SAILS & RIGGING
Well, I'm still waiting to resurrect some pics of the sails and rigging in-progress; until then, this will have to do (more pics of sails/rigging to follow once I get the computer working again):
After adding the bow and bowsprit mast from the Megabloks Pearl onto the 3286 ship, and adding a 3rd (mizzen) mast aft of the ship's wheel, the next thing I did was relocate the yard arms.
1. I kept the top yard arms on each mast where they were, but I raised the lower yard arm to serve as course sail yard arms, leaving the top yard arms to fly the top sails. Additionally I lashed a third yard arm made from thin wooden dowels on the topmasts (top gallant masts) to accommodate a 3rd set of sails (top gallant sails) on the foremast and main masts.
2. On the new mizzen mast I used a stock Playmobil main sail yard arm and turned it sideways to become the yard supporting an aft lateen sail, atop which I fashioned two more wooden dowell yard arms to fly a smaller square sail.
3. I modified the bowsprit to have attatchment points for standing rigging including lines to fly 2 jibb sails.
4. On all non-playmobil spars I used a dremel to taper the ends to a dull point, and carved notches in the wood to serve as attachment points when lashed to the masts.
5. Once I had the masts in place, I tooks some cordage and began working on the standing rigging only. I have a simplified layout for the rigging, though not as simple as stock Playmobil rigging, but not nearly as complex as genuine rigging. None of my lines are simply “for show,” however, with every single line being adjustable, and fully functional within the constraints of the toy and scale. This I am very proud of.
6. Once I got the standing rigging in place, I held up pieces of paper to the spars to measure and trace out attachment points for each and every point of all 12 sails.
7. Once the sail patterns were on paper, I cut them out, and test fitted the all 12 white paper sails onto the ship before transferring them over onto fabric to cut them out.
8. Transferring them to fabric involved using scotch tape to tape them to very thin, light, almost sheer black synthetic fabric, and then cutting the shape out with the paper pattern attached. This served both to ensure a proper shape, and to maintain the cloth in a rigid state as I cut.
9. In hindsight, I would have added one more step to this by outlining the fabric (before cutting) with cyanoacrylitic glue and laying down strips of cordage to the outlines, allowing it to dry before cutting out the shape. This would have added realism and also solved the problem of frayed sails later on. However, since this was the formerly haunted Black Pearl, I allowed the sails to first fray, THEN I added glue to the edges to arrest any possibility of further fraying. The result was a purposely-frayed look on a perfectly-intact sail that will not fray further.
10. Once the fabric was cut, I then lashed the fabric sails directly onto each yard (or in the case of a staysail, directly onto a stay line). I attached Playmobil clew attachment pieces to the corners of each staysail, including the foreward jibs, as well as the course and top sails of both the fore and main masts. The top gallants and the square sail on the mizzen were lashed directly to supporting lines from the sail directly below them.
11. Once the sails were attached, I began adding running rigging. Basically, for all the stay sails, I ran adjustable lines from the clews down to fastens on the hull, and for the square sails, I ran adjustable lines from the tip of each yard down to the hull. The topmasts, top gallant yards, and top sails yards of the fore and main masts were all braced by the mast aft of each respective mast, the mizzen braced only by the hull, but also braced forward to the main mast.
12. Finally, I was wondering what to do with the sheets…… I was debating on even doing much rigging at all in the first place, because I couldn’t decide if I wanted this to be the “Haunted” Black Pearl with torn sails that just fly eerily through the air with virtually no (or useless) rigging, or should it be the post-haunted “mortal” Black Pearl as seen in the second and third movies that operated as a standard mortal ship would (with rigging and such). Finally, I decided I wanted a fully-functional ship, so I decided to give the sails the ability to be furled and stowed for times when they had to batten down the hatches and hold fast through un-navigable storms, or when they were docked at port (or in the case I wanted to turn her into an RC ship with a propeller and wanted to run her without sails deployed.
13. SO……. I began rigging the sails with working winches and pulleys (Playmobil parts) so that you could actually hoist the jibs and stays, and you could furl or unfurl all the square sails as well!
14. The running rigging is ALMOST slave-rigged, that is, when you adjust one side of each sail, the opposite side will adjust accordingly, and all lines meet in the middle below deck. All that’s missing is an actuator (I plan to go with Futaba) to be able to remotely adjust the sails in the wind simultaneously. For now, you can either adjust the sails at the spars, or you can move the lines below deck in lieu of an actuator servo.
That’s all for now on sails and rigging until I recover my pics of that stage from my other comp. Until then, I will give you some pics of some custom decking.....
