Some time ago I promised to show some shots of the rigging proces of Lenox. Well, here they are, together with a short report of a rather disastrous job. I was halfway applying the ratlines to the shrouds when I finally saw the shrouds were too thin. I took them all off and started anew. Something similar happened when I made the sails. My stock of thin cloth was gone, so I went to buy some new one.The shop had closed down and I had to visit another one. There I could not find exactly what I was looking for so I made a choice. The wrong one of course. With all the sails made and some of them raised on the model I did a test to see if they would bellow like I wanted them to. No, they didn't. So I had to start all over again.
Learn two things from this: Make sure before you start a complicated proces like this to take the right sizes of rope and the right quality of cloth. And test it before taking them to the model.
I always try to do as much of the rigging with the masts not being stepped yet. It is a lot less heavy on arms and shoulders.
Here is how it looked with too thin shrouds and too thick cloth for the sails.
Here all sails are hung. The ropes have all been belayed temporarily because the next phase is that the sails will be set with the braces and bowlines. All other ropes are there now, except for these two. They will give the sails their right setting. After that all other ropes can be belayed definitively.
The difference between English and Dutch rigging was interesting for me. I never realized there were so many (subtle) differences. I'm afraid nobody will see them, but knowing they were there, I could not deny them.
Once the rigging is finished, anchors, flags and lanterns are made and some people are placed on the model my son can finally take photographs to make posters of the Dutch-Anglo wars as planned.
They will be in my next posting if all goes well.