The Shackles to the Bow was a real bear to put in for the Standing Rigging for the Foremast. I had to take that little Fife Rack off in order to do it. Primarily because my neighbors were having some kind of party next door and had their music playing blasting loud and my dog Moco insisted on being underfoot because she was scared of it.

One nice thing I found out though. I used a 1 mm Drill Bit to open up the Shackle hole wide enough that I was able to put a threader through and run a black line through it no problem. Then, I used the thinner tan line and tied a clove hitch in order to tie it off and glued it. Actually, what I did was to double the line back, glued it, then I tied it off. It made life a lot easier that way.

I also found a little loop without a Block on one of the lines hanging off the Mast. It wasn’t very difficult to put another Block on, however, I ended up losing 3 Blocks in the process! I hope I have enough Blocks to finish.

I might mention that the way I’ve been getting the Eye Pins which is connected to the End of the Shackle is to push it through the Hole. I made these Holes according the the instructions very early on. I made the holes right after I put in the Upper Deck Planks I think. Anyway, at the time, I had no idea what the Holes were going to be for? I used a Drill Bit that is a tad too big for these Eye Pins that I bought. They would definitely be too big for the Eye Rings the kit provided for sure. Anyway, what I do is to put the Pin in and I put a dab of Superglue to it. Seems to hold pretty good doing it like that.

After I get the other set of Shackles in there, I’m going to put a dab of this Thin Superglue on all the holes so that it will penetrate inside the holes. I don’t want to do it right now though because I don’t want them accidentally flowing into the other holes.

That line on the left part that comes up to the Knot. Is actually 1 line which is held by the line coming down from the Main Mast, just over the Top. The Knot I used was a Bowline, which I closed up pretty tightly around that line it’s looping. That way it doesn’t leave a space in the Knot. Then, I basically came up and tied a couple of loops around the Mast and Top Mast and tied it off with a Taut-Line Hitch and glued it off to hold it. The instructions call for me to do some sort of crazy thing with coiling the line around itself but I’m not going to do it.

I’m afraid that I have been guilty of making up Knots. Sometimes I’ll come up with a Knot that is completely funky, but it seems to work so I’ll just leave it.