William A

Funny how I was a rote amateur in the workshop a couple of years ago but now I'm much more confident managing lathes and milling machines than plastic models at the moment. I whipped up a stand to hold the ship in place:

Thank you all. I had a Cutty Sark model on the go which I shelved (see OP) - feeling a bit at sea (pun!) I'm going to push forward with that first and see how it lands. I don't suppose it will prepare me any better for a wooden kit but I can at least prove that I want to, and can, build a large ship kit to completion with at least the standing rigging. Thank you all for the advice, I will check back with this thread once the Cutty Sark is nearing completion!

Hello @Wawona59 ! Sorry for the slightly delayed reply For the belaying pins, is the implication that I'm going to cut all of them off the racks, then drill and fix brass ones? The idea of that fills me with dread - there are so many!

Well, it's a year later... I've decided to treat this as a 'best efforts' kit rather than aiming too high. I think that's been the biggest problem for me with so many professional modellers churning out content online I have always felt completely inadequate. This time I have the 'excuse' that I can only be as good as the kit is, to a degree - it doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be finished. Doing an inventory it seems when re-boxing I have unfortunately lost the rudder, so a pleading email has been sent to Revell. I have decided to go with a HiS Model deck - though my stepfather assures me that the caulking could be proud, I just can't get on with the frankly horrid join lines, no matter how much filling and sanding (and resultant obliteration of detail) I do. While I'm waiting for that to arrive I've got some masts and painting, and a base to mount it on to get on with. Rather than the faux wooden batons that come with the kit, I'm going to mount it on brass pillars screwed through the keel into captive nuts inside the hull. With a lathe it's a pretty straightforward exercise to run up some temporary stand-offs so the kit doesn't have to wallow around. I'm having trouble deciding on the exact paints to use, my rule is Vallejo for everything and both the kit's painting instructions and the Revell-Vallejo colour conversion chart doesn't make any sense to me - so I'm basically aiming for a warm orange wood tone for 90% of those wooden areas, with a darker cool tone for around the hatchways, and a bit of gloss medium mixed in for specific parts. First up though, is the hull - I airbrushed up some Vallejo Model Air Copper and though it was an absolute beast to spray, I don't think it's come out looking too bad:

@Bob Cleek thank you, I did read that thread. I appreciate that everyone thinks they're the exception to the rule, but I just don't know how to drum up the enthusiasm for a tiny fishing boat @allanyed captured in 1814 as HM Sloop Grecian so that'll have to do

Having lived near Greenwich and some experience with plastic kits, it felt like the Revell Cutty Sark was an obvious choice to bridge the gap into model ship building. It was only after having bought it and started work I realised just how rough much of it was, and honestly my enthusiasm has almost completely drained. I got excited about the prospect of proper rigging but the extra cost pushes the model into the same league as a wooden ship model, and it feels like throwing good money after bad. As a result, I'm in the market for a kit with the following criteria: 1/64 since I would like to build more than one eventually and a consistent scale would be nice. Double-planked seems like the best way to go. Ideally a British ship: nothing against other nations, but a steady diet of Aubrey/Maturin has this as something I want Square Rigged, with a Pointed Bow: These are just the things which I think make a ship beautiful and I want my model to have them Realistically either double masted and/or with a quarter deck would be preferable. With that in mind I've been searching around for options and come across the following as potential options: Vanguard Models HMS Speedy: https://vanguardmodels.co.uk/product/hms-speedy-version-2023/ Vanguard Models HM Sloop Grecian: https://vanguardmodels.co.uk/product/grecian/ a distant third, the Caldercraft HM Yacht Chatham: https://www.cornwallmodelboats.co.uk/acatalog/caldercraft_yacht_chatham.html#SID=95 I would be grateful to hear any further suggestions, or opinions/anecdotes about those ships I've shortlisted above.

My stepfather has been building a partwork HMS Victory for the best part of a decade, and so I finally caved and bought myself a ship to work on too. I decided to stick with something at least (mostly) injection moulded rather than wood, but it's ended up slightly larger than I expected - baby for scale: It will be built here: The build will not be wholly as instructed, as there are a couple of modifications I'm planning to the base kit which are quite simple such as the bulwark stanchions and moulding around the deck houses. More significantly there are a few aftermarket parts available for the kit - the main one being the replacement of the plastic, three-part deck with a laser cut oak veneer equivalent. The supplied deck has 'positive' timber outlines and so even if I can fix the glaring gaps between the three deck sections and rescribe the grain it's still going to look quite bad. There are also photo-etched names and ornamentation, draft decals and flags which I think I will avail myself of, but the rigging and its level is yet to be determined (see later) Anyway, on with the build, commencing with purchasing two hardback books about the ship (by C. Longridge) and getting the hull together. The first modification are on the bulwark stanchions - seen here: These should be metal posts rather than fillets, so I have cut away and sanded them flush as below. You can see the fairly awful decking laid in place: I experimented with fixing the decks together with supporting styrene to get them as level as possible and extra clamps, but even so the joins are very obvious indeed. As such, I'm expecting to use the laminate decking and will work under that assumption: Despite enjoying the occasional ferry and reading the Aubrey-Maturin series I've no meaningful knowledge of rigging and only a very minor familiarity with terms (please excuse me - lots of googling going on). I am aware that hismodel provide both rigging plans as well as CNC machined deadeyes, photoetched eyelets and hooks, etc. but frankly I don't know if that's just going to end up being too much for me. I think I would be quite happy with the rigging as described by the Revell kit instructions, except for the fact that the shrouds and their associated deadeyes/lanyards are moulded plastic - it just doesn't look right to me. QUESTIONS ABOUT RIGGING: Is real rigging a fools errand for a first sailing ship build? I don't mind taking time but I don't want it to be impossible! I'm thinking given the low cost to replace the eyelets and hooks with photoetch/wire as standard. My first thought was to use the Revell hardware placements like-for-like, and then add any additional for the 'real' rigging as I go along (if I take that path). Is that sensible, or should I really know upfront? If I go ahead with replacing the shrouds with thread, how much time is that as a proportion of the time spent doing a) the Revell rigging, or b) real rigging? I want to know if I'm going to commit to that whether I should just go the whole hog, or whether there really is a large gap and I need to think carefully. It is also really not clear to me why I would replace the belay pins, though it seems to happen frequently - I appreciate they are about twice the size they should be, but they are still very small. Does the fact they are plastic play a role? QUESTION ABOUT OTHER AFTERMARKET PARTS: Most build logs seem to replace the plastic railing stanchions with turned brass equivalents - not cheap at all, worthwhile? Many thanks for reading, see you all soon.