal Museums Greenwich

www.rmg.co.uk

The first page is below
View attachment 489455

Oh thank you for thinking of me Allan.

I don't really work to such tolerances. I'm using whatever looks about right from my Grandma's sewing box. Well, actually my box of leftover line from other kits plus a handful of bought in Gutterman polyester but you get the idea.

I might actually be slipping into building a piece of furniture .

 

[Peter Gutterman]

Good morning Smithy. I had to play some catch up here. I enjoy reading your logs and you make me smile and laugh. Always a good thing. Way to go with your rigging you are owing it.
Cheers Grant

Agreed!

Thanks Grant. I like to include a quip or two.

Nothing done yesterday unfortunately. I visited a market yesterday and bought a huge pile of CDs - music from way back in the seventies and eighties to replace my long lost collection. I spent an marvellous evening travelling back in time to my single days. I even dreamed of the youth club disco.

It’s been a terrible shock seeing myself in the mirror this morning. I seem to be old?

I just came to the shocking realization this afternoon that I qualify for the terms "Geezer" and "Old Timer"!

 

[Smithy]

Agreed!

I just came to the shocking realization this afternoon that I qualify for the terms "Geezer" and "Old Timer"!

The trick is to dodge the term ‘boring old fart’.

 

[Smithy]

Your approach is very compelling and will allow you to actually understand the rigging. I took a different approach: study one line until I I knew everything about it - install that line - forget everything I learned - move on to the next... This means if I ever fully rig a ship again I'll have to 'start over' .

It turned out that I just wasn't able to take in the whole scheme without some practical self-lessons to support the theory. I stopped studying the books when I had more or less grasped the principles of the standing rigging and have been installing that ever since. I'll return to the books when it's time to put the black line away and begin with the buff. So my method is a compromise between your 'one line at a time' system and my 'learn everything before making a move' ideal.

At any rate, that's how it's worked out so far with the relatively simple standing rigging...

 

[Smithy]

I've done almost nothing to Alert since Tuesday's update. The exception being a single hour this afternoon when I made the standing backstays and attached then to the mast only. The chains and deadeyes for the foot of these stays must wait until another time.



I have been busy with other things. I've tackled my backache which was induced by laziness and spending too much time sitting down and not enough out walking these dark and glorious hills with my wee doggie.

I've re-engaged my love of music in a big way by switching from the tiresome iTunes to playing CDs on a hi-fi and deliberately listening to the entire album as it was always intended. Away with your shuffling, skipping, 21st century background music!

I've received some minor medical attention - scarcely news at our age, and I'm happy to be as right as ninepence going into 2025.

I'm also finding this part of the Alert build quite tedious. It's very repetitive and I'm not even rattlin' up the shrouds yet. However, I must crawl on and make some progress each week or the build will wither and die. That would be a serious matter because, having failed to complete any models, wood or even simple plastic, for a couple of years, Alert was nominated the 'make or break' model. I must make it or break off from modelmaking entirely. This is why I am working at my tiny desk instead of investing in the big bench I have planned - I have sworn to spend nothing apart from simple replenishments on modelmaking until Alert is done, done, done. I'd hoped that might have been at the year's end but obviously that won't now happen.

I don't want to be building Alert ten minutes a week for the rest of my life so I think a deadline is called for. Shall we say Easter? April 21st 2025? Yes we shall.

 

[Jack Jäger]

Let's hope HMS Alert is the first of many logs you entertain us with Smithy. Have a happy Christmas JJ..

 

[Smithy]

I’ve tied my standing back stays at both ends now, from up and down but still somehow it’s Alert’s advertising I recall. I really don’t like this fugly thing at all. It’s more like a corporation dust cart than a sleek and graceful spirit of the sea.



This is the official manual’s way to fit the lower deadeye, stropping it to a flat chain plate with a flat hole in the flat eye at the flat end.



I had a bit of fun with the soldering torch. Only one of the deadeyes burst into flame so I was quite pleased.



‘He’ looks angry.



And there you have it. And you are welcome to it. The only thing that’s gladdened my heart this evening is that it didn’t take as long as I expected. I may not be getting any better at this lark but I am at least getting faster.

p.s. I know those deadeyes are too close together. I don’t care.

 

[Smithy]

deadeyes are too close together

While asleep last night, I’ve thought of a way to make that look a little better

 

[ColonelKrypton]

It’s been a terrible shock seeing myself in the mirror this morning. I seem to be old?

Just on the outside. If like me you still sometimes feel like a little kid on the inside. The spirit is always willing but aches, pains, and creaks slow me right down.

I just came to the shocking realization this afternoon that I qualify for the terms "Geezer" and "Old Timer"!

