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[Brian60]

 Thinking about it afterwards I am sure that just twisting all the wires together in the drill would have achieved much the same finish as I ended with! So p240 is the wire with rope seizing extending along 7inches (model inches not full scale)of its length. This loops around the upper part of the main mast, the seizing is to protect any running rigging that may rub against the wire stay. It was at the point of attaching this to the mast that I noticed a mistake that I can’t correct without a lot of trouble.
 

[Brian60]

 The six main shrouds should also have this rope protection not only along their length, but also around the loops themselves, as mentioned I can extend the rope downwards but no way can I do the loops. If I take them off they will not go back on, essentially they will end up short because of the added circumference at the top. In other words all six would need to be re-made, I’m not going to do that.
So p241 and p242 is the wire stay seized around the peak of the main mast and p243 shows the lower end where it enters the stem post and around the shieve that is set into it. Then p244 is the reverse angle. You can see the stay entering the stem and coming through the rear face of it to another pear shackle under the central cavil rail, this is made up as previously described. The shackle is warped to the brace of the port bitt, I left the warp rope its white colour here so it showed better in the photo. I have yet to tie off the loose end and stain it.
 

[Brian60]

  Last up for this week the rope staining technique. I use various strengths of tea in screw top jars, you don’t need much, I have made two jars, with about 30mm of boiling water. The first had two teabags added, the second had four. Left for 24 hours the teabags were disposed of, leaving two varying colours of dye! Add your ropes to each of them and leave until desired colour is achieved then remove and dry. Empty the jars and rinse out after use or you will find a nice culture of green stuff begins to grow which is not pleasant. Finally in p245 you can just about see all 10 shroud lines and the wire stay, now that the bowsprit and the mizzen boom are in place it is rather too big for the workbench and my turntable to swivel without doing damage. I am negotiations with swimbo to use her art table for a short while- if no further updates appear I may be laying dead with a palette knife stuck in my back!
 

[Netleyned]

Sailed Vigilance at Brixham in June but no photos of rigging.
Going again in Sept and will try to overload with photos of lashings etc

Ned

[hammer]

Brian I think you will find the end of the lanyard are seized to the stay. Above the seizing of the stay.

[derekwarner]

So much progress in 7 months Brian..... ...so many different metal fittings cut, bent, twisted. soldered & installed ..... amazing

One simple question.........

In the model, are the octagonal masts stepped down into the keel plate and glued?.......or are they secured by alignment & supported on some sort of tapered arrangement or fox wedges?

PS....nice to "see" your voice here hammer.... ..... Derek

[Brian60]

Sailed Vigilance at Brixham in June but no photos of rigging.
Going again in Sept and will try to overload with photos of lashings etc

Ned

That would be good Ned, there are sadly very few clear photo's available- however modified over time since the original builds!

Brian I think you will find the end of the lanyard are seized to the stay. Above the seizing of the stay.

That is the route I went with Hammer, it just seemed two half hitches around the seizing on the shrouds didn't look correct.

So much progress in 7 months Brian..... ...so many different metal fittings cut, bent, twisted. soldered & installed ..... amazing

One simple question.........

In the model, are the octagonal masts stepped down into the keel plate and glued?.......or are they secured by alignment & supported on some sort of tapered arrangement or fox wedges?

PS....nice to "see" your voice here hammer.... ..... Derek

They are stepped and glued into the keel Derek. I will get on to mast flex in the next post, this has caused me some consternation which I will explain then.

[Brian60]

 Just a short update this time, we had a friend appear out of the blue which curtailed modelling.
 So I moved on from last time and completed the topmast stays shown in p246, again made with twisted copper wire and the loop soldered and then seized. The other end was finished with a single block in p247. This block is attached to a second block in what I believe is referred to as a gun tackle rig (please correct me if I’m wrong) the second block hooks to eyes let in to chocks on the capping rails, the chocks were to stop trawl ropes fouling up against the forward shrouds, these are shown in p248 just above the ‘H’ on the hull. The short block and tackle being used to tension the stay wire to the top mast.
 

