Hello everyone,
Being newly returned to ship modeling after quite a long time, I have learned quite a bit from many of you here. Hat's off to the knowledgable experts here, I am truely enjoying my visits.
I'm currently working on two ship models, The Lindberg Sandpiper and Jolly Roger. As mentioned in a previous post of mine, I'm setting the Jolly Roger aside while I work on the little Sandpiper.
However, I'm still piddling with the Lindberg Frigate - I'm building the JR as an American Frigate. With that in mind, I've turned my attention on researching the rigging.
As any of you that have built the JR know (& I found out recently!) the rigging instructions for the JR are a cruelty joke, they are horribly indistinct. At 1/130 scale this nice little kit cry's out to be more accurately rigged. I've purchased a number of sailing ship kits in the last month (8 to be exact) for a variety of reasons, one of which is to see what other instructions have on rigging.
Because I'm building the JR as an American frigate, I've opted to follow, as much as possible, the rigging for the Constitution. Wheither the Constitution's rigging is exact for the frigate I'm building is really immaterial, I'm just using it as a basic guide.
The spar arrangements on the JR & Constitution differ in the number of spars per mast - amoung other ways, but the spars are what I'm concentrating for now. The instructions show that rigging the Constitution (1/96 & 1/120) show the lower yard & topsail yard lifts tie off to the pin rails on the spar deck. The topgallant and royal yards tie off to the masttop deadeyes. The JR has only 3 yards per mast so only 1 will tie off to the mast-top dead-eyes - no real problem there.
However, the pinrails for the JR are small - pin availability for all of the lift lines, not to mention the sheet & clew lines, will be scarce. Would it be feasable to tie off the lower yard lift lines to the bulwark pins where available or perhaps install some cleats? Or am I just over thinking it?
And - are there any other lines that would need to be added, other than what I've mentioned, that would have to tie off to the pinrails?
I'm using the smallest blocks from the 1/96 Constitution for both the lift lines, braces and the sheet & clew lines - they look much better than the lumps of oval plastic that Lindberg supplies with the kit.
I am also contemplating using an extra set of the 1/96 Constitution ratlines cut down to fit this kit. I've read on several post on this forum that many of you dislike the preformed ratlines, but I really don't like the Lindberg injected ratlines for this kit and I don't feel up to trying to tackle hand tying a scratch set of ratlines either. Still up in the air on it for now.
I'm REALLY new to rigging and it started out as massively confusing. I'm just now getting to my normal standard confused state - so I am getting better.
I don't really know what I'm doing, just trying to get my first rigging job done as correctly as I'm able to at this point in my ship modeling. One step at a time & one line at a time. I've got a 1/150(?)(22") Constitution I'd like to tackle after these two.
I'm hoping this rambling post makes sense, I appreciate any & all comments.
Thanks,
Adrian A.