Steel wire and white lead

J

jray47

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I am assembling a kit of the Japanese merchant training ship "Nipon Maru". The four-masted barque was built in 1930. By that time, much of the standing rigging was made of steel rope.

In the book "Pamir (A Voyage to Rio in a Four-Masted Barque" there is a reference to painting a stay with white lead (ostensibly to protect the stay from corrosion).

This leads me to the question: Were all of the standing rigging coated with white lead, or just some of them (e.g. would the stays supporting stay sails be so coated) ? Also, should the coated rigging be represented by white rigging thread?

Thanks.
 
I did a little more digging and came up with the following reference found in a Wikipedia article entitled "Tarring".

The process of protecting wire rope standing rigging is described in the book Star of India, The Log of an Iron Ship - Page 116, Footnote 3[3]

To protect wire rigging from moisture and resultant rusting, it first is "wormed" by laying small line in the spiral grooves between the strands, to make a smoother surface. It then is "parceled" by wrapping in the same direction with long strips of cotton duck (burlap if you're poor) and finally it is "served" by wrapping it in the opposite direction with hambroline, a three-stranded tarred hemp cord, a little smaller in diameter than a lead pencil. Finally it is well treated with Stockholm tar.
Click to expand...

So...white lead? Traditional tar? I personally think the dark brown thread (representing tarred rope) would look better and is more available in the smaller sizes needed to represent wire rope.

P.S. Brown thread is available on the Syren web site (https://syrenshipmodelcompany.com/).
 
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