Every time I look in the mirror and sometimes feel like a "Grumpy Old Far"

While asleep last night, I’ve thought of a way to make that look a little better

Waiting to see what last night's deep sleep brainstorm has devised.

not enough out walking these dark and glorious hills with my wee doggie.

One could easily get lost for a while enjoying a day out wandering those hills. Round here is mostly farm land and rather flat.

cheers, Graham

 

[Smithy]

Just on the outside. If like me you still sometimes feel like a little kid on the inside. The spirit is always willing but aches, pains, and creaks slow me right down.

Absolutely spot on. I’m still a kid playing with toy boats! I think you have to encourage the kid inside if you want to experience the joy of playing as well as the more grown up satisfactions of knowledge technique history etc.

Every time I look in the mirror and sometimes feel like a "Grumpy Old Far"

That’s true too. My GOF inside is the ghost of my father, still being a miserable old git, thirty years in the grave.

Waiting to see what last night's deep sleep brainstorm has devised.

Didn’t work.

One could easily get lost for a while enjoying a day out wandering those hills. Round here is mostly farm land and rather flat.

Definitely. It’s lovely up in the Peak District right outside my door. The weather stinks but that’s just a matter of having the right clothes with you.

 

[Smithy]

I wonder what it would feel like to spend a year building my Alert and destroy it a minute after it was finished?”

When I wrote that a few pages back I was half joking, half trying to provoke a conversation. Nobody laughed nor replied but I’ve thought about it a lot in the context of process focussed vs goal focussed activities. To build a ship and immediately let it go would be heavily into enjoying the process and letting the goal become only seconds long. It sounds crazy in our context when we spend so long building our ships but there are creative activities similar to this. Consider spending years learning to play a musical instrument, and then playing a song in a concert. The song is the goal but it’s gone immediately it’s finished.

The metaphor can only be stretched for so long. Sure, the musician can play it again, but then, with the things I’ve learned from building alert, I can make another boat. A better one. Perhaps the musician wants to play the song a little better each time too, and may not want to keep recordings of all the times he played it before.

But what do I know?

 

[Kurt Konrath]

Burning the deadeyes with a torch whild soldering is one way of getting them black.

 

[Smithy]

Burning the deadeyes with a torch whild soldering is one way of getting them black.

It was like removing laser chat, just … backwards.

 

[Smithy]

I’ve rigged the running backstays today, over three sessions. It’s raining.



That’s the whole thing. It’s a way to add a little strength to the side and aft bracing of the mast. They are adjustable in use, hence RUNNING backstay, and would be tensioned on the windward side to give a little help to the mast, switching sides as the boat came about to the other tack.



I cheated at the top, making one loop around the mast hold both stays. I was feeling lazy and preferred to make one four-inch serving rather than two three-inch servings. I also saved myself one more big seizing and partially hid the messiness of the standing backstays immediately underneath.



That’s where the pulling power comes from. The tackle with the big single block and the unusual fiddle block gives a four to one mechanical advantage.



The fiddle block pulls down on yet another single block which multiplies the four to one advantage by two so that four men hauling on the free end would have the pulling power of thirty-two.



It takes large blocks to stand the strain. This is the sort of thing that would occasionally break off and fall onto sailors below smashing them to a pulp.

I have been shellacking my blocks today. I really like that yellow colour.



Finally the other end of the other rope. It rapidly gets difficult to describe rigging in words.

EDIT: I notice that I haven't installed the second securing pins in these little chainplates. I left them off so that the plates would take up the correct angle relative to the rope as I tightened everything up. I'll pop them in next session - I've had a drink with dinner so it's unwise to try that right now!

I'm beginning to like the way the complexity of the rigging is building, thread by hairy thread.

 

[Smithy]

It has never been my intention to fit sails to Alert. My second hand kit is an older edition that provides sailcloth but you have to do your own sewing. Textiles, me? I am the guy who once sewed his Corporal’s tapes onto his jacket and simultaneously sewed the jacket to his bedspread! So, no sails.

There was a time when I said no rigging.
There was a time when I said no masts.

I got over both of those declarations and this morning discovered that Vanguard models now include a ready made set of sails in the newer boxing at no extra cost. They generously make the sail set available for the giveaway price of only £120 plus a fiver for the stamp! I’ve seen the quality of Vanguard sails on the Zulu that I built for my first wooden boat and wasn’t impressed.

No sale Vanguard, no sails.

 

[Namabiiru]

I’ve tied my standing back stays at both ends now, from up and down but still somehow it’s Alert’s advertising I recall. I really don’t like this fugly thing at all. It’s more like a corporation dust cart than a sleek and graceful spirit of the sea.

I guess it’s premature to have Joni Mitchell rolling in her grave, but I give you full marks for the attempt

 

[AllanKP69]

Very neat work Smithy,
I see a hole in the rail with what looks like a metal insert. This is a new one for me so I kindly ask what it is?
Thank you!
Allan