Jim Bates

Making a start on the lifting gear for the gaff that's the yard that goes up at a angle on the stern. Quite a few ropes go on to this. Once I get that and the boom fitted I will see then true length.

Hi Mattlow Hope that's a complement thay didnt take long to make thinking of making another pair a bit smaller and thinner?

As a distraction from rigging I turned my attention to making the ships display cradles. My initial design was the Hight to finish somewhere just below the copper band and look dry dock nautical and hold the ship well.

Mizzen rigging is nearly finished fitting the booms for the spanker sail is next thanks for all your likes.

Thanks lads for your likes if you have words of wisdom feel free Fitted Cro jack truss pendent with truss tackle to starboard same as forward masts. The sail I removed from the Cro jack yard fitted the spritsail perfectly that's where it should have gone in the first place happy days.

Found out the Cro jack yard doesn't Carry a sail and sometimes no Horses as well so removed said items from the Mizzen mast. Main mast is now mostly rigged I say mostly because there will be something I still have to do.

Carrying on with roping the main mast still more to tie down. A little setback that I managed to snag and twist one of the jears very easy to do in the confusion of ropes. Read a short while ago of one builder pined his yards to the mast which makes tensioning the ropes so much easer. A good dodge that I have to tension one yard to another and not get overdo it but so far so good. Bit of trimming to do still, A few pictures of progress.

Great news my base felt came today so wasted no time in sticking it down. Thinking about the fittings for the stand how best to display the model will do some searching on the internet for inspiration. Getting a bit ahead of myself here is the results.

Starting to rope up Main Mast looking a bit chaos with all the loose ropes. At leased I managed to get the top yard fixed in place before packing up time.

Continuing with the main sail now just got to copy my work on the foresail, Because I haven't worked on this for a long time have to redo my research again. So these are the main topsail tye and buntline blocks ready to be erected.

Replaced the broken stand by the main mast and fitted the main yard ropes to it. Fitted the coils to the stand I can see more work will be needed to get them to hang on the pins more naturally probably got one passable,

Having a nightmare working on Victory just got nearly to the end of tying down the first yard to the belaying pins when the stand broke into pieces. Must have been weakened by drilling the holes for the pins. Have made up a new stand the holes more apart this time. In the meantime turning my attention to making coils of rope. Will have to make quite a few of these by the time I finish Drilled two holes about 1/2in apart for two pins into a wood block threaded my rope through a needle and passed it around the pins 5 times then keeping it taught very important that, then passed it around the middle finishing by passing it through itself to finish then cutting and knotting the ends together. Sounds easy but had a few goes to get it right. Just got to get them to hang right now few pictures to explain.

As you can see before

Last few days thinking about the colour of the felt for the base green blue or grey at the moment leaning towards grey. Repairing the gun ports are my next job as thay are in a sorry state totally my fault keep catching them must learn to have slow hands one side done.