My belaying pins how awful: need some advice

We need to be careful about generalizations.  Those dimensions sound about right for iron belaying pins toward the end of the sailing ship period.  Most of the earlier ones I've seen have been fatter than that.  That applies especially to wood pins - for obvious reasons.  The shanks (i.e., skinny parts) of most wood belaying pins I've bumped into have been closer to 2" in diameter.  On 1/96 scale that translates into about .020" for the shank, and maybe 50% thicker for the handle. That's about as small as I'd want to go with brass pins; if they were any thinner they'd be likely to bend under the strain of the rigging.  The smallest ones Bluejacket sells are a little bigger than that - but not much.

The belaying pin has an interesting history, which to my knowledge hasn't been researched with all the thoroughness it deserves.  James Lees, in his Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War, 1625-1865, says the belaying pin was introduced in 1745.  (He says they "were used on racks on the shrouds of small ships" at that date, "but not seen on large ships until the end of the eighteenth century.")  That may be true of the Royal Navy, but the belaying pin is considerably older than that.  Belaying pins have been found among the remains of the Mary Rose (from the fifteenth century).  The inventories of the American Continental frigates Raleigh and Alliance, compiled during the American Revolution, include considerable numbers of belaying pins - both wood and iron, surprisingly enough.  I wouldn't want to be dogmatic about the date when the belaying pin - in either a fife rail at the foot of a mast, a pinrail inside the bulwark, or a rack on the shrouds - made its initial appearance.

On the American fishing schooners, a belaying pin measured 17" long, with a 6-5/8" handle. The handle was 1-3/4" diameter max, and the "pin" was 1-1/4" diameter. In 1:96 scale you'd start with a 0.018" dia. rod, the pin part would be 0.013", or, just slightly smaller than a #80 drill bit !! Well, so much for "scale".

There are some things which must err on the side of "large" simply for strength. Music wire, and ACC!, unless the scale is bigger than 1:96......(or you're crazy like me!)

Pete

P.S. My Unimat SL, has milled several locomotive frames.

Ah, yes, and we all have to 'squint' a bit to get anything finished at all, don't we? <g>

Scale is always one of those "things" that can get touchy, there are those whoe swear by certain scales and those that "swear at" others.  Me, I've no problem with 1/350 or 1/700 for modern ships.  I just know I don't have the patience for sailing vessels at such scales.

Some of that will be age, too.  I find I'd much rather build a sloop-rigged cutter at 1/48 than just about anything else.  That's me.  May be I can get a few more "fiddly bits" in, which make me happy even if no one else notices.  Like actually fitting all the sheaves in the tackle for the Anchor Hoy I've been fiddling with for a great long while.

I also have a Unimat SL. Bought it used in '72 for $60 and added quite a few accessories over the years. The motor died on it, too, and, unable to locate another, I made a bracket for a sewing machine motor and got it back into service. Not as powerful as the original but it works well enough. Great little machine!

I've got a Unimat SL, a wonderful old gadget that can be set up as a lathe or a drill press.  Last year it celebrated its 30th anniversary in my possession; back in 1975 it cost about $250 - a huge outlay for a struggling grad student.  I bought it through the hobby shop where I was working; the owner let me pay him in installments.  Nowadays, if such a tool were available, it would cost at least twice as much.  (The Sherline lathe, with a second motor to turn into a drill press, probably comes closest.)  The old Unimat is on its second motor (the first one died in about 1983), but it still works fine.

It's capable of making belaying pins all right, but since I had a bunch of the Bluejacket ones on hand (they were a lot cheaper in those days, too) it made sense to modify them rather than start from raw brass stock.  It actually didn't take long - less than a minute per pin, once I got the technique figured out. 

Wire-cored plastic rod probably would work all right, but I've never seen it in sizes that would be small enough.  About the only material I can recall that meets that description is the stuff made by Plastruct, and if I remember right the smallest diameter is about .040".  When it comes to turning, it's hard to beat brass. 

A lot of considerations ought to go into the choice of scale for a model.  I tend to gravitate toward smaller scales, for a couple of personal reasons.  I'm near-sighted; I have trouble recognizing my wife from across a room without my glasses, but until recently I could do all the work necessary on a small-scale model without resorting to magnification.  (During the past few years I've had trouble getting both eyes to focus simultaneously on anything closer than about a foot and a half, and I do find magnifiers helpful sometimes.)  I've also discovered over the years that my finger muscles are far better coordinated than my elbows.  When my father and I were remodeling our old house he used to get impatient with my inability to drive full-sized nails without bending them, but I don't have any trouble threading a needle with one hand.  I also get along far better with a 5/0 paint brush than I do with a 2" wide one.

One of the great virtues of ship modeling, in my opinion, is its tremendous variety.  I've always tried to resist the temptation to think that one form of it is "better" than another.  I have tremendous admiration for the grand old English "Board Room" models on 1/48 scale, and equal admiration for Donald McNarry's astonishing models on 1/196 and 1/392.  It's the kind of hobby one can literally work on for a lifetime without exhausting even a small fraction of its potential.

Hee hee, I guess I am a little too spoiled with my power tools.  A pin vise by far is a very good tool to start out with, and to continue to use for very fine drilling.

