Guns, carriages and carronades in scale

The armament took nearly a year, and most of that sits in the carriages. The brass barrels were degreased and chemically blackened rather than painted, the axles were sunk so the gun does not sit too high in the port, and the bolts and breeching rings were made from the nails in the box.

The ropework is part of it too: breeching ropes of 1 mm cable-laid rope, gun tackles with 2.3 mm blocks, and a seizing of 0.1 mm silk thread round the small block, because a glued knot at this scale is bigger than the block itself. On the gun deck the fall lies coiled on the deck, on the upper deck it is frapped to the tackle. If you want it done differently: Piet (pietsan) strops his blocks with a single half hitch tight against the block, a drop of CA, the end cut off and the knot squeezed flat, and coils his deck rope on a piece of tape (Dutch forum, ‘Vaardigheden, tips en weetjes’, January and February 2020). The how-tos for that ropework are collected on the page Ropework and knots.