Test for squaring mast using sander and Proxxon mini vice.
Foremast is built. 
Looks great your build is progressing very quickly.
Thanks, Tony. I’m fully retired now. The first week of retirement was sitting around binge watching Netflix and Britbox. Now I’m back in the swing of things. Downloaded R. C. Anderson yesterday and researched spritmasts and tops. According to him, my tops will be pretty close to the way the French did it. However, the masts aren’t supposed to be squared at the tops. The cheeks under the lower crosstrees are supposed to be therefore padded. Too late now!
Congratulations on retirement, Vic. I hope it is everything you want it to be. I have been loving being retired for 11 months, although I do some consulting (like this week) now and then to keep myself in the game somewhat.
I’m loving it so far! Here I used an Exacto blade and some black wash to make this mast base to look like it’s in segments. 
And then I cheated with pencil.
Vic, why shouldn't tops be square. On Victory, the top is square. It's different on different ships.
And I'm embarrassed by these side and front trims that are installed on top of the vulings. How are they really supposed to behave?
Just following the directions. I don’t know what those wood slats are for. Sorry I embarrassed you.
The Victory is a British ship. They had square masts from the cheeks up in the early 17th Century, according to Anderson. He said the Dutch and French ships had round ones until the early 18th Century. They had to add extra support to the insides of the cheeks to keep them straight and firmly attached to the mast.
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Vic, looks like we have different Anderson books. In my book, the mast top is square
Regarding the front fish on the mast and side chucks. They were fastened with wulings. You can see it well in this picture. I don’t know what is drawn in your assembly instructions, but it’s more correct this way.
Good morning Vic. I've been away for a while and it is good to catch up with your build. I agree with you that the 2x2 is too large. I have had the same issue time and time again with my build and being in SA the availability of wood is limited. I used my circular sanding bit on my dremel (low speed)(I have no fancy tools) to reduce the width of the 2x2. It works pretty well after a few practice runs. Cheers Grant
I followed Pauls method...clearly did not come out like Pauls, however worked for me.And here is how I did mine... https://shipsofscale.com/sosforums/threads/vasa-1-65-deagostini.5904/post-201256
I started with round stock that was larger in diameter than needed...sanded down everything but the future squared portion on a mini-lathe to the required mast dimension...and then did what is shown in the post above to create the square area. In my case I needed the 'flat' on the squared portion to equal the width of the round portion (as Kurt described above).
Another option is to make a stand-along square section and pin and glue it onto the round section (that is, make the mast in segments along its length). The challenge here would be to keep everything straight... There will be a visible seam but no one will notice because they will be admiring the paint job you did on the horse figurehead.
Nice Vic! Looking at @Heinrich log, researching the historical correctness of a ship is more of a debate of many expert papers, documents, and opinions than an exact science. It is an interesting experience for sure. Great work on your Le Soleil. Cheers Grant
Now I'm trying to determine how I'll do the halyards. The instructions show the use of jeers, or blocks that are on the yard and mast/trestle tree yard. The lines lead to belaying pins below. The picture on the right reflects that method of doing the halyard. The left picture shows the lines "tied" without blocks or jeers and looped over the masthead cap. Then the lines go down to a large block. A line goes through the block and sheaves in the knight. Apparently, the real Soleil Royal used the knight for the halyard of the lower yard. Andrey @Mr.Deep showed his SR using this method earlier in my build log. Anyone have any experience doing it this way?
