soleil royal build

" />all anchors are now attached

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The "Louis XV" model that Anderson based his description of French practice on has the ropes going over the top edge ot the fighting top, hope it makes you feel better!  This photo is taken from Jean Boudriot's book on models of the Musee de a Marine in Paris.

Rigging practice must have changed over the years..

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it does my friend , thank's for the confirmation .

the upper pendant's are done" />

Your WIP is truly amazing.  Do you enjoy rigging a ship?  It seems like armour modelers put up indie tracks for the looks of them, but overall the time committed to them isn't too great.  Rigging looks so integral to the build, and there is just sooo much of it, that I can't imagine building a sailing ship if it is just something you put up with for the looks. 

( I'm sorry if this is a dumb question )                              gk

not a dumb question at all knox ,and yes I do enjoy rigging , help's to be a bit left of centre though , lol , and yes there is a lot of it , when I do a model I don't want it to be over in a couple of week's , this forum is great for learning from . I take it you do tank's etc, do you post pic's if so I'd love to skip over to that forum and have a look . I see you are from new guinea , what's the hobby supplies like up there .

steve5

" />started on the futtock shrouds

  This latest picture shows how much patience, (and crazy), you must have.  It is awe inspiring.

  I haven't built a tank yet, but I do plan on it soon. I mainly build airplanes, but for the past few years have concentrated mainly on wargame figures and models. 

  I did grow up in New Guinea but I've been back stateside since college.  I do plan on visiting (or an extended stay if I can convince the missus) after I retire.

  I enjoy following all the WIPs on the forum, but there are a few,like this one, that I read with a cup of coffee and time so that I can stare at the pictures longer.

  Thanks for the reply.                            gk

Steve-

You're really going for it with this build!  I'm impressed!

Looks like you're doing pretty much all running rigging?  What is you sail configuraton going to be?

Question:  It's hard to tell from the pics..on your futtock shrouds, did you attach a futtock staff (stave) to the lower shoruds and run your futtocks from that, or did you attach directly to the lower shrouds?  I haven't decided whether I'll use a staff or not.

Also, I like your pendant tackle.  I started to install them on my lower masts, but there wasn't enough room between the lower deadeyes/shrouds and the caprail without fouling the lay of the shrouds so I had to abandon it...probably because my deadeyes are too big.

Anyway, you're making some great progress.  I haven't had as much time lately (lots going on with home remodel, plus it's gardening season) to work on mine, but I have gotten the lower shrouds and ratlines all done, now working on the tops.

Keep up the good work....it's very helpful to be able to reference your build as I move ahead!

Dave

thank's dave ., hopefully I'm going to do full sail's , with some half furled , or in the drying position . { that's my intention at the moment anyway ] . I think I read somewhere the staves were made of metal , so I sharpened up the end of a piece of wire and pierced through all the shrouds and glued it in . hope that help's , how did you go with yourcrows feet did you end up doing the euphroe ? .we're the other way down here , heading into winter , so lot's of time for modeling . one other thing dave I found I had to go to 4mm dead eye's for the upper shrouds , 5mm I could not get to fit in , if you still use them I hope you have better luck .

thank's for the kind word's knox , I didn't know I had any patience till I started these ship's , I've only been modeling 3 or 4 year's . those war game figure's , that is an art I don't want to try just yet , way too small lol .

steve5

" />started the upper shrouds

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slowly getting there" />

That is _really_ nice rope you are using for the shrouds, lovely structure and no fuzzy-wuzzies. Where did you get it?

I got it from syren , very nice  stuff indeed

http://www.syrenshipmodelcompany.com/miniature-rope.php

Steve-

Yes, the 5mm top deadeyes are a tight fit.  I got them to work, but I basically had to shift them over a touch to make it work.

I did make a couple of euphroes for my crowsfeet, and I've been playing with installation methods...my stays are very tight, but I'm finding that any vertical tension can pull them out of alignment.  So when I apply any tension to lead the crowsfeet up to the top, it's fouling the lead of the forestay?  And I'm using .008" line, so I hoped it wouldn't require much tension to keep crowsfeet more or less taut.  Did you have any issue with your stays being fouled?  I'm trying to think of a way remedy it.  Maybe install a temporary line holding the stay down while i tie the crowsfeet, then hopefully when I get them in, I can release the lower *temp stay* and the forestay will remain in line...I'll have to practice on a mock-up and see what happens.

Anyway, really enjoying your progress!

Dave

Dave, for the stays to bend a little when other lines are attached to them is perfectly authentic. The old master pictures confirm it.

I once had an interesting discussion with a guy who understood such things better than I do. He posed a little mathematical problem. Suppose there are two phone poles, one with a pulley on the top, the other without, standing twenty feet apart. Tie a rope (or a wire) to the one without the pulley, and run the line through the pulley on the other pole. Then hang a five-pound weight from the middle of the rope. How many pounds of force will have to be exerted on the end of the rope in order to make it absolutely straight between the two poles?

Correct answer: infinity.

