Meanwhile, I scratchbuilt the yards of the Redoutable. I used aluminium again to keep them light but strong. Only on the boomkins I used brass (these don’t need to be light), and for the stun’sail booms I used plastic (they don’t need to be strong, because no rigging is attached).
I tried to give the impression of the stun’sail booms ‘lying’ in their irons, instead of being clamped by them, by gluing them to the bottom of slightly oversized rings (sliced from aluminium tubing).
The stun’sail booms will be left detached until after painting and preliminary rigging of the yards (hence the blobs of Blu Tack). The connection between the boom iron ‘rings’ and the yards will be added only at that time.
The square elements on the yardarms were made from Magic Sculp. A blob of putty was left to harden around the yard, then sanded and carved to shape.
The spanker boom and gaff had their jaws shaped in-situ too. First, oversized plastic pieces were glued in place:
Then the insides were filed to fit to the mizzen mast:
And finally their outsides were carved and sanded to size/shape. I found out this needs a soft touch, as I did have to re-attach some pieces more than once…
The jaws of the spanker boom in place: (the mizzen is 2mm thick here)
I had already built the more complicated pieces of mast floating in the sea earlier. But now I also built the smaller pieces of debris and shaped them like parts of masts and yards. Much smaller debris (splinters, pieces of planks, etc.) will follow later.
The overall picture is starting to get pretty complete now…