The following is a random thought, making almost no sense at all. Forgive me. It's early Monday and I'm not really looking forward to my International Marketing class which is coming up in about an hour.....
Well, the La Reale is almost done (pictures will be coming soon), and I'm finding myself staring at the Soleil Royale and the dreaded task of rigging the deadeyes and shrouds...at least they're dreaded for me. And the worst thing is, because of I dread the work, I have the potential to take shortcuts that would be "less" than satisfying in the end.
I've never been one to take easily to repetitive tasks. I've always been a fan of the different, where it's never the same day twice. That's the way it is in my life for the most part. My classes have new material every day (only 2 more classes for my Bachelor's, then on to my Master's), my job is completely unpredictable every day, just the way I like it, and of course my wife and kids keep things hopping at home.
Then I sit down in front of the Royale...
I stare at the masts, realizing just how much I loathe the task before me. Now, don't get me wrong, setting shrouds and ratlines can be therapeutic. But after about the 500th knot, I find myself procrastinating...I'll find something else to do, like prepping another model, or looking up material on the web. One can only take so many clove-hitches you know.
So my question is, how does everyone do it? How do you force yourself, motivate yourself to do the monotonous tasks of period ship building? And by that I mean tasks such as assembling, painting, detailing and rigging 50 or 100 guns and carronades, or setting up the ratlines on a First Rate. I'm sure there are some people who have no problem what-so-ever and get sheer enjoyment at staring at a set of shrouds for 2-3 hours a day...me, I have to come up with interesting ways to keep me going.
What I've done is create a "mobile workstation." Essentially it is one of those bean bag lap tables you can pick up at Wally World. I think it's original purpose was as a breakfast-in-bed kind of thing. But what I did was modify it for all of my rigging needs. The surface is roughened up so things aren't as likely to slide around. There is a small square of wood from a 2x4 with a bunch of holes in it. I use this for rigging. I have a bunch of alligator clips with dowels on their ends. I can put the clips into the holes on the block in an infinite number of ways and hold literally anything in place while I rig it, say, like when I'm seizing a bunch of blocks for later use. I can also get other things done, like when I will be cleaning up all the barrels and carriages for the cannon and carronade of the Constitution I'm going to start in a few months. It has a lot of uses..
So now I'm a little more motivated to the more mundane tasks. Right now, I have a whole bunch of deadeyes to get done for the shrouds on the Royal. I'll now do the initial work on them down in the living room with the family while we watch WifeSwap. I get the best of both worlds, and the Royal actually gets a little closer to being done. I won't be doing any painting downstairs, but a lot of the prep work for rigging will get done. My wife gets me downstairs, and I get my model "fix"..
So how does everyone else get through the more laborious tasks? Do you have any secrets that make it a little faster?
Grymm