All carriages assembled

All 28 gun carriages are glued together, ready for painting. I have already put one gun together completely to see what the end result will look like.

What I find really ugly are the pins from the kit. Ideally I would have black ones with round heads, but I could not really find anything about them. Stephan thought they were ugly too: it looks as if they have no head at all. He pointed to pins with heads from Corel, Kick and Mantua, and to the range at Cornwall. Piet did better. He has 6 mm brass pins with a nice round head lying around, a few hundred of them, and offered to send me some. I will have to blacken them myself, or just touch up the heads with black paint, which he does himself as well. Very kind.

For the breeching rope I would like a ring at the back of the barrel. Piet has those too: simply slightly larger eyebolts, a hole drilled into the back of the barrel and the eyebolt glued in. I had not thought of that. I had tried gluing a small ring onto it, but that was not strong enough.

The rigging will have to wait until I have the right rope in. That will be another puzzle, because the reference books I have looked at are not really clear about it. Incidentally, I think I have ordered far too thick a rope for the breeching: 1.2 mm, whereas 0.6 mm is probably more correct. I will just try and see what looks right.