Hi Jan,

Yes, it's certainly a step in the right direction!

Here's a couple of pictures of the mizzen sail, after I tried to darken it with a weak coffee solution, and after I ironed it this morning (still needs some more ironging!). From the pictures, it doesn't look like the sail got very darkened, but at least the bright white of the cloth is toned down. I put an unadulterated staysail in the picture, for comparison. I also found, it's not so much the strength of the solution, but the coloring is dependent on how long the sail stays in the solution. Here, I kept the mizzen sail in solution for about 15 minutes.

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For everyone who might read this, lemme know what you think - always open to ideas.

Cheers,

Tim

Jan,

How close does the color of the mizzen sails match the other sails? Seems to me that they would age at the same rate or more being how mizzen sails are always used. If they match up pretty good with the others then they should be good to go.

Mark

Hi Mark,

Yes, I agree, that all the sails should have about the same color, due to aging. So far, I've only tried to color the mizzen sail; the stay sail in my pic is just for comparison...and these 2 photos don't really show just how bright white the sailcloth is.

Tim

A wa-la!

Not liking the coloration of the mizzen sail after the previous work, I decided to make a darker coffee solution, and soaked the sail in that solution for an initial 5 minutes, let it dry for a couple of days (and still not happy with the color), and then soaked for another 10 minutes. After drying it and ironing out the wrinkles, I'm quite happy with the result! Here's a picture of the newest coffee solution:
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And here's the sail after ironing, and the image below it is a comparison of an unadultered sail, contrasted with the colored mizzen sail:

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So now, there's only 19 sails to go! Plus, as I use up the coffee solution, trying to re-create the same color...I won't mind some color variations in the sails, I think it will look a tad more realistic.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tim

Tim,

Try, try again seems to finally paid off for you on color selection. I agree having variation in colors on the sails would look more natural.

Mark

Thanks, Mark. I just hope the color variations aren't too drastic between each sail.

In other news, I finally got myself motivated to work on Victory; what I've been putting off for several weeks, is the attachment of the mizzen sail. If I haven't said this before, I'll say it now: I wanted to get the mizzen sail in place before adding the braces for the top & topgallant yards. So, here's today's effort:

I had previously downloaded some sail instructions from Hismodel (where I got the cloth sails from), and he has an illustration showing the method of attachment. Here's a pic of his illustration:

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If you study this, it looks pretty simple, right?

Wrong!

Here's how things looked after about 5 knots and 45 minutes:

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I'm not sure where things weren't working, but it's not the look I was trying to get. So I took as many of those knots out, and decided to just "sew" the sail to the horn - it's just simply through the sail, over the horn, and back through the sail. It took me about an hour to complete this, and all told, took 22.75 inches of thread to complete (there's about 2 inches left over). I tell you this, because the thread I'm using is some leftover stuff when I built a small version of Thermopolaye many years ago. About midway through, I had to cut some additional thread to finish the job. So, of course, here's a picture of the effort:

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Oddly enough, when I started working on this today and I picked up the mizzen sail, I had an off-hand mental thought that "this looks like it has a coffee stain on it"!

So thanks for taking a peek, and hopefully, more progress will be made as the year ends.

Cheers!

Timothy,

It looks your first effort would have worked it you spaced the stitching closer like in you did in the second attempt. On knots like in the photo I find it easier to work each knot and then add a drop of glue to hold the finished knot while working on the next one.

In the drawing the stitching looks much closer than the your first attempt. Maybe the line you were using was to thin and should have been thicker?

Nice to see you are still making progress. I know the feeling, that after finishing a major step you like to step back and take a break.

Mark

Mark,

Well, I thought I had the knots pretty close together, and as can be seen in the picture, it turned out not (knot?!) so good when I tried to pull things tight, so that's why I went with the "over and under" method. I think if I had secured each knot with some glue before doing the next knot, sure, it probably would have worked out, but I'd still be working on it!

Today I finished securing the mizzen sail to the boom. I used a thread 36 inches in length, and it took about 70 minutes to complete. The big problem was making sure I didn't loop the sail-attaching thread around any of the other rigging, and keeping that thread secured in the eye of the needle.

