It’s commonly known that many of the available plastic sailing ship models do not include Parrels (or is it Parrals?) or much else in the way of keeping a yard on the mast (aside from the typical molded locator pins/slots)…
I’ve been trying to gather info about parrels, and I’ve only really been able to glean little bits of info here and there. Does anyone know of a resource that details these mechanisms for the modeler? I’ve seen a couple of available aftermarket products for sale online, but the details of the products are super vague (only listing a size in 6 or 10 mm, I think, which doesn’t tell me much)…Probably wouldn’t be too hard to make them myself, but I can’t find a good supply of pics for modeled parrels, and I’m lucky to find a sentence or two scattered about my books at home…
So, I thought I would open a dialogue to maybe help myself and others like me to find some information? I’ll keep looking for stuff online, and hopefully I can contribute my finding to this post, as well…
Perhaps once I get a technique down, I’ll make a video to post on YouTube in case it will help anyone…Assembling and installing a Parrel definitely seems like a great example of something that is very hard to describe in words, but would benefit greatly by being demonstrated on video!
I believe that the three basic references we have shared on this site to have the best diagrams and descriptions of parrels/parrals (Both spellings are used in these three).
Anderson, R.C.,The rigging of ships in the days of the spritsail topmast, 1600-1720. pp140-143.
Campbell, G. F., The neophyte shipmodeller’s jackstay. pp 43-44.
Mondfeld, W., Historic ship models. p 312.
I am sure that there are other references that might have greater detail, but I do not have them. I have also written an email to Chuck Pasaro and posted a thread on the NRG modelshipworld website posing your question. I hope that it helps!
Unfortunately the Anderson and Mondfeld books seem to be the only ones (in the English language, at least) that take up French practices. Modelers of English/British ships are cared for much better, by James Lees’s “The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War, 1620-1865.” It was published about 40 years ago by the Conway Maritime Press, of London; the Naval Institute Press sold an American edition. I have no idea how hard it is to find nowadays. My old copy is really showing its age.
I suspect there wasn’t much, if any, difference between French and English parrels in the seventeenth century. (By the way, either spelling is correct.) I’d recommend getting hold of a copy of Lees’s book (if possible) and using it as a starting point.
I continue to suspect that there are some good, French-language publications that we just don’t hear about. We do, of course, have the wonderful books of Jean Boudriot, but so far as I know they only deal with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. [later edit: I found several used copies at www.bookfinder.com . The prices were around $38.00. Thats pretty reasonable, I think.]
Methinks that there isn’t much info , except what you mention. Parrels / Parrals Do vary and I have found they aren’t covered well in the HECABOP Kits ! T.B.
Dave…just remember…a Parrel is just a roller bearing that allows the yard to roll up and down the mast securely. Rolling wood(balls) placed between the wood (raceway) slats. Rope binds it all together and to the spar. I have lots of modleing books with them designed in them.
Rob(“The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War, 1620-1865.” is on sale at HPB)
The running rigging is designed to control the sail - to set and furl it, and to adjust it relative to the wind. The sail (by means of the robands) pulls the yard, the yard (by means of the parrrel or, later, truss) pulls the mast, the mast pulls the shrouds and backstays, and they, by way of the chain plates, pull the ship through the water.
The lower shrouds are among the heaviest lines in the ship. The braces are relatively light by comparison, because they aren’t subjected to such enormous forces. And under normal circumstances the braces are somewhat slack, whereas the shrouds and backstays are bar taut (at least those on the weather side).
The sheets stretch the sail downward. They do get subjected to powerful forces; the lower and topsail sheets are about the same weight as their respective shrouds. The clew lines just “clew up” the Lowe corners of the sail when it’s being furled.
On a fore and aft rig like a big schooner, made to sail any which way within limits, the forestays realy earn their keep. On my America, the forestay is almost 4" in diameter ( a “ten inch line”).
Steve, could you possibly post a copy of p.168? That’s the one that gives the proportions of the parrel ribs and “trucks” (rollers). There’s enough material there to answer Dave’s original query pretty effectively.
Again, please do remember that Mr. Lees is talking specifically about English ships. But I don’t think the French did things much differently in this case.
As for making the parrels - I like to start with a piece of Evergreen strip styrene as wide and thick as the finished parrel truck. I recommend drilling the holes in it as the first step. Then chop off the individual ribs, and finally file the various curves in them. Small beads, whether from Bluejacket or your local craft store, will make good trucks.
