Thread (line) winder

I hear you on that one, took me ages to make the anchor line. so I am building one of these: does not have to be so elaborate, just functional
http://www.naut-res-guild.org/forms/ropewalk.pdf

The link vapochilled provided is excellent. The "ropewalk" described therein is undoubtedly excellent and efficient. It's also more sophisticated than it needs to be.

I made mine (actually several; they tend to disappear between rigging jobs) out of a Lego set. Lego makes nice gears, and the blocks with holes in them make good, smooth bearings for the shafts. I've never bothered motorizing a ropewalk; I just turn the gears by hand. (I tend to work on small scales, so the ropes I make don't need to be long. Quite a few years ago I did a Heller Soleil Royal; the main topgallant backstays for it started out as three lines stretching across my basement, and required, if I remember right, about 45 minutes of cranking. If I were doing a project that big again I'd probably invest in a motor.)

The great thing about ropewalks is that if they work at all, they work right. A ropewalk needs four features: a set of three gears on one end, a gadget at the other end to spin the three strands into one, a "top" in the middle to control the pitch at which the strands intersect, and a means of making the whole arrangement shorter as the rope is made. Anything beyond that just makes the job go faster - and costs additional money.

One more thing to bear in mind - especially if what you're working on is that little Revell Flying Cloud. A ropewalk does two things for you: it lets you make rope of particular diameters, and it gives you the option of spinning it up in either direction (cable-laid or hawser-laid). If you think about it carefully you may conclude that neither is particularly relevant to this particular project.

Almost all commercially-availabe thread is hawser-laid (i.e., spun up right-handed). For models of ships prior to the mid-nineteenth century that's problematic, because such vessels often used cable-laid (left-handed) rope for their standing rigging. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, cable-laid rope had almost disappeared. It's a safe bet that all the line used in the Flying Cloud was hawser-laid. So ordinary thread can represent it accurately.

Model Expo ( www.modelexpoonline.com ) sells quite a variety of line in appropriate colors and diameters for ship model rigging. My suggestion would be to see whether Model Expo can provide everything you need, without recourse to a ropewalk. My guess is that it can.

Two golden rules about ship model rigging: 1. If in doubt regarding size, err on the small side. 2. If in doubt regarding color, err on the dark side.

Hope this helps a little. Good luck.

I built mine from a plan in Model Ship Builder many years ago that uses a Dremel and is a smaller version of the one in the above link by vapochilled. However, the dremel produces way too much high speed torque for small ropeworks which I found to be a real pain lately while doing shrouds for a really small clipper ship I'm working on.

About two months ago, my wife won a cordless screwdriver at work. I was using the said screwdriver a few weeks ago on a honey do project when it occured to me, wow, this thing would work great for my rope walk since it turns at slow rpms yet produces good, constant, torque.

So now she's looking for her screwdriver which has been "slightly" modified to be powered by sewing machine foot switch (um, hope she won't be sewing soon ).

She always said she is glad that I build sailing ships, well at least she used to, now I bet she wishes that I built cars or tanks instead.

Of coarse, it goes both ways, I keep finding all my fine clippers and tweezers on her vanity and have caught her using my files to do her nails.


Scott

Thanks for all the help and advise. As always, this forum has given me exactly the information that I needed.

I will likely invest some time in making one of these contraptions for the other project I am working on (1/96 Constitution). I work for a company that makes commercial machine tools and have access to plenty of raw materials and machinery to manufacture such things...provided I want to spend more time at work :)

I will further investigate the commercially available items from modelexpoonline for the Flying Cloud as the rigging line in the kit was ancient, unbagged and is very fuzzy.

Thank you all for your replies and information!

Greg

My recommendation is to throw the thread that came with the kit in the trash - along with the vac-formed "sails" and the plastic-coated-thread "shrouds and ratlines."

Different modelers have different opinions about the best material for rigging; it's a complex subject. A good starting point, though, is the line sold under the Model Shipways label by Model Expo. It comes in an appropriate variety of sizes for a small ship model, comes in appropriate colors, and has an unusually nice, rope-like texture. I haven't used a great deal of it (I don't think it's been on the market long), but on the basis of my limited experience with it I'm quite impressed. The largest diameter in that line isn't big enough for the lower shrouds and stays of a big model, but plenty big enough for any line on that little Flying Cloud.