Here's a wide view:

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And a couple of close-up shots:
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Thanks for taking a look.

Tim

Timothy,

With issues you had getting the right size sail and such, I bet you are ready to move on. The mizzen sail looks great now that it is fitted. What's the next step?

Mark

Mark,

Thanks for your kind words. Your question, though, made me chuckle, as I have been thinking about the next thing to tackle (and there's plenty to tackle!!). I think the next item to go after is simply the flag staff, before much more rigging goes on...after that, I'm not sure. Probably something to do with sails & rigging!

Tim

Tim,

just a very quick and brief 'wow'... That's a lot of delicate work and it looks really fine!!

Cheers
Jan

Thanks, Jan.

The current update: I have attached the cringles to the mizzen topgallant sail, but when I test-fitted the sail, it just hung flat, and not looking too realistic. So I had the idea, to put the cloth sail over the molded plastic sails that came with the kit, and use a diluted solution of white glue & water to try and form the cloth sail as if some wind was hitting it. Well, all that went fine and dandy, except that the glue solution caused the sail cloth to pucker up. So I've been hunting around the house for a thing my wife had for ironing rounded clothes items, but so far, I haven't found it. (I'm thinking I might have thrown it away after my wife died). So I'll do some more hunting tomorrow for the "thing", and if I don't find it, maybe I'll head to the store Friday or Saturday to see if I can find something similar.

I'll try to post some photos tomorrow.

Thanks for watching, and I hope everyone enjoys Thanksgiving.

Tim

Well, I didn't find the "thing" to help iron rounded surfaces, so I just used the pointed/rounded edge of the ironing board to try and iron out those puckers. It didn't take all the puckers out, but it works for me. I think, on the next sail, instead of applying the glue/water solution to the whole sail, I will just use it on the edges of the sail, and will hopefully get a shaped sail without puckers!

My last post, I mentioned about adding the cringles to the mizzen topgallant sail. Here's how it looks:

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Here's a picture comparing some paint samples (from Benjamin Moore) to the topgallant sail, after I had soaked in the coffee solution.

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And lastly, some pix of the sail in-place (but not attached), to see which thread I use for the buntlines. I wanted to compare the threads I have, and see how they contrast against the sail. The first pic shows the sail with white thread (well, it's a little bit off-white, but it's the stuff I'm using for a fair amount of the rigging):

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This next pic, I'm using the same white thread, but after I ran it across a brown Sharpie, to give the thread some color. It looks almost black in the picture, but I think I will use this thread for the buntlines:

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And this last picture, I'm using some thread I call "ecru", as I'm not sure what color it is. I also like the thickness of this stuff; I was at Wal-Mart yesterday, and found some thread matching in color, but not in diameter. I like this color a lot, and would love to use it all over the ship, but then the rigging might become too monochromatic.

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So that's all for now. I am glad to report that I achieved a goal on Victory: getting at least one sail attached before the end of the year! I'm headed off to the workbench now, to see about getting a second sail attached! Wish me luck!

Timothy,

Nice looking sail, really like the luff/shape of it, looks like a light wind has taken it. Your water/glue method is working well.

Mark

Hi Tim,

some very nice progress! Your work on the sails is very smart, looks really cool!

Cheers
Jan

Mark & Jan,

Thank you very much for your kind words. If all goes well, I should have another sail attached by the end of the weekend!

So here's one thing that needs to go well: last night, I was trimming the threads I used to bend the sail to the yardarm...there was 3 or 4 places that needed trimming, on both the front and back of the sail. Well, as I was getting down to the last bit of trimming, for some reason, I was having difficulty cutting through the thread. Soon enough, the job was finished, and I thought, "great!". Well, upon closer viewing, I saw that I had cut through a previously installed thread (the tye line for the mizzen topgallant yardarm). When I first saw the cut thread, I thought to myself, "why is that thread not going anywhere?"...and then it dawned on me as to what happened. So the next thing to do is to get the tye line repaired, and then try to get on with attaching the mizzen topsail. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

Timonthy,

Sorry to hear about the mishap. I thought builders ran the thread through bees wax to eliminate those threads?

