As the standing rigging continues, it moves from the bowsprit to the standing masts. The first step is an often overlooked feature on model ships. The burton pendants were relatively short lines that were wrapped around each of the mastheads hanging down about 8 to 10 feet below the mast tops. Each line is served it’s entire length (to protect it from frequent use) and ends in a circular thimble. The burton pendants were used for heavy lifting in conjunction with other rigging on the yards.
First I wandered around searching through my little drawers and containers to find something that might work for the thimbles at the end of the pendants. What I ended up deciding upon were these little nuts left over from some model or another. They were an adequate diameter and just needed to be rounded off by slipping them over a toothpick and barely rubbing them against the belt sander.
First, I seized a loop around each of the sanded thimbles. Then, each of the pendants has a splice at the center of the line where it loops over the masthead. Creating this splice is a definitely a little bugger – it needs to be measured perfectly so that each side of the pendant hangs down the same distance.
Once it’s measured, another served line is attached to the first by inserting a needle and feeding a thread through to attach the two. Finally, the other end of the “loop” is seized and the pendants are looped over the mast head. I was using a .50mm line served with Mara 120 (my smallest) thread. It took me several tries to get the seizing correct as sometimes the tiny dab of CA glue created a giant blob of string instead of a nicely wrapped seizing.
The process is repeated for all three masts, however the lines for the main and foremasts are larger, so a .75mm thread is used and served with Mara 70 threat to create pendants that are a total of 1.0 mm in diameter.
The Lehman Shipyard 