Frigate Chapter Fifteen: Shrouds
I was planning on writing a step by step guide to basic Shrouds but have to leave that till later as I hit an unusual problem. Basically the kit instructions stated the Shrouds for the Main and Foremasts used 1.25mm thread whilst the Mizzen used 1.0. The kit diagram showed 1.3mm. Having searched I noticed that I did not own any 1.25 or 1.3. I had some 1.5 and lots of 1. Grumpily I decided to start on the Mizzen with my 1.0 and order some 1.3 direct from the suppliers. When it arrived I was horrified to find that the 1.3 I was expected WAS the 1.5 and that the 'size' was not as exact as I maybe hoped. I posted by predicament on MSW and then the entire situation got murkier when I was told that actually the Main Mast should be .1.02 mm and even the 1.3 had I had any) would be out of scale.
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This may not be an issue as at the sizes involved it is unlikely anyone else would notice the problem was that now that I was aware of it I would notice every time I looked at the model. It was therefore time to work out the correct sizes myself.
For this you need James Lees book on masting and rigging and a good idea of the correct diameters of the relevant lower masts. I will take you through the process for the Main Mast.ng="en-gb">James's 1812 war and Lees both give the diameter of a 38 as 27inches. The Main Mast Stay is half the diameter of the Main Mast hence 13.5 inches. This figure is a cirumferance. Dividing by p to get the diameter provides 4.29 inches. Multiply by 25.4 to get this figure in mm's makes 108.97 and divide by 64 for the scale makes the stay, on the model, 1.70. Now the lower shrouds are 0.6 of the lower stay hence 1.02. Hence the Main Mast will be correct using the 1mm rope. From now on I intended to work out the correct sizes of every rope myself as I no longer trusted the kit size (which woud have been apropriate for a 1:48 scale model or a 64 gun ship...)
As a guide a created an application that, given the correct mast diameter would do all the calculations for me. Currently the simple version is at ScaleConvertorFront.htm but as I continue I will add to the application to generate more and more of the related calculations. Eventually I will have a windows ap that will do so with sorting and filtering though that is very low on my current list of requirements...
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