BrianBrachiopod wrote:
I am using Katana's 2017 rigging posts to help with a 1/250 motorised but static display model.
Does anyone know how thick the main rigging cables of the Yamato were?
(specifically the 4 main cables from the jack pole to the bridge, and the near-vertical cables near the centre).
From material resistance stand point, the long rigging cables (stretching from bow/stern jack poles to the bridge/mast) must have been below (yet around) 1cm. At 1/250 scale they would be well under 0.1mm. What I did in my 1/250 build (I used the Arii kit as a base for my build) I used 0.1mm fishing line.
As for the auxiliary rigging, this would be a totally different story. At 1/250 scale they would be in range 10 microns. Well, as gross as it might sound for some, for those I used human hair. It happens that my wife has a beautiful, thin, long & straight hair so every time I need to do small scale rigging, I ask her to save few strains of hair for me when she brushes off. Although they are (obviously) well above the 10microns, visually they look way thinner than the 100microns fishing line, that serves the purpose of using them in the first place.
From engineering stand point, human hair has fantastic mechanical properties. It is slightly elastic, and considering its thickness, even a tiny amount of tensile stress would lead to a very sharp, very straight looking rigging. Moreover, as opposed to most of the synthetic lines it does not lose its elastic properties (neither decay) over very long periods of time. I have decade old builds, where the rigging is as tense and straight as the day one...oh, not to mention that it makes a perfect and instant bond with the cyanoacrylate based glue.