And so the rigging begins. I decided to start with the Mizzen mast and work my way forward, for no other reason than working forwards sounds better than working backwards, and also that the Mizzen mast looks a bit easier to do than the rest of them
The mast is stepped by applying a small amount of wood glue to the base and housing it into position through the stern decks. The mast is supported by four sets of shrouds which is where the rigging really begins. I created staple-shape brackets from 24-gauge wire to hold the upper deadeyes in place and equidistant from the lower row of deadeyes on the channels. This is purely for aesthetic reasons, of course. I understand there are all sorts of reasons why this is not necessarily realistic in practice.
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The kit instructions recommend 1mm rope for the lower Mizzen shrouds, although the plans indicate .75 mm instead which, to my eye, looks more to scale especially when wrapped around 3 mm deadeyes. Each shroud-pair loops around the mast top and is seized to two of the upper deadeyes with .25 mm line. I did not serve the central section of the shroud rope as there is not enough room in the lubber hole to accommodate the thickened rope. It may work on the other, larger mast tops.
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The wire brackets are removed and .5 mm natural thread is reeved as a lanyard through the upper and lower sets of deadeyes. The lanyards are used to tension up the shroud lines and then seized just above the upper deadeye.
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Finally, the loose ends of the shroud lines are seized in a couple of places above the lanyard seizing. I experimented with various knots off-model to find those that gave a reasonable look of authenticity and did not leave too many of those pesky stray ends. The knots were secured with a mild fabric glue that dries clear and does not freeze the rope in the way that superglue does.
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That's the lower Mizzen shrouds done! I installed the shroud lines in the order of starboard-fore, port-fore, starboard-aft, port-aft, and will stick to that pattern with the other shroud rigging as well. The process is not as daunting as it first seems and gets easier once you get into the zone. Keeping the two rows of deadeyes equidistant and maintaining a fair bit of tension in the shroud lines are the two variables that can make the exercise quite challenging, and I'm sure that I'll have forgotten all the lessons learnt by the time I get to setting up the shrouds on the Main and Foremast
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Thanks for checking in
Mark