Shrouds and Deadeyes

Hi All,

I am back again with more updates about the Black Pearl model construction. Be aware, I might get technical this time :-P.

Today I am going to tell you about Shrouds. What are they, what are they used for, how one can model them.

Let's start. Shrouds are ropes that go from the top of the masts to the ship body. Their role is to support the masts and keep them in position. Since a picture always says more than words, I present you my first pair of shrouds.

To make a Shroud, one needs rope and deadeyes. The rope should be passed over the mast top and cut long enough. the loop over the mast head is seized (you can see it already cut to the right length and seized in the next image).

On the other end of the shrouds there should be deadeyes attached. They will be connected using laniards to the deadeyes already attached on the channels (don't worry, there will be a picture with this later).

The first step is to find where on the shroud should the deadeyes be attached. The literature says they should be spaced against the channels' deadeyes with almost 2 times the diameter of a deadeye. To get this right for all the shrouds a jig is needed. You can see the one I use in the next picture.

The next step is to measure the shrouds ends and mark where the deadeye should be attached. After this is done, one can attach the deadeye to the shroud. The first thing is to prepare the shroud and deadye for the first knot (that will be a throat-seizing). It took me a while to find a way to properly do that, but finally i got to this solution:

From this position, it was easy to do the throat seizing.

Next, another two seizings are done at regular intervals to hold the rope together. You can see the first one here:

And all three can be seen here (together with one of the tools used):

 In the end, you should have something that looks like this:

Now the shrouds can be connected to the ship's body using the laniards. In the next picture this is already done.

So this is it, one pair of shrouds done, 5 more to go (for the fore mast, there are lot more to go, each mast component has between 4 to 6 pairs of shrouds).

This is it for today. I will be back with more details soon.
Have a nice day!