20210906
Ship is completed! Took almost 8 hours to complete the rigging but the finished product looks nice (patting myself on the back there). Besides the wrong size rigging lines that were supplied a couple of minor issues developed along the way to the finish line.
- After attaching all of the blocks (nothing in the directions or on the plans stating, explicitly, where they go; the few photos in the directions and the photo of the finished ship were all that were available for help – the location of most made logical sense), while I was lacing the mainsail to the boom I noticed that the block just above where the gaff joins the mast was missing. After a moment of panic, I moved everything (storage boxes, tool holders, etc.) out of the way, swept the floor and got down on my hands and knees to check under furniture too heavy to move. No joy…and no spare available. Had to manufacture a substitute out of a scrap piece of basswood stock. It came out OK but the basswood takes the stain (liquid brown shoe polish) different then the supplied blocks did. Still, hard to tell the difference without a close inspection.
- The eye of the metal turnbuckle installed on the top of the bowsprit end snapped off while threading the rigging through it. Not a major catastrophe; drilled a replacement hole in the body of the turnbuckle and kept on rigging.
I to try doing things that fall under ‘optional’ in the directions; sometimes they are simple details and other times they are a bit of a challenge. The metal hanks on the jib are in the first category; just ook some patience to get them through the holes drilled in the jib and then closed around the forestay (managed to drop one on the floor but the kit had a spare so no issue finishing). The parral trucks on the lines holding the gaff and boom to the mast were in the later category – with the challenge being finding something that didn’t look grossly out of scale. I managed to find some 1 mm metal crimp beads in an arts & crafts store that seemed to be what was needed. I painted them black, threaded them on and think are working out just fine.
Towards the end the directions said to belay the jib sheet line to a cleat on the mast that already had a line belayed to it. Not wanting to belay one line on top of another, I belayed the jib sheet to the Samson post. I should have read ahead one step as the directions said to belay the topping lift (the last line installed) to the Samson post. Dug around in the spares box to see if there was a cleat hanging out; again, no joy…but aha! There was a 90° bent pin left over from an earlier model that looked promising. I drilled the forward bottom of the mast, glued in the pin and belayed off the topping lift.
The extra rope coils are a bit so-so. I installed them as I made them so the latter ones are a lot neater than the first ones.
I’ve not completed all 3 of David Antscherl’s model – the dory, the Norwegian pram and this one. Model Expo does not have the next one mentioned at the end of the Lobster Smack’s instructions (a longboat) but figuring the 18th century longboat model Model Expo will test my mettle, I purchased it (a few months ago when I bought the Lobster Smack). I’ll start the longboat in a couple of weeks when I return from some work travel.
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