Page 196 - The Complete Rigger’s Apprentice

CHAPTER 6

Loft Procedures

My loft is a factory, library, warehouse, office, labo- MEASUREMENT
ratory, store, and museum. There I can contemplate
and execute in a place made just for making rigs. Will it fit? God, what a headache of a question. Will
To hear me talk, you’d think this was some sort it fit? Completing standing-rigging fabrication in
of intricately detailed, gizmo-filled fantasy shop, but the loft is the most efficient method, but you’re in
it’s really just a room in an old Odd Fellows Hall there, the boat’s out there, and every time you turn
where I’ve bolted down some tools, filled the shelves up an end you ask yourself once again, “Will it fit?”
with other tools and materials, and gone to work. Sometimes you can’t stand the worry or can’t get
There isn’t anything I do in there that I couldn’t and sufficiently precise measurements for confident cut-
haven’t done while up a mast, but I’d much rather ting. Then you can splice the upper end in the loft,
work where everything is ready to hand. A rigging leave lots of extra length, and splice the lower end
loft makes difficult work easy. in place. It sounds convenient but seldom is; your
This chapter covers some of traditional rigging’s working platform is crowded or moving or both, and
most involved procedures: advanced ropework and it is wet, or cold, or hot, and you can’t keep track of
ways to make a gang of rigging fit. You will find that your tools, and there are too many people looking
the most difficult part of mastering these procedures over your shoulder, and believe it or not there’s still
lies not in comprehending their intricacies, but in a very good chance you’ll make a mistake in mea-
training your hands and eyes; you must develop surement. Better to work it all out at the loft, using
skill. Make your loft conducive to this. Make it measurement routines that are sufficiently precise
quiet, uncluttered, orderly, and well lit. See to it that and redundant to muffle that recurrent question, if
your tools are of appropriate size and good qual- not silence it.
ity. Collect reference books. Leave a space where
you can sit and think. Rigging work might take up Replacing an Old Rig
only a small corner of your life in a small corner of We’ll start with a piece of cake, a little sloop whose
your shop or garage, but it is sufficiently involved, gang has gone brittle. You want to replace it all with
in itself and in its relationship with other arts, that the same diameter and construction of wire. Get
it requires no slight accommodation on your part a notebook and pen and study the boat while the
before you can expect to do it well. old gang is still in it, to see whether the last rigger

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