Another 1:96 Cutty Sark post!

Thanks alot!!! My email address is repulse145@hotmail.com. I appreciate your help.

Kevin

Hello all,

               I just have a quick question here on the rigging. I have read the numerous threads on replacing pins and the detailed rigging plans that are available. I just need some help understanding the rigging process. I pretty much understand the standing rigging. I was wondering more about the running rigging and what knots I should look into learning how to tie before I begin rigging. I refer to the actual Cutty Sark rigging instructions :

1) On Step 5 it talks about the lifts and halyards. Is this something I can do eventhough I am not applying the sails. Do I just do as the instructions say and keep all the lifts taught against the yards?

2) On the rigging that would attach the sails that go in between the main and mizzen mast and the aft sail is it still practical to do all those lines and still look like a decent job eventhough the sails would be missing?

3) I am also concerned about the later rigging steps and since you guys know more than I do I would appreciate any help you could provide.

4) And as asked above what types of knot tying do I need to become knowledgable about.

I have scans of the instructions if anyone needs them for a reference. Thanks!!!

Maybe a little basic terminology would be helpful here.

Standing rigging stands.  With a few exceptions (extremely few in a latter-day sailing ship like the Cutty Sark), it doesn't "run" through blocks or other gadgets; it only gets moved around when it's being set up or tightened.  Its purpose is to keep the masts from falling down, and to transmit the forces exerted by the wind to the ship's hull.  (The wind fills the sails; the sails exert force on the yards and masts; and the masts, by means of the standing rigging, pull the ship through the water.)

Running rigging runs.  It's constantly being hauled around, by means of blocks, winches, and other gear, to make various parts of the ship move in response to the wind and the commands of the people operating the ship.

Running rigging can be divided, for purposes of discussion, into three sub-categories.  One - lines that support and adjust movable spars (i.e., yards, gaffs, and booms).  These include braces (which swing the yards in a horizontal plane), halyards (which haul the various spars up and down when the sails are set and furled), and lifts (which are secured to the ends of the spars, to maintain them at the desired angles relative to the masts).  These lines are, generally speaking, permanent parts of the ship's rigging, and are rarely if ever removed.

Two - lines that control the sails.  These include sheets, tacks, buntlines, clewlines, leechlines, bowlines, reef tackles, and a few others.  These lines are directly associated with the sails.  Some of them might well be removed when the sails were removed (i.e., when the ship was to be laid up for a prolongued period). 

Three - lines used for various purposes not directly related to the spars and sails.  These include boat davit falls, cargo handling gear, etc.  The cargo handling gear normally was only set up when the ship was loading or unloading.  (Those big black winches at the feet of the fore- and mainmasts were for handling cargo.)

The triangular sails between the masts are called staysails.  The running rigging associated with them isn't really so complicated, but it may be a little confusing.  Each staysail has a pair of sheets leading from its lower, after corner (one on each side, coming into play depending on the direction of the wind), a halyard running up from its upper corner (to haul the sail up the stay when it's being set), a downhauler running down from the upper corner (to haul the sail down when it's being furled), and a tack on the forward bottom corner (to secure that corner, so the halyard can stretch the sail taut). 

How much rigging you put on your model is, of course, entirely up to you.  One popular approach for models without sails is to include the standing rigging and the "category one" running rigging.  That configuration secures a line to almost every conspicuous point, so the ship looks reasonably complete; the spars don't seem to stick out in space with nothing to support or control them.  The real ship might look like this if she were laid up for a fairly long period.  In real life it would be quite unusual for all the lines in "category two" to be removed, but lots of eminently respectable models are rigged this way.  This is the approach I'd probably recommend to anybody who doesn't have a fair amount of practice with rigging.

There's one important point that lots of newcomers miss.  The yards of a sailing ship don't just swing around horizontally; they slide up and down the masts.  The exceptions (in this particular case) are the lower yards and the lower topsail yards, which are fixed permanently into their positions.  The Cutty Sark has double topsails.  The upper topsail yard on each mast slides up and down the topmast - up when the sail is set, down when it's furled.  (Any photo of the ship with the sails either furled or removed should make this clear.  The upper and lower topsail yards are only a few feet apart.)  The topgallant, royal, and main skysail yards also slide up and down.  If the sails aren't present, the yards should be in their lowered positions.  (If I remember right, Revell molded some rings around the mast components to indicate both raised and lowered yard positions.  I don't know whether the instructions in Repulse145's kit explain all this or not; those in early versions of the kit did.)  Putting the yards in their raised positions with no sails set is a mark of a modeler who doesn't entirely understand how rigging works.

