Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!
(And a bit of Gaff)
With a soundtrack from the Vengaboys (now that was real music, baby!), I have, in odd moments when the gentle zephyrs of dying mojo permitted, created the first two pieces of moveable sparage for Alert: that is to say the Boom!, a large beam named for the sound it makes when the vessel tacks and it swings with all of the power of the wind into the side of one's carelessly unobservant head (did you know that during the twenty-odd years of the Napoleonic wars, after disease, accidents at sea were the chief killer of our not so Jolly Jack Tars?) and the Gaff, a similar but smaller timber which rises above the boom, somewhat in the manner that the Gaffer (traditional English word for the immediate boss of a work gang) rises above the duller, heavier members of the team.
The kit's Boom! and gaff are to be tapered at both ends, very gently from root to tip and more abruptly at the point where they fit into the jaws which in turn will mouth the mast (note that this is a Vanguard Models simplification - the spar actually continued all the way to the mast and the jaws were bolted on either side - however, this is close enough for me) where they are to be secured by a line of parrel beads, of which more later; such tapering is customarily carried out by your humble servant and scribe, using a whacking great electric drill, a vacuuuum cleaner and a handful of sandpaper, a process which had never failed me in the past.
This is a mock up of the operation because with long, thin, unbalanced objects such as myself, and the wood, whirling around at great speed supported only at their butt ends, there is great potential for disasters of one kind or another and true in-progress photography was considered ill-advised in the extreme, partly because the blessed thing had already whipped out of true, described an orbit wide enough to contact my tender visage (still beautiful, thanks for asking), snapped off short and exited the scene, due to the unsurprising impossibility of holding onto the drill, with its jagged ended pole awhirl scant inches from my groin (far more vulnerable than my face, as I'm sure you will agree), yes, of holding that deadly handful of steel in a firm grip while releasing the trigger in the midst of an adrenaline rush not matched since my attendance at a shooting party when a toff turned round with a loaded but misfired pistol to request assistance in handling THAT deadly handful of steel.
The jaws proved to be a perfect gauge for forming the exact taper, slowly and carefully this time, and I'd like to draw your esteemed attentions to the fact that the laser char (which sounds like a supersonic tea-lady to me) and other excrescences have not yet been removed from the jaws since until glued firmly into place on the boom or gaff, those pearwood components are fragile in the extreme and clean-up operations are therefore best postponed.
At this point, and remember the ten wobbly inches of shaft sticking out gaily to the right, my nerve failed me and I discarded the deadly drill of death with a sigh of relief, reverting to good old-fashioned manual dexterity for the removal of the final half millimeter or so.
You may well say that I became over-enamoured of the joy of hand working the Boomstump(!) and took too much off, but I would respond by pointing out that one must leave a little room for the glue to work its renowned gap-filling qualities, for what use is gap-filling glue without a gap to fill, I asked myself (or was I answering myself? Yourself?) while clamping up the pieces with a multitude of clothes pegs.
Though completelyignored by Chris Watton, erstwhile designer of the kit, the three iron bands drawn by Mr Peter Goodwin in Anatomy of the Ship Alert, adds a lot of character to an otherwise unremarkable piece of the boat (Unremarkable? Surely only if one hasn't already suffered agonies of terror in its manufacture, that is) and in my view called for some attempt to simulate them, preferably in actual real metal for no other reason than that we seem to think it looks good.
Unfortunately I was completely out of iron and the forge was cold so, rather than being a black-Smithy for the day, I signed on as a copper-Smithy or brazier and utilised this copper tape, sliced into thin strips and wrapped several times around the joint, mostly because it is malleable enough to be easily pressed into the corners.
Actually I don't think it looks particularly wonderful but I found it adequate, very adequate indeed and I applied a coat and hat of shellac over the entire boom which simultaneously finished the wood and acted as a splendid undercoat for the dark, dark, very dark grey paint with which I was to colour my hoops.
The boom and gaff would spread a very large area of canvas sometimes known as the 'driver' with which I will not be troubling myself.
This is the AotS rigging plan I choose to follow (almost), in preference to the kit instructions which are blessed with some extra lines, the veracity of which I do not doubt but then, neither do I need any extra work, and for that reason I will refrain from running either of the gaff or boom lines to the channels, larboard and starboard respectively, but will direct them to the eyebolts in the deck which, I believe, is mandated in the kit rigging destructions.
The gaff required a lot of blocks and lines and these were fitted off the boat; something of a relief considering the relative complications of the peak halliard and the boom topping lift with which I'll do battle at a later date.
This is the gaff and its accoutrements almost ready for fitting and missing only its parrel beads.
The parrel beads are number 4 in the drawing and are effectively bearings, holding the boom tightly to the mast while allowing it to swing easily from quarter to quarter to catch the wind (interesting phrase, someone should write a song about that - oh, they already did); being bearings the beads are small, round and prone to escaping while the modeller attempts for the umpteenth time to tie that tiny loop of thread around the mast, a fact I know from the bitterest experience.
A small piece of Japanned copper wire makes rigging this necklace of doom a great deal easier, neater, less aggravating and quicker.
It is perhaps blessed with one bead too many but I rather like the slight sag in my parrel (I am an elder gentleman now) and here's a better view of my 'iron' bands too.
