Bobstay and Blocks

Hi All,

Yesterday I have finished to rig all the guns and also installed them on the deck. You can see the results in the next picture. The work on them is not completely finished. I have to varnish them, but for now they are glued and painted and look pretty good.

Next I decided I have avoided this enough so I started (again) the work on the standing rigging. The bobstay was not in the plans, but needed on the ship. Its role is to provide the bowsprit some help in handling all the forces that pull him up. Without the bobstay, the bowsprit will only be counting on the gammon and that is a bit unsafe. Here it is how it looks like.

Yes, that is my hand (or at least a part of it). A sharp eye will notice that the bobstay is attached to the bowsprit with two deadeyes and a laniard. Yes, this is my first attempt to connect the deadeyes with a laniard and I must say I am happy with the result. You can see it in more detail in the next picture.

 You can see that I have also fitted the back castle handrail (yes, I found out how it is called in the meanwhile...).

This adds some more detail on the bridge itself and it also improves the safety of the passengers.

After some days of research on the rigging, I decided that the kit plans are not good enough and I will do the rigging the right way using pictures, plans and details from the internet.

This implied I will need to fit on the masts' tops a lot of double blocks. Of course, the kit provided only single blocks (and in small numbers) so I tried to create some from the spar wood that remained from the planks.

First, I have glued to pieces together (just one was to thin). Then, I measured and traced the needed lines. Next was drilling the holes. After that I have started to cut. This is how it looked like.

Soon, I had some prototype blocks to play with. They look pretty nice. I am not to sure if they are usable, because the wood is kind of soft. I will have to test them somehow.

I prepared some paint to paint them and the 5 holes deadeyes built last month.

I also had time to fit the remaining deadeyes on the fore mast top. Also you can see there some of the shrouds (one more pair has to also go there, but that one is not yet ready.

This is it for tonight. Next time I want to fit the needed blocks on the top, put the fore mast back on the ship and start to rig it. That will be a very interesting and challenging!

See you soon with more updates on the Black Pearl!

Have a nice evening!