I have to say that I’ve really enjoyed myself the past two weeks. I’ve managed to turn-out all of the yard arms, with the exception of the fore and main t’gallant yards. I was hoping to recover those yards from off-cuts of the topmast and t’gallant mast fabrication. I also roughed out the main topmast, and this has me really excited!
Here are the yard arms. From left to right, you have the sprit-mast through the mizzen mast:
As with everything, I got better and faster at this, as I went. The third yard from the left is the fore topmast yard. I was a little over-zealous in my initial planing of the central octagonal flats, and I removed too much material on one flat. As I will paint these yards black, I decided to recover the piece with a little BONDO. The repair isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough and I can conceal it aft, and facing toward the deck. I don’t have a lot of this clear cherry, and I didn’t want to waste any.
Along those lines, the mizzen lateen yard is a little ovoid, in cross-section, for the middle third of the yard. Otherwise, though, the yard has no shadow-revealing hollows or bumps, so I decided to keep it. Again, I can orient the yard in a way that displays its correct maximum breadth.
The scaling of the upper masts is a direct take-off from the St. Philippe 1:48 plan-set, which I have reduced by 50% to 1:96. If I were a math-brain, I would not be impressed at all that the actual 1:48 length of topmast (17”), reduces perfectly to 8 1/2”, at 1:96. It does, naturally, and there is something magical about that to me. Perhaps it is because I can actually understand the simple math in my head
I honestly can’t remember whether I lengthened the lower main mast section, above the main deck, by 1/2” or 3/4”. The overall objective was to make it plausible for the topmasts to be lowered through the main tops and removed. As Heller has designed this kit, that is not remotely possible. Weirdly, the Heller fore topmast is a solid 1/16” LONGER than the main topmast. At scale, the Heller main topmast is 7/8” (7 scale feet!) longer than that of the SP. It actually works out perfectly that the 8 1/2” SP topmast can be perfectly maneuvered around the main bitts.
Anyway, it was fun to rough out the topmast, and in the pictures below, you can begin to get a sense of the overall height of the model. Keep in mind, that part of my calculations for the mast height factored-in the shorter than Heller t’gallant masts. Significantly shorter.
The net result of widening the lower fore and main tops, as well as shortening the fore and main topmasts to plausibly workable dimensions, will be a visually credible spread of the topmast shrouds. As Heller has modeled it - it is nearly a vertical climb.
Anyway, little by little, we are getting there! Thank you for your interest and for stopping by.