Here I go again on a periodic tangential blog post.
As you can see in the enclosed picture, we are laying out all the fittings that go on deck.

We have beautiful cleats from J. M. Reineck done in his business shop on a CAD machine with all the machine tools and jigs to make many parts exactly the same, including posts to fasten these cleats to the deck. On the other hand, we have exquisite craftsman-made parts from Mike Mirman in his home shop.

BUT, it is so nice to just create one template for drilling attachment holes for 15″ cleats rather than custom-fitting attachments for each of the dozen #6229 pad eyes! SO, didn’t we just have an INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION moment on the RELIANCE Project! As Tim Horton (Our team psychologist and jack of all trades) said “You didn’t think that Henry Ford custom-made each cylinder did you?” I must admit I DO like the custom, craftsman approach. There is something about the statement” HAND MADE IN THE USA BY A CRAFTSMAN” but wouldn’t it be nice to have CAD accurate parts with engineered strength already confirmed; if only it were cheaply and readily made! We’d be done and you’d be enjoying this beautiful replica.

BTW, in the picture, we have cut off 4′ of extra length from our mast and fitted it as a stump mast for the time being. I think we’ll hang the boom from it shortly, if for no other purpose than reminding us of the immense size and girth of these two sticks and to get us giggling about building such a monster in one-sixth scale with such tiny fittings attached to such large sticks. We do have those moments!

We just received our miniature bronze cleat castings from J.M. Reineck and Sons, and we’re so excited to show them off to you! Shown are 19 scale 12″ cleats, 22 scale 15″ cleats and four scale 19″ cleats. In the background is one of Jim’s “real” cleats! Jim makes bronze castings for many Herreshoff boats and you can see his beautiful work at bronzeblocks.com.