Well, the struggle with the deadeyes continues. I haven’t been wanting to work on them, as they are difficult to complete, and the results aren’t very satisfying. I’ll start with how things turned out on the starboard side:
In reviewing my pictures, it looks like I wound the shroud around each upper deadeye, before gluing the lower deadeye, and threading the lanyard (Longridge’s word). I didn’t realize it until I had about the 4th shroud done, that the whole shrouds/ratlines assembly was getting caught up in the running rigging on the topgallant yardarm, and that caused the shrouds not to be at the proper length when I wrapped the shroud around the deadeye. In the below picture, you’ll note that the shrouds have a convex shape, instead of being straight down:
This led to the upper row of deadeyes being at different distances from the the lower deadeyes:
For the previous picture, I had painted the shrouds and upper deadeyes with a thinned amount of flat black paint, to cover up all the glue residue.
So here’s the shrouds, with the lanyards installed. The piece of white paper just makes things more visible:
And the same pic, without the white paper:
So not being overly pleased with these results, I decided to go with Heller’s instruction, which is to run the lanyards between the deadeyes, before installing the deadeyes. This way, according to Heller, the distance between the upper and lower deadeyes will be correct, or at least, a uniform distance. What I don’t like about their instruction, though, is that it says to tie a knot after the lanyard comes out of the last hole in the lower deadeye. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how you’re supposed to any kind of knot that will secure the lanyard in place. So I once I ran the lanyard through, I decided a drop of glue should hold everything together. The below pic shows the backside of the deadeyes, after installing the lanyard.
So after cutting the deadeyes of the sprue, I installed them on the foretop & wrapped the shroud around the upper deadeye. Unfortunately, everything got all twisted up, and it looked terrible. Plus, the glue didn’t hold the lanyard in place, so I pulled the lanyard out, and re-threaded it. However, because of the twisting of the shroud and deadeye, I decided to re-thread from right to left, instead of left to right. But for some reason, I kept threading the lanyard from backside of the upper deadeye to the backside of the lower deadeye, when it should have gone into the frontside of the deadeye. I didn’t realize this mistake until I had the lanyard threaded through all holes on the deadeyes. So I took the lanyard out, and did the same thing again. So I took the lanyard out (again), and still did the same thing again. Finally, on the 4th attempt, I got the path done correctly. (Now do you understand why I find this particular work so unsatisfying?!)
At this point, I decided to go to using my little fixture (or is it a jig?) to hold the lower deadeye in place. But this time, I decided to wrap the shroud around the deadeye, in front of the flange that surrounds the deadeye. The next photo or two shows a lower deadeye lightly glued to my jig, with the flange standing proud of the jig:
Well, of course, while I was trying to get the shroud wrapped around the deadeye, the deadeye popped of my jig, and I was ready to scream. So I quit what I was doing at the time, and decided to re-group. I came up with the idea (well, actually, I read about it in Longridge’s book) to use a block of wood that will sit upon the top, and I can better fasten the deadeyes to the wood block, and thus give a more consistent height between the upper and lower deadeyes. And to hold the deadeye in place, I’m using safety pins (they’re slightly smaller in diameter than the holes in the deadeyes) to hold the deadeye in place. Here’s the thing in action; the straight pencil line indicates where the bottom of the upper deadeye should be:
I’m not sure if mentioned this previously, but I added the lines that will become the futtock shrouds:
So that’s all for now. I think I have two more deadeye pairs to do on the foremast, then I’ll tackle the same shrouds on the mainmast. And to think, all this work to get the shrouds finished up, is just so I’ll have a place to belay the buntlines for the top & topgallant sails!
Hope all is doing well; I got my first Covid-19 vaccination shot last Saturday. It’s the Pfizer vaccination, so I need to get round 2 of it in April.
Cheers!
Tim
but there’s no way I’m going to home school the kids this time round!!!
Was hoping to get a couple of the Airfix starter kits for the kids, but seems the dreaded virus has delayed them as well… 
