Hi all,
I'm in the middle of building the Revell Cutty Sark. Have had the kit stored for about 15 years so thought it was about time to take it out of the box.
Basic hull and mast construction is complete and though the colour scheme may not be true to life, many ships changed parts of their colour scheme during their service so I make no apologies.
One of the worst aspects of the model is the amount of flash and the filing that has to be done to remove excess material - very time consuming. However, it's not too much of a problem to get the parts to fit.
This brings me on to sequencing and here I think the instructions could be improved.
For instance, I would do as much rigging work as possible before attaching the spars to the masts. Most of the Standing Rigging is in place including the Ratlines, a lot easier to do than working your way over and under the spars. Incidentally, the ratlines are all hand knotted and the way I did them, setting them up on a frame, prevents the "hourglass" shape which some folk have mentioned.
You can see this in the pictures; I've used the template supplied with the model and stretched the vertical threads using map pins to hold in place. Then again using map pins to hold it in place, I start the horizontal threads with the tension maintained. This way, you can complete the ratlines for one side of the model just by working across the template, then repeat for the second side.
I'm just about to start the sails and running rigging and would appreciate advice on whether to glue the yards to the masts and then attach the sails, blocks, etc.. Or attach the sails, blocks, and so on to the yards first, and then mount the sub-assembly to the mast. I reckon it would also be sensible to work from the deck upwards rather than top downwards.
Any ideas welcome guys, thanks.