What's on my desk? Part 70.
Hello and welcome to the first blog post of May!
We had some nice weather last week, so I've been working on Fram with the door open. Always fun to see people on the street peeking in to watch. :-)
Anyway, I've been making very good progress on the sails. So good, actually, that I think in another week or two, Fram will be finished!
Last week, I had the two square-rigged sails up, and made a start on the first bowsprit sail. Now I've rigged all four of the bowsprit staysails, and all three fore-and-aft rigged sails are done.
Let's start with an overview photo. Looking good, if I do say so myself...
The fore-and-aft sails are weaved around the gaff (the top spar), and around the bar on which the yards are mounted. Not too difficult a task, using a sewing needle and taking care not to snag any of the other ropes present. Once the weaving is done, the bottom back end of the sail needs to be fixed to the boom (lower yardarm), and the boom fixed to the deck. Then two lines go back from the boom to tackle blocks on the mast, to be tied off to belaying pins on the mast or side. Here's a pic showing the main mast sail:
Later, the two blocks on the gaff will be tied to tackle blocks on the deck. Can't do this now, because that would completely block off any manoeuvring space, which is already the case for the pins behind the shrouds...
Here's an overview of all the fore-and-aft sails:
Moving to the front of the ship, all four of the bowsprit staysails are done. I made a mistake with line number two. I didn't notice that you're rigging them 1-3-2-4 and I put sail 3 on rope 2. So I had to cut/pull all the lines out and redo them, otherwise the other sails wouldn't fit.
With all these staysails in place, the mess of ropes on the front deck looks complicated, but if you pull them to the correct belaying pins, none of them should touch any of the others.
What's left to do? There are four more staysails (triangular sails rigged to rope instead of masts/yards) going in between the masts. Then the yardarms need to fixed to the deck or shrouds. There's a Norwegian flag provided in the kit that also needs to be rigged with ropes, then I need to re-attach three of the lifeboats I knocked off while pulling and weaving all of the ropes. Same for the navigation lights, and finally some general touch-ups. As I mentioned, I estimate one or two weeks of work left.
Meanwhile, I fixed the nose and cockpit canopy of the Bf108, which didn't fit very well, but I succeeded in glueing it in place. The tailplanes and rudder were also fixed:
Finishing up on this one, also. Painting to follow.
That's it.
See you next week!