Mark

Thanks, Mark. I use beeswax mostly to lubricate threads; I've never considered using it as an adhesive/binder.

I've started repairing the topgallant tye line today; I might finish tonight when I get home from work, or maybe tomorrow (at least I'll have sunlight tomorrow!).

Tim

So, in looking at where the buntlines belay to (on the mizzenmast top, step 27C), the instructions indicate they belay to some pullies that were (supposed to have been) installed in step 22C. Well, I remember looking at step 22C, and it shows 4 blocks attached to the rings in the mizzen top, and those 4 blocks are magically attached to 4 more blocks, with a flag in the instructions to indicate I should look at step 27C for further instruction. Well, these being those finely thought-out Heler instructions, I decided at the time to just skip utting the blocks in, and I'd belay the buntlines to the rings. Well, now that I'm putting the rigging into place, I decided to go ahead and put the pullies in place, and try to rig the buntlines. as they're supposed to be? Heller's instructions skip over just how all this tuff get put together.

But before putting any blocks in place, I had to fabricate another ring, as the one I previously glued into placed had broken off. So I took a 4 mm metal ring, cut some of it, and formed a ring with the remaineder, then super-glued it to the mizzen top. In attaching the blocks to the rings (blocks p278, p280, p282, and p284) the question comes to mind, how high up from the top should the pullies be? I decided to make their height about even with the mast cap, with the inner blocks belonging to the topgallant buntlines, and the outer blocks belonging to the topsail buntlines. So now, the guess is to determine how far from the yardarm the buntline should fall, before that end wraps around a block (in this case, either p279, p281, p280, or p285). So ow, I have to go back a little bit, and attach blocks to the fore and main tops for the buntlines on the sails on those masts. (For what's it worth, I started getting the blocks prepared tonight. I found that for the fore mast, the distance from the top to the mast cap is 45 mm, and for the main mast, the distance is 55 mm).

I hope all of that made some sense!

So here is a picture of the metal ring I made. It's slightly larger than the rings that came with the kit, but I don't think anyone's going to notice. The ring is already attached to the top; it's about in the middle of the picture:

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This is a picture of the rings, with one block already installed to an inner ring:

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And this last one shows 2 buntlines roved through separate blocks; you'll notice that the blocks are at about the same height as the mast cap.

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So that's about it for now. One bright spot: since I haven't really done much rigging on the other 2 masts, installing the blocks on the respective tops should be a little bit easier.

Thanks for taking a look, and I hope everyone has a Happy New Year!!

Timothy,

Nice recovery and adjustments. Looking at the photos I keep asking myself how in the heck can he get in there to that work without effecting the existing rigging. I couldn't do it, hats off to you for doing it.

Mark

Thanks, Mark. Yeah, it's a big enough challenge doing the rigging the first time, let alone going back and putting something in that was missed. Two tricks that help: give yourself a lot of time, and give yourself threads that are long enough so that they'll be easy to grab with tweezers, fingers, etc.

I found out today, I have to install some more blocks on the main mast, that will accept the brace lines from the mizzen mast. The installation of these blocks are not in the instructions for putting the main mast together; they're actually in a subsequent instruction that describes putting the shrouds & mast components together. Oh well. At least I got another sail attached before the end of the year (here's where time comes into play: I spent about 90 minutes securing the sail to the yardarm).

Thanks, one and all, for stopping by and taking a look. It's still early in the year, but there is optimism that this build might actually get completed this year!

I re-read the instructions regarding the aforementioned blocks, and these blocks actually attach to the main mast shrouds. Problem solved!!

Timothy,

Sounds like good news. Looking forward to the photos of the installation.

Mark

Hi Tim,

I'm there with Mark, his second last comment. Just hats off to you, I couldn't do it. I keep seeing amazed by your patience and by all the rigging and blocks and stuff you're doing, despite those often less than helpful instructions, and you are getting there! Fantastic work!

Cheers
Jan

An Epic build Tim!

As I mentioned elsewhere I'm always in awe of model sailing ships but like Jan, I couldn't do it either.

My hat off to you sir for seeing the build through!