Most of my rings grow up to be chainmail, or at least some sort of jewelry. But every once in a while a truly unusual project comes along. Back in 2007, Ray contacted me from Kentucky about rigging rings for his 1/24th model of the HMS Surprise. He needed recoil rigging rings for itty bitty cannons:
And attachment rings for the stay sails and spanker sails:
The ring sizes he used for his project were 4.5M17jb, 5M17jb, and 5.5M17jb. To a 1/24th scale person standing on that deck, the rings would appear to be one inch thick. Ray said that’s pretty accurate for the cannon recoil rigging, but that the sail rings would have been closer to half an inch thick. Unfortunately, if you scale half an inch down to 1/24th, you get 23 gauge wire. Not nearly strong enough to hold even a small sail! The tiny people on the tiny deck will just have to deal with having inch-thick sail rigging rings. *grin*
I think I love this project so much because it’s clear that these model ship builders are just as detail-crazy as I am, but about a completely different subject. It’s lovely to have a little window into someone else’s nitpick perfectionism glee.
And now a few larger images where you really can’t see any jump rings, but the ship is so pretty it (almost) doesn’t matter.
ps: For all you history geeks out there, note the flag on that last image. It’s 15 stars (three of them are obscured by fabric curl) with 15 stripes (not thirteen stripes… fifteen). I’m more of a math girl than a history girl – but I’ve seen the Star Spangled Banner at the Smithsonian, and this little detail pleases me mightily. *beam*
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