The Cutty Sark's yards have fixed lifts.  (They're made out of wire.  They could, in fact, almost be included in the standing rigging; they don't run through blocks.)  The lifts of the lower and lower topsail yards are taut all the time.  When the upper topsail, topgllant, royal, and skysail yards are raised to set the sails, the lifts go slack and droop down behind the sails.  If you're omitting the sails and rigging the yards in their lowered positions, all the lifts should be taut.

If you're omitting the sails (which I personally think is a good idea; I've never been a fan of vac-formed plastic sails) you can forget about the staysail rigging - and, for that matter, the running rigging of the headsails, between the foremast and the bowsprit.  But that's entirely up to you.

As for knots - don't lose any sleep over the subject.  Knots are a fascinating, fun subject; people have invented hundreds (or maybe thousands) of them over the centuries.  But for ship modeling you only need to learn two - or maybe only one. 

The basic knot used to secure a line to a spar or other is the reef knot, known to landlubbers as the square knot.  In order to rig a ship model you really need to know how to tie that one; it would be hard, if not impossible, to get along without it.  You probably already know how to tie it.

If you're going to rig your own ratlines you need to learn the clove hitch.  It's an extremely simple knot; you can learn it in a couple of minutes.  (Knots are notoriously difficult to describe verbally, so I won't try, but a picture of a clove hitch will make it ludicrously obvious.) 

If you discard the kit's plastic "deadeye and lanyard assemblies" and rig your own shroud lanyards, you'll need some sort of "stopper knot" to keep the end of the lanyard from slipping through the deadeye; on 1/96 scale a reef knot with two or three extra loops in it will do the job fine.  Rigging individual deadeyes and lanyards is tricky; I don't recommend it for newcomers.

If you're interested in such things, a text like The Ashley Book of Knots will keep you busy for a long time, and learning additional knots can be lots of fun.  But for ship modeling they aren't really necessary.

I've said it before and I'll say it again:  the best possible way to find out about the Cutty Sark's rigging (and every other feature of her) is to get hold of a set of those plans by George Campbell.  Two of the three sheets are devoted to the rigging and sails.  There's no better bargain for ship modelers.

Hope that helps a little.  Good luck.

Hi,

      Doy know of any online resources or books I can look into on making my own ratlines. Thanks!!!

 What does Cutty Sark mean? Is it English? Sorry for a dumb question.

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Re the ship's name - it's Scottish dialect for "short chemise."  The term was lifted from the poem "Tam O'Shanter," by Robert Burns (a favorite author of the ship's owner, John Willis). 

The poem tells the story of a lout named Tam O'Shanter who, riding his mare Meg home from a round of drinking, chances upon a bunch of witches and warlocks holding an orgy in a clearing in the middle of the forest, with the devil himself presiding.  The witches are wearing cutty sarks.  After watching these proceedings for a few minutes, Tam (for some reason I've never figured out) "roared 'Weel done, cutty sark!' And in an instant all was dark."  The head witch, whose name is Nanny, chases him, but doesn't quite catch him; the faithfull Meg jumps over a stream just in time.  (Witches can't cross water.)

The ship's figurehead is a portrait of Nanny (much uglier in real life than the Revell version), painted white except for a gold-leafed line around the bottom of her cutty sark.  A tradition among the crew was to put a hank of horse hair into her outstretched hand, representing Meg's tail, when the ship was homeward bound.  And after a particularly good passage Willis presented her with a sheet-metal cutty sark to serve as a weather vane at the main topgallant masthead.

Here's a link to the poem:  http://www.robertburns.org/works/308.shtml .  I'm reliably informed that it takes a genuine Scott to really appreciate Burns.  Not being one, I confess I find his works pretty hard to handle.

Mr. Willis apparently had an odd sense of humor.  Worked into the carvings on the ship's stern is his family motto:  "Where There's a Willis Away."  In 1/96 scale, fortunately, it's illegible.

Oh - and the whiskey is named after the ship - not the other way around.

Re ratlines - we've taken up this subject several times here in the Forum; a search on the word "ratlines" will bring up about a dozen different threads.  But maybe it would be helpful to go over the basic ideas again.

In my personal opinion the first step is to forget about all the jigs, "looms," "loom-a-lines," and other gadgets that the ship model companies have tried to foist on the public as solutions to the Great Ratline Problem.  Rigging ratlines to scale (or near-scale) isn't anywhere near as difficult as many people seem to think.  There's a learning curve to it, but the curve isn't long.  And it does take a certain amount of time, but not as much as most people think.  I'm convinced that the vast majority of people who are capable of building a ship model at all are perfectly capable of rigging a set of ratlines.  Some unfortunate folks, due to defective close-range vision, lack of dexterity, arthritis, and other infirmities, are, I'm sure, physically incapable of doing it.  But if you can assemble all the parts of that kit you almost certainly can rig ratlines.  And the 1/96 Cutty Sark actually isn't a bad kit to start on.  It's on pretty big scale, and that ship doesn't have nearly as many shrouds as a warship (e.g., the Constitution or Victory).

