I bought some of this 20 gauge German wire from Michael’s and some Shrink Tubing to make these replacement Shackles.

Here I have this black String strung across my jig. I ran a bead of Superglue down the line and when it dries, the string will be hard. I then use the stiffened string as the courses for the Ratlines.

Here’s the courses that I’ve glued on so far for the Ratline going up the Foremast.

I’m not going to bother tying a knot around each course. I don’t see any in the instructions so I’m not going to do it either.

Futtock shrouds are rope, wire or chain links in the rigging of a traditional square rigged ship. They run from the outer edges of a top

downwards and inwards to a point on the mast or lower shrouds, and carry the load of the shrouds that rise from the edge of the top. This prevents any tendency of the top itself to tilt relative to the mast.

I’m starting to make the Ratlines. I tried it with only putting the black thread across the Stays, but it didn’t seem to work that great.

I decided to tie the String across my Knot practicing Jig and then running a bead of Superglue across it in order to stiffen the String so that it’s almost as hard as a wire. I think it will work good after it dries.

The Black String is across the 2 Dowels that I made for Knot tying practice.

This works great. I waited for a couple of hours for the String to harden. Then it had a stiff consistency. I then used the Beacon Fabric-Tac Glue across the Stays and laid the cut line across it and it stuck marvelously well.

I cut a piece of wood to use to measure the distance between the foot lines.

All the Standing Rigging for the Main Mast are in. I’m getting quite the hang of it now. I have to make 5 Shackles for the Stays holding back the Mizzenmast that go to the outside of the Railings of the side of the Stern.

I thought that I had plenty of Shackles for this project… Because I had something like 10 left in the Parts Box.  As it turns out, I kept either breaking them or losing them while trying to figure out a way to run this Black thread through the Hole. As a result, I’m now down to only 5 Shackles and I still need 10 for the Ratlines that come off the Stern which I didn’t know about until last night. I only realized about my scarcity of Shackles this morning while in a state of half sleep. All hope is not lost though. I ordered a Metal Forging kit from MicroMark, which I’m still waiting for. I ordered it for another part that I lost so that I can forge a new one.

These are the Ratlines that I will need the Shackles for…

I’ve been working on this for about 2 or 3 hours now. I had a couple of set backs but corrected them all. I ended up breaking around 3 Shackles trying to drill the holes big enough. I found that if they’re not 1 mm, then there’s no chance for the black string to be able to go through.

I’m thinking to myself that perhaps instead of a simple single Clove Hitch for the Shackles, I’m going to start using a Double Clove Hitch. Which is to come around twice before going under the line. I think it will look better than a simple single Clove Hitch.

It’s too late to go back and fix the rest of the Shackles but it really doesn’t look bad at all aesthetically. I also messed up on one of the Stays. It was supposed to go to the top but I put it to the one of the middle ones. I’m not going to worry about it though.

The way that I get the line to stay taut through the Shackles is to pull it tight and then put just a small drop of Superglue on the line going through the Shackle. I only have to wait a few seconds and then I can simply tie it off.

So, like an asshole I didn’t do this before I put all the Shackles on to the Eye Pins which go into the Pin Rail. I could have avoided a lot of headache had I predrilled these holes. Oh well, live and learn. At least on my next ship, which is an early 19th Century British Frigate, they’ll use Blocks and Dead Eyes instead of more modern Shackles. The Belem was made in 1898 so it’s pretty modern compared to those old period Vessels.