Masts

Before installing the foremast I assembled the bridles which will attach the Mainmast fore stays to the deck and installed them. This is a lot easier then installing them after the foremast is in place.

Assembling the masts is pretty straight forward. The lower masts are in 2 halves and are cemented together after cleaning up the flash and mating surfaces.

Squadron green filler putty was used to fill the seams in the lower masts.

The main mast has a jackstay for the Spencer gaff as part of it.

I removed it temporarily to fill the seam it was covering and reinstalled it after painting. The openings in the mast caps and tops were too small to allow the topmasts to pass through without scraping the paint off. A little work with a small round file remedied this. The lower masts and the doublings were painted testors flat white and the rest of the masts were painted testors flat brown.

This is the best time to install the chains that support the yards. After the yards are installed the small eye they tie to will be more difficult to get at.

Looking ahead to the rigging, I installed the blocks for the running rigging now before the masts are installed. The instructions say to install the yardarms while the masts are being assembled but this will make the rigging process more difficult then it already is. So, I leave the yardarms off for now.

The foremast is installed first and to align it I tied 2 fake backstays from the maintop to the bumpkins and made sure the mast was straight with the ships centerline and slightly raked toward the stern. This will provide opposition to the forestays, backstays and shrouds while they are being installed and keep the mast in alignment. This was repeated for each mast as they were installed.