The first thing to be understood is the totally different functions of the shrouds (the vertical lines) and the ratlines (the horizontal ones).  The shrouds are among the most important parts of the standing rigging; they hold up the masts, and help transmit the force of the wind in the sails to the ship's hull, thereby pulling it through the water.  The ratlines form ladders for the crew to climb aloft.  The ratlines, therefore, are much smaller in diameter in the shrouds. 

There are two good ways to rig ratlines on a model:  the "clove hitch method" and the "needle-through-the shroud method."  The latter is somewhat simpler, and less time-consuming, than the former - and especially appropriate on smaller scales.

For the clove hitch method, start by setting up the shrouds.  Get them as tight as you can; let them make the mast lean ever so slightly further backwards than you want it.  The stay - the line leading from the masthead forward - will pull the mast to just where you want it, and will tighten the shrouds.

Draw a series of lines about a scale foot apart (the contemporary sources give spacings ranging from 11" to 15") on a piece of stiff, white card that you've cut to fit inside the shrouds, between the rail and the top.  (I'm assuming we're talking about the lower shrouds.)  Take a long piece of the finest black thread you can find (you're unlikely to make the ratlines too thin), and tie one end of it to the lefthand shroud in the gang.  (I'm assuming you're righthanded; if you're lefthanded you may find it easier to start with the righthand shroud.)  Use a reef knot (aka square knot - the one everybody knows how to tie).  (In reality this would be an eyesplice, but nobody, so far as I know, makes eyesplices in ratlines on 1/96 scale.)  Slide the knot along the shroud till it (the knot) is in line with the bottom line on the card.  Then, using a pair of fine-pointed tweezers, tie the ratline around the next shroud in the appropriate spot.  This time use a clove hitch.

It's notoriously difficult to describe knots verbally, so I won't try, but the clove hitch is about the simplest knot there is.  Any book or website dealing with knots is bound to show it; you can learn it in about two minutes.  Here's a link:  http://www.goals.com/vyc/knots/clove.htm

Continue tying clove hitches around the shrouds, using the lines on the card as a guide for the spacing.  When you get to the last shroud, tie the ratline off with another reef knot.  Then go on to the next ratline.

Put a tiny drop of white glue on the first and last knots in each ratline, and let it dry.  Then snip off the excess thread with a small pair of scissors.

The needle-through-the-shroud method is similar, except that instead of tying knots you use a needle to shove the ratline thread through the middle of each shroud.  That's a little quicker - but not actually very much so.

One detail of the Cutty Sark's lower shrouds:  only every fifth ratline goes across the full gang.  The others stop short of the foremost shroud. 

I've preached the following sermon before, but I'll take the liberty of doing it again:  try the clove hitch method, and give your fingers a fair chance to learn it.  (Fingers do that.)  My guess is that the first ratline will take you about fifteen minutes, and leave you exhausted, cross-eyed, short-tempered, or all three.  Don't give up.  Step back from the model and imbibe a tall glass of the liquid refreshment of your choice, then try again.  I bet the second ratline will take you ten minutes.  And by the time you get to the masthead, you'll be rigging one ratline every two minutes or so - and wondering why in the world anybody makes such a fuss about rigging ratlines. 

One further refinement is to make the ratlines from wire.  That lets you work the appropriate amount of sag into them, which is difficult with thread.

Hope that helps a little.  Good luck.

 Thank you, jtilley. I have always wondered about that. Thanks for always sharing your knowledge.

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As posted before, a new attempt:

Dear Folks,

I got an old Revell 1:96 kit through ebay though the figurehead is missing (along with few other parts that I easily can duplicate); does anybody have a 'trash'/ damaged ready built model or incomplete kit? If this person could send me the figurehead, I'd be happy! I'm willing to pay for the costs involved.

Thanks, Max.

If your like me to look for parts, I have an old junker I bought off eBay to repair my current 1/96 Cutty Sark.

 What parts do you need?

BTW, for those using the Cutty Sark Plans should read the book "Masting and Rigging: The Clipper Ship & Ocean Carrier" by Harold Underhill.  It gives a wealth of information on how the large ships, incuding clippers, were set up.

Dave