Starting the Rigging

I've finally started the rigging. First things first...start placing all of the standing rigging. The standing rigging was either permanently or sub-permanently in place and was typically dark in color becuase it was tarred often. The running rigging however, was used to control the sails and yards, and was much lighter in appearance.

I am attempting to rig this model according to the actual ship which as it turns out is far more extensively rigged than what the original kit provided for. In addition, most of the rigging diagrams with the kit are incorrect in many respects. As a result, I am using about four different books specifically detailing the HMS Victory in order to get the rigging correct. The problem is...as you can imagine, there is so much detail that not one book can capture it all so I find myself spending about half the time sifting through pages trying to figure out how things should be tied off, etc.

Near my initial descent into all of this rigging madness, I made sure to purchase tons of different diameter rigging so that I would be prepared for just about anything.

Here, I've started rigging in the mizzen shrouds. The mizzen mast was the rear-most mast of the ship and was always the smallest of the masts. The shrouds are the vertical standing rigging that look kind of like rope ladders.

The problem with the shrouds is that they are dressed around the mast underneath all other rigging. However, as you can see from the photos, their placement makes for some very precarious access to anything that eventually gets tied of on the deck. Note in the above photo the dressing of the shrouds around the main mast head (the largest mast). There is a very specific ordering to how they were dressed around the mast as you can see in the photo.


Remember how I said that the placement of the shrouds would make everything else difficult to reach? Well...to alleviate this, I am dressing all of the shrouds and stays around the masts but leaving the ends loose for now. This will allow me to move everything out of the way so that I can access all of the running rigging that gets tied off at the deck. You'll notice in this photo that I use sticky tack, the clay-like stuff that you can use to stick posters to walls to 1) temporarily apply tension to the shrouds and 2) to provide weighting to lines in order to remove any slack until they are permanently affixed. This stuff works great for this purpose.

Here, and in the next photo, we can see the fore stay and the main stay. These were the two largest diameter ropes on the ship (aside from the anchor lines). One of my references provides details on the diameters of all the ship's rigging. I am using a variety of rigging diameters on the model in order to approximate the relative diameters of the actual rigging in order to improve its look. There is nothing worse than seeing a large model with two or three diameters of rigging. It tends to look very chunky and one-dimensional.

Things really look a mess right now since nothing is tied off. However, the messiness now will really help out in the long run as I will readily be able to move things around as needed. The most important thing is that I get everything ties off starting from the inner most regions and work my way out to the most easily accessible areas.