[Brian60]

 In p249 this can be seen more clearly the way the tackle operates, the rope belaying under the end of the cavil rail and to pin no2 on the cavil rail, the book Sailing Trawlers is a wealth of information, detailing down to the last thole pin what each was for. Photo p250 is just another shot of the same rig from outside of the hull, this also shows the shroud steady bars, which I have located above the seizing of the deadeyes, on further viewing of the book these are incorrect and should actually be just resting on the deadeyes themselves, so another minor alteration to be made.
 

[Brian60]

 P251 are the navigation lightboards being attached, on the Humber it was customary to have these on the rear shrouds rather than the forward shrouds like most other ports- us northerners like to be different. The starboard one can be seen with a bulldog clip holding it in place while the glue sets, the port one is already in place. These were just a simple oil lamp hung on a clip attached to the board itself. What I cannot fathom is whether the boards were painted white or left natural, all the black and white images in my two books are very blurred when it comes to the detail.
 

[Brian60]

 On to p252 and you can see the top mast stays by the shrouds, the main mast stay to the stem and my failure, the forestay. I made the forestay out of wire the same as the main stay, however it was impossible to tension them both to the same degree, if one was tight without kinks, the other looked slack and vice versa. This I surmised was down to the two masts flexing (even though it has a steel rod up the centre) So I replaced the forestay with a rope one as can be seen in the photo.

While discussing the bowsprit I have noticed in modern photo's to be found on the internet how many of the surviving craft employ a bobstay. Yet in the book there is a quote from an old fisherman that the only time bobstay's were used was in the summer racing competitions amongst owners, ordinary fishing conditions never required one! Which is fortunate because I never intended to have one anyway.
 

[Brian60]

 I’m almost complete on the standing rigging in fact the forestay is classed as running rigging so I reckon you can say I’ve moved on to the next part! I wanted to begin at the front and work aft, simple! Err not quite. Studying the plans and books the logical place to begin is at the mast and work outward, so the first item on the agenda would be the foresail sheet and halyards. The problem was that the tack is attached by a hook and the clew is attached by another hook, so the halyards and hooks all have to be done together but need the foresail to tension them, hmm, I didn’t want to get into sailmaking just yet.
 

[Brian60]

 So we move to p253 showing the two hooks, on the right is the simple hook that is shackled to the stem post. The one on the left is known as a long hook and as can be seen is a bar wrapped around a deadeye, the hooks of both directly attaching to the sail corners. The deadeye is attached in the usual way to a second one which in turn is shackled to a bullseye running along the horse. The horse being the iron bar running transverse across the deck, this can be clearly seen way back in p48. In real life the foresail was set and then left to look after itself for the most part, any adjustment being made with the halyard in the deadeyes (some builders/ports used two blocks and lanyard in place of the deadeyes). I have shown how the hooks sit against a paper template in p254, both hooks are moused which is something I am at a loss to understand. If you wire the hooks closed across their mouths, why not just use a U shackle and bolt?
Anyway that’s it for now, hopefully I’ll have figured out the foresail (fears of bringing the wife’s sewing machine out of storage) and have it in place for next time.
 
 

[hammer]

Brian. Why mouse a hook when a D shackle would do the job. Simple, cost the blacksmith can make a hook in no time, buy a shackle, no way.
 I don't mouse the hooks on my models, to much trouble, as I change the sail plan according to the weather. Hammer

[Brian60]

Thanks for the answer hammer. Pretty obvious when you understand how shipyards used to work.

[Brian60]

 Okay let’s start with a p255, a bolt of cloth I bought from that emporium of haberdashery in the UK otherwise known as Dunelm Mill. It seemed right at the time but on making up a sail it is too red, so I think I’ll go with a soak in tea with a piece and see how it turns out. Meanwhile let’s move on with a test piece.
 

