Thanks again for all the encouragement!
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Rails continued …I have installed the rails around the deck-house on the starboard-side too. This time a picture with a coin for size reference.
In the meantime, a forum colleague made the suggestion to braid the wires instead of double-twisting them. I think I had tried this earlier on, but the copper-wires were too soft and broke to easily. I’ll give it a try again with the Konstantan wire and will report. They used chain on this boat for a lot of things, where today one would find wire-rope instead.
Mast and riggingAs noted above, my intention was to work ‘inside-out’ when installing the rails, so as not to damage already installed parts. I now realised that I should have installed also the mast and its stays first, before the deckhouse rails. So, it was high time to do it now, before going on with more rails.
The pictorial evidence is rather scarce for the early form of the mast. In fact, there is only the very first photograph that shows SMS WESPE being fitted out. All other photographs show later forms, when the mast had acquired a top-mast and a fixed signalling yard. When this was installed is not known. Perhaps around the time of the first minor refit, when the boat-racks were installed, or when she got the conning tower with the search-light on top, as shown by the only other photograph with the black/white/yellow livery (as per 1878 regulations).
The mast had been turned a while ago from a steel rod and fitted with belaying pins. Not sure, whether I showed already pictures of this.
It seems that there were double stays leading forward to the front of the boiler-casing, but there are no pictures that show how they were fastened and the drawings are silent on this detail. So, I assumed that there must have been ring-bolts rivetted to the casing. In fact, I should have installed this before painting and installing the casing, but did not have sufficient foresight. Hence, they had to be ‘retro-fitted’ now. Then there is a pair of shrouds on each side – quite a few for a simple pole mast. These shrouds seem to have been made fast on eye-bolts between the rail-stanchions on the deck-house, for which there is a vague indication on the drawings. Again, there is no evidence for how they were set tight. I gather it must have been some hearts with lanyards between them.
I assume that the stays and shrouds were wire-rope. On some later picture it vaguely looks, as if these ropes had been served all over. To imitate such ropes, I have collected over the years electronic copper wires and stranded wires and are spun with silk (as used in high-frequency coils). I choose a 0.15 mm wire for the purpose here. The silk in my case was green, so it had to be given a light coat of black paint first.
Before the shrouds and the stay could go on, the signal halyard blocks had to be installed. I assumed that these were stropped double-blocks, but this is purely conjectural, based on the number of belaying pins. For the signal halyards I used some of my treasured nylon-thread as used in the old days for mending ladies’ stockings – a tightly spun two-ply thread that does seem to be out of production now (better than the fly-tying threads). The lay still was not tight enough, so I twisted it a bit more and stabilised the twist with a light touch of varnish.
At that time a steamer should have carried a steamer-light at the mast at night, but the available photographs are not are not clear enough to be sure that it would have been hoisted from a halyard in front of the mast. I just installed the halyard without attempting to model any additional arrangements, such as guiding ropes. The lithograph from the early 1880s also shows a crane for light just in front of the casemate, but it is not visible on the photographs.
Making working hearts for the stays would have been asking a bit too much, so I simplified the arrangements and just provided seized eyes at the end of the standing rigging and roved the lanyards through them and directly through the eyebolts. I gather this is good enough at this small scale. It was difficult enough to install all this without destroying other things already put into place.
To be continued ....
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