Guess which part this is for my model of the Themis?                         Well actually that would be easy, it is the rudder.

I have done rudders in the past but this time I really think I did a good job on the pintles (the little pins on which the rudder rotates)  I also cut the brass brackets by hand.  In some of my previous models I thought they were a bit too clunky.   Eventually they will be painted black because in real life they would have been made of iron not brass.

Granted the entire rudder took me 4 hours and it is not even mounted yet.  Good thing I do not do this to make money.

The rudder shaft is boxwood while the rudder is Swiss Pear.  I use boxwood because at this scale it is very strong even cut into thin pieces.  I have to add blocks (pulleys) at the end and pins to hold the line to the ship’s wheel.

You may wonder why I am adding a rudder when there is still so much to go on the hull, but it has to be mounted early so I can feed the lines up through the deck beams in the year ahead so that I can eventually wrap it around the ship wheel and make the rudder work.  Years of experience have taught me that there are things that have to be done in an order.