[Brian60]

Out with the wife’s sewing machine p256 and a piece of cloth about to become a foresail. Now I am not a novice when it comes to this machine but sewing a triangle? Well, all I can say is its like driving, anyone can pass a driving test but it takes years to learn to drive properly! The result can be seen in p257. A bit of adjustment i.e re-seeming and it was acceptable.

[Brian60]

 So I had a hemmed triangle shown in p258 against the sail diagram (full size) and a close up in p259 of the bolt rope that I hand stitched to the starboard side of the sail. I then got out my 1mm brass eyelets and added one to each corner of the sail, that is, clew, tack and head in correct terminology. I also put them along the luff of the sail p260, I’m not sure they are successful or not, but as this is a test sail to see how things look I’ll see how it goes over the next few days.
 

[Brian60]

 Then to p261 this is the uphaul of the foresail belayed off on the cleat of the main mast, also in the photo is the sheet of the foresail, that is, the deadeye rove to the horse on the deck, photo’s are wonderful, it wasn’t until I studied this one that I realised I had used the wrong diameter rope for the deadeye halyard, this is corrected in later photo’s. This oversize halyard is better seen in p262, where it is hooked to the clew of the sail.
 

[Brian60]

 In p263 is the full sail in position with the eyes hanked to the main mast forestay, the tack rove to the hook in the stem and the halyards hooked into the head, the downhaul halyard hanging loose waiting to be belayed around its cleat. Its been a couple of days and I’m still not sure about those eyelets, they look okay in the photo but up close they seem out of place, maybe it’s the colour of the brass? Anyway a long think is in order before I remake this sail.
 

[Brian60]

 P265 and p266 are the correct halyard size now in place on the sheet deadeyes, one from outside the hull, and the other across the deck, this one shows the coupling to the horse with another pear shackle made up as before from tubing cut in half and rolled to shape. Also in this photo can be seen the end of the uphaul halyard tidied away in loops over its cleat.
 

[Brian60]

 Wow p267 a wooden double block seized to a halyard! For no apparent reason other than I didn’t at that moment want to make another sail, I began on the main boom topping lift (out of sequence again!) So p268 is the free end seized to the end cap, this goes up to a single block on the starboard cheek of the main mast p269, and down to the double block that is shown in p267. The double block is connected to a single block that is hooked to an eye between the shrouds, its purchase going to the thole pins in the starboard cavil rail, p270.
 

[Brian60]

 Now on to p271, I had made up the jib sail mainly because I wanted to try my hand at machining the seams into the sailcloth, I was pretty successful with that. However going back to what I said about mastering techniques, if you view p272 you will see it has misshapen badly especially along the foot of the sail when put under tension. Also even though cut across the bias of the cloth, it had stretched wildly, I re-shaped the head of the sail cutting away almost 25mm but it now looks abysmal p273.
 

[Brian60]

 A better sail is shown in p274, against the old one for comparison. Remember at the beginning when I said it was too red? Well in the local ‘we sell everything’ Chinese store, I found some dark brown cloth dye. I made up the concoction and put my cloth in it. An hour later I took it out to find the burgundy colour. Of course the water colour artist wife then chose to inform me that if I had used the ‘colour wheel’ I would have known that adding green to red would give me brown, I hate a know it all, but I daren’t tell her that!
A little more knowledge for those that often wondered why sails were a ruddy brown in colour. It was customary for sails to be soaked/treated with oak bark, the tannin in the bark acted as a preservative on the sails making them last longer before needing replacement.

 

[Brian60]

 I’ll follow that with p275 a close up of the jib sail showing simulated stitching for the individual panels that make up the sail, also the boltrope on the old sail, p276 is forum member Hammer’s brilliant idea for attaching the boltrope to the sail.


 The sail is stretched across the span of a U shape, I used a piece of Perspex because that’s what came to hand first, but a piece of ply works equally well. Cut it to the U shape, stretch your boltrope across the legs of the U and clip in place to stop slippage. Then offer up the sail cloth and stitch the rope to the edge, remembering to get it on the starboard side of the sail. When the rope is released it will return to its un-stretched state, putting a slight belly in the sail cloth for you.