I intially thought that sounded crazy, but when I thought about it for a few minutes I realized it's true. If it isn't, for heaven's sake don't tell Itzhak Perlman or Yo Yo Ma. A string on a violin or cello has more than a hundred pounds of force pulling on its end. But it only takes a few ounces of finger pressure to shove the string down to the fingerboard. And a stay or shroud on a ship bends out of line when another line is pulling on it.

It's really remarkable that sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century riggers led so many lines to other lines. But the practice didn't really end till midway through the nineteenth century. I don't think a single line in the Cutty Sark is secured to a piece of standing rigging.

Interesting stuff - and good news for the ship modeler.

hi dave , can't wait to see more pic's of your build , I have been using syren line , look's beautiful and easy to use , but I have found that through the day my main and fore stay"s wilt a bit and tighten at night ?!! , so I am leaving the last tightening of the main stay's till I have completed all the back stay's . have you tried using the smallest smear of ca glue on each individual line of the crows feet as they go in , hold them down with a clip as a weight while it dries.the more I thought about it , the more I realised it just couldn't be completely straight , with so much other rigging hanging of off it .

steve5

John-

Thanks for the reassurance!  I was driving myself a little nuts trying to find a way to balance the tension...I finally pulled it all back apart, re-cinched the forestay, and went through methodically and gradually installing the crowsfeet lines.  I think I got the tension pretty good, with minimal distortion of the stay...I was actually able to duplicate it pretty well on the mainmast crowsfeet as well, so I'm happy with it now!

Steve- 

Thank you for the suggestion, and also for posting your crowsfeet pics from before.  By using a hybrid of your method and some experimental techniques of my own, I think I have a nice result!  Not sure about your tops, but mine didn't have the correct number of holes in them, and also, there weren't individual holes for the crowsfeet, but more like segmented slots that allowed 3 line into each one.  I ended up having to perform a bassackwards method to keep the lines going back and forth from the euphroe to the top in the correct order....it would be too hard for me to describe it, and it wouldn't make any sense without a video, and a syllabus, and a couple glasses of scotch!  jk

Anyway, I also enjoy Syren line very much...it's leaps and bounds above most kit-supplied line, though I think the old Imai line is also very good (if not always in scale and in enough sizes to really accommodate all the rigging lines)....I do find the Syren line will begin to unravel if it is handled too much, but I've learned to be careful with it, sometimes dabbing CA the running ends to keep it in check.

I've been remiss, haven't psoted any progress on my WIP for some time.  I'm happy to report that I have finally reached a point where I can turn the page of my instruction book, and that means progress worthy of a few pics and a Thread Update.

I'll head over there now and upload a couple pics.  I'm still quite a distance behind you in construction, but I'm happy to be making progress!

Thanks again....:)

Dave

prof. jtilley , could I ask you a question please , I have been following some builds on a german forum and they have put ratlines on the top shrouds , I always thought they were left out , could you advise me on the correct procedure thank's

Yes, there should be ratlines on the topmast shrouds. You'll find them easier to rig - and quicker - than the ratlines on the lower shrouds.

Anderson takes this up in his book, pp. 129-131.

As a follow on to Dr. Tilleys point, it gets progressively harder to deflect the line with the tangent force, the more the deflection. As the line deflects, it gains more of a lateral force component.

my apologies gentlemen , I meant the top gallant shrouds , I will learn all these nautical terms one day

steve5

prof. jtilley , could I ask you a question please , I have been following some builds on a german forum and they have put ratlines on the top shrouds , I always thought they were left out , could you advise me on the correct procedure thank's

 

I don't think it's safe to generalize about stuff like this. Dr. Anderson doesn't address this particular point clearly. The best other source I know of is James Lees's The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War, 1620-1860. Here's what he says, under "Rigging of the topgalland and royal masts" (p. 61):

"Ratlines were not fitted up to about to about 1715; from then until about 1745 large and sometimes small ships had them fitted all the way up the shrouds. After 1745 very few ships had ratlines [on the topgallant shrouds] and those few that did carry them had the lower sections of the shrouds only so fitted, about six ratlines being rigged. This lack of ratlines was one of the noticeable features of ships during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."

Lees tends to be a little dogmatic about such points. (His statement that royals weren't fitted to English warships before 1799 is just plain wrong - unless a caveat that they were usually "set flying" is added.) And of course he's only talking about English ships. But I've found plenty of photos of 17th-century Board Room models that don't have ratlines on their topgallant shrouds. I can't claim to have examined any French sources; they're notoriously difficult to find on this side of the Atlantic.

I think the modeler of the Soleil Royal would be safe in either rigging or not rigging ratlines to the topgallant shrouds.

thankyou to staale s and jtilley , ratlines are a pain , have to see what sort of mood I'm in, when the time comes

Regarding ratlines on topgallant masts, I checked the pdf for Boudriot's monograph of the "l'Ambitieux" and other ships from the reign of Louis XIV and they all had ratlines on the topgallant masts.  The model of "Royal Louis/Louis XV" that R.C.Anderson based his description of French practice on also has ratlines on the topgallant masts.

 Also when I looked into the crows feet further, the one on the fore mast does appear to come from under the top on the "Royal Louis/Louis XV" model, whereas the one on the main mast comes over the top of the edge, as shown in the photo I posted...  if it's important to you.