Lenox

[abhovi]

Thanks RdK.

As for the painting of this hull you best have a look at my thread about the fluit. Here it is: A 17th century Dutch fluit
The plastic strip I use comes from a company called c-d-fix. They sell plastic foil in wood colors, but I use white with a wood imprint. After painting with yellow oker I apply Van Dijk's Brown and wipe it off, so that the paints remains in the wood structure. You do have to use primer, or the paint won't stick.

I will post some rigging pictures in due time.

The scale of the model is 1 : 77, like all my ships. This scale produces ships that can be kept in a normal house and the level of detail is pretty good.

[abhovi]

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.

[Mike1158]

I understand the accuracy thing, I have it too which is both a boon and a curse. Your ship is quite fantastic and demonstrates the length you go to get things 'right'.

[Seahorse]

Thank you for another instructive post. The ship is gorgeous.

Tomek

[elliott]

Indeed it is. Even your trials & tribulations are beneficial to us. Thank you for providing clear, sharp pics of the Lenox's rigging & sails. Looking forward to your son's photos as always.

[RdK]

Hi!

Thanks for the pictures from your rigging progress.Something similar, but less disastrous happened to me when I used a too thin main stay, that was intended to be set as a mizzen stay. Because everything was already set up and I did not want to do the line again the only solution was to cut the line and glue it back together in its right place.

Now you got me with mentioning all the subtle differences between the english and dutch rigging. Maybe when you have time you could provide more insight? Then at least some of us will be able to see them..

Looking forward to the flags and have some questions in this respect:
Were they rigged like a normal modern day flag pole? Did the line go all the way down to the deck or only to the crosstrees? Were the flags sometimes nailed to the mast?

Rgds,

Radek

[shipbuild]

Inspiring work. The Gold Standard in sailing ship models.

[abhovi]

Thank you all for your kind words. It is a slow process, but it pays off in the end. Making a hull is a creative process. Rigging takes more discipline (and time), but changes the looks of the model dramatically.

Radek: If you want to read about the difference between Dutch and English rigging, read Anderson's book I sent you. Most of what he wrote originates from both studying Dutch literature and English models. For me the lifts and the top-ropes were different, as well as the run of the braces. There are more differences, but we will end up here in the naming of ropes nobody will understand. Anderson's book has it all and even illustrated.

As for flags: difficult to find hard rules for how they were historically fixed. Very little sources to rely on. I know from more recent models in my museum having small sheaves in the trucks on top of the flagpoles, but I am not sure every flagpole had them and wether or not that was a later invention. We see sailors on 17th century paintings handling flags by climbing the pole, which was not necessary if it could be lowered by a rope....There were more methods of connecting a flag to a pole than one.
On a model in my scale it works best to simply glue the paper flag to the pole and let the whole problem rest. Glueing has the advantage that you can point and shape the flag and wrinkle it just the way you want. If it is connected to a rope, it will not let you dictate how to fly.
On models often times the flag ropes were white and belayed on the decks.

Oh, and what I forgot to mention: belaying the ropes temporarily and letting the loose end hang is handy, because once the braces and bowlines are all set, many of the earlier ropes (clews, lifts, even jeers) have to be reset, which is very hard if they are all belayed in a final way, which is with a drop of glue or lacquer.

[Michael Mash]

Hello Ab,
Even for non-sail ship builders like myself, reading your accounts of ropes and rigging is fascinating and informative. I enjoy your work.
Mike

[abhovi]

Last week I finished the model after five months of work (during a bloody hot summer).

I am not really in to English ships, but as my son and I wanted to do some posters on Anglo-Dutch wars we needed one. So I built Lenox, a well documented ship from the book The Restoration Warship by Richard Ensor.

Pictures of the posters will come later, they take a lot of time and work, but for whom it may be interesting, here are some pictures of the end result.