Scott

Having had the patience to chuck up every pin to touch them up, were (have) you not been tempted to do some dremel-tool "lathe" work?

I've taken some of the less-useful dowels from some (remaning nameless <g>) European wood kits and chucked them into the Dremel and plied my hand at a bit of turning.  (Perhaps after having read NRG one too many times <G>.)  The "trick" of it, I learned, was that you had to have a pattern, and patience, the patience of a stone gargoyle at a bout a minimum <g>.

I've never had the patience for sailing ship kits under 1/96, fiddley bits like blocks & belaying pins being high up on my impatience-causing list.  However, in such small scale, I wounder if the styrene rod on a wire core might not suit as stock for such tiny BP.  One could take a bit of brass stock and grind a curve (beveled carefully) in the edge to make a forming "knife" of sorts to "turn" out the tiny pins in some sort of uniformity.

But, I suspect that steel wire and thick CA hit with accelerator would likely be as fast and usefull.  Such is life.

A drill press is handy for this sort of work, but hardly necessary - and certainly not worth going out and buying if you don't have more frequent use for it.  There are several ways to line up the holes in a pinrail.  One good method is to use a clamp or vise that has a straight edge.  (I've got a little gadget called a hand vise that fits the bill admirably.)  Mark the locations of the pins with a pair of dividers or some sort of scriber (a sewing needle held in a pin vise will do fine).  Clamp the piece of stock that's destined to be the pinrail in the clamp in such a way that the face of the clamp lines up with the line where the pins are to be.  Then hold the drill bit (in either a pin vise or a power tool) against the face of the clamp.  The holes will be in line.  Alternatively, scratch a lenthwise groove on the underside of the stock, and scratch a line perpendicular to it where each pin is to go.  Put the tip of your drill bit down on each intersection, and drill from the bottom.  I personally find a pin vise preferable to a power drill for that kind of work.

On small-scale plastic kits you may find that sheet (or strip) styrene is preferable to wood.  When I was working on my models of the Bounty and the Hancock I got in the habit, when the finished fitting was going to be painted, of using either styrene or boxwood - whichever I happened to have in the right size.  In terms of workability and sturdiness there didn't seem to be much difference.

Scottrc's trick of using a glue blob on the end of a piece of piano wire sounds like a good one - especially on small scales.  If the shank of the belaying pin is to be thicker than .020" or so, though, brass wire works fine.  (Brass wire thinner than that is likely to bend.)  The smallest turned brass belaying pins in the Bluejacket line are 1/4" long - too long in most cases for 1/96 scale, and certainly too big for anything smaller.  They're pretty skinny, though.  I made them work on a couple of models on 1/110 and 1/128 scale by snipping a little off the skinny end, chucking it up in my Dremel tool, and rounding the fat end down just a little with a file.

In any case, this doesn't need to be a major, time-consuming job.  Once you figure out just what technique you're going to use, you can crank out a pinrail - complete with pins - in ten or fifteen minutes.

A few items in a Heller kit should be omitted and a desclaimer put on the box to prevent frustration.  Those are the spars and pinrails.  From aside to being inaccurate by some means, these parts are made from flexible, soft plastic that WILL NOT hold up to any stress put upon them by the rigging line.  For my pinrails, I cut to size the plank and gussets out of basewood, then drill holes for the pins, which requires a small drill press, a vice, and good aim..  I like to use a tempered steel such as piano wire and cut them to size, glue them into the holes on the plank, and then place a drop of thick superglue to make the pin head.  Then paint.
The arrangement varies with location in reference to plans, period, and style of ship.

Scott

There isn't necessarily anything wrong with having a gap in the spacing of the pins in a pinrail.  A belaying pin, by definition, is a removable fitting.  If you were to drill a couple of holes where the missing pins used to be, you could say somebody had removed the pins for some reason.

I'm not familiar with that particular kit, but there's one other thing you may want to consider if you intend to rig the model.  Styrene plastic is wonderful stuff, but there are some jobs for which it really isn't suitable.  It isn't a good material for belaying pins.  It's entirely possible for the manufacturer to mold them to scale, but if he does they'll be so thin that they'll snap as soon as the strain of the line comes on them.  (Many Heller kits have another belaying-pin-related problem:  somebody on that firm's design staff thought belaying pins were supposed to have sharp points.  That's ridiculous.)

Several companies sell nice aftermarket belaying pins.  (My favorites are the brass ones from the American company Bluejacket - www.bluejacketinc.com .)  They aren't cheap, but the investment will pay off in saving tremendous headaches and profanity when the rigging starts.  Just shave off the plastic pins, drill holes where they used to be, and insert the brass replacements.  It may be that none of the aftermarket ones are small enough for this particular model.  If so, you can get by quite nicely with pieces of wire of the appropriate length - perhaps with the upper ends rounded over a bit with a file.  That approach would cost practically nothing.

In any case, plastic belaying pins are an invitation to trouble.  I strongly suggest replacing them somehow.

I say definitely try to make some new oins. If is doesn't work all you've lost isa little time, and maybe gained some great experience. And if it works you'll feel great! You may have to try 2 or 3 trimes, I often have to build 2 or 3 tricky things before I get it right, but it feels good! Show us some pictures!~