Building - New Rigging

Re-Rigging

Some time ago I posted up pictures of the ships I had worked on but there was always something about them that didn't feel right.  Something that needed to be done better. After looking long and hard at what I had done it became apparent to me that the sails and rigging needed redoing.  Dead-eyes needed to be added to enhance the look of the rigging and the sails needed a complete overhaul.  

Thankfully Rick Casler was able to come up with a fantastic way of doing sails and Old Glory had perfect deadeyes in their shipyard range.

I also changed my rigging from elastic to metal so that I could magnetise climbing sailors to it down the line.

I used metal wire which I twisted up using a small hand drill.  First I threaded one of the Old Glory deadeyes onto the wire before putting the ends of the wire into my drill.  Carefully I held the deadeye in one hand and the drill in the other.  The turning action of the drill causes the wire to twist around itself forming a rope like pattern.

 

Next I put the wire through the holes in the mast pieces.

And then the other end where the deadeye is through the holes on the ship body.

I found it less time consuming to do all of these before moving onto the next stage.

Cut off the wire using snips.  I used the line around the ship as my guide.   Some damage was done to the paintwork whilst I installed the wires but this is easily touched up at the end.

Eventually you will end up with something resembling this which in my opinion is perfectly acceptable.

To go a stop further I used thin elastic to finish off the shrouds.  I spaced each piece out 1.5cm to form rectangles.   I tied one end of the elastic on then thread the other under and over the metal wires before tying it off at the other side.   Using a piece of white paper behind the rigging makes it much easier to see what you are doing.  

I also drew lines 1.5cm apart on a piece of paper to use as a measuring guide to get each cross piece evenly spaced.

Once done I put a small dot of superglue on each knot before using matt varnish to take away the shine left by the glue.

Once all the glue is dry its just a simple matter of cutting off excess pieces to tidy things up.

From there you can continue to add more rigging to suit your taste.

Hope that helps.