It would be ridiculously easy for a kit manufacturer to mold nice, uniform parrel ribs. But unless I’m mistaken (as I may well be, of course) the only kits that take a stab at are the later Airfix ones. They have parrels molded integrally with the masts. That means they can’t have more than three ribs - but at least the designers understood the prototype and made an effort.
How anybody who doesn’t know that yards are attached to masts could tell somebody else how to build a ship model, and then charge him several hundred dollars for the privilege…well, the world doesn’t need another one of my usual anti-Heller rants.
One respondant posted the following on the Modelshipworld site:
Lees gives the following information on page 168 of his Masting and Rigging English Ships of War 1625-1860. I paraphrase →
The lower yards had three rows of trucks and the others two rows. Except for the sprit topsail and topgallant yards, the length of the ribs on the lower parrels were one and a half times the diameter of the diameter of the yard. For the sprit topsail and topgallant yards they were twice the diameter of the yard. The depth of the ribs was equal to the diameter of the trucks, and the width of the ribs was a quarter the diameter of the trucks. The trucks’ diameter was one fifth the ribs length on parrels of three rows and one third the length of parrels of two rows. The length of the trucks was one and a quarter times their diameter.
I think the 2mm beads will do for me for a 1/100 scale model (not sure if there are smaller ones out there)
I’ve tried to find what I have at the moment, from 74 gun ship, Marquard, and so on. It looks like things changed over time, e.g. the 74 gun ship didn’t have parrels on fore and main yards, only top (?) and topgallant yards.
Here are illustrations form 74 gun ship which shows late 18th C French practice.
74 gun ship main yard with truss-parrel
Paris shows parrels on the main yard for “Royal Louis”/“Louis XV”
I’m a physicist and concur with everything you say. Good analysis. To put things in aviation terms, the parrels take the total force component, both lift and drag. The braces take the moment load, the twisting of the sail due to center of pressure not coinciding with the center of the sail where it attaches to mast (square sails, not lateen).
Thanks, Don. Spell checker did inject one bit of jibberish into my post. “By means of the to ands” should read “by means of the robands.” When I type on my I-Phone some checking program kicks in automatically. I cuss at it a lot when it does things like this, but I imagine my posts would be even worse Without it.
Dave, I do believe that, thanks to Mike and Cerberus, you now have just about everything there is to answer your question. Interesting stuff.
You see, this is a great example of how online forums allow us to propel and support each other with the sharing of information…bravo!
Yes, I think there is plenty of info for me to start making some plans…I have some various thicknesses of Evergreen Styrene sheet, and I can come up with some beads at the local craft store…
Not sure I’ll go to the lengths of exactitute put forth in some of the reference material, but I will definitely make good use of the drawings and use the proportions to help me keep things more or less the correct size and shape!
Again, thanks so much for coming together to help! For myself, and for others in the future who will undoubtedly find this thread helpful! Thank You!
Also, once I make some progress with my parrel adventure, I’ll be sure to snap some pics and take some notes to share here.
Of course, there’s always some discrepancy between sources, especially when the cold hard facts aren’t documented well from certain timeframes…
While I was doing some browsing through my own limited library, some of the points I found were at odds with some figures listed so far on this thread. For example, and I think it was Mondfeld (whom I don’t take as gospel) gave parrel rib sizes as being equal to the diameter of the yard to which they’re associated…seems like an easy rule of thumb, though a previous post here gave much more varying proportions, each based on certain yards and masts (if I recall correctly).
Also, and this may come from Mondfeld or Anderson (don’t have the books in front of me), it seems like the sprit yard had no parrel, nor did the crossjack yard of the mizzen…they are said to have slings?
Anyway, just thought it was worth mentioning…and it’s possible I misinterpreted something…
I’ll probably make a few different sizes of parrels, all either 2 or 3 rows of trucks each, based on some proportion of the yards. It occurs to me that some of the smaller yards are very, very narrow, compared to the main yard for example…so adhering to a rib=yard diameter would be impossible, since the topgallant yards can be barely bigger around than a single bead itself! By the way, would there be different sizes of trucks? Different Bead Sizes, depending on the yard? I guess my biggest focus for the parrel project is to avoid having some parrels that look proportionate, and then others that are obviously way too out of scale, and looking super-large…
