PatLynch

Good to know! I've seen clippers depicted with and without, so I wondered. Lennarth Petersson ("Rigging Period Fore-And-Aft Craft," The American Schooner) showed his schooner example with ratlines, but many paintings I've seen do not show ratlines. Thank you!  🙂

I’m a newbie at ship modeling and doing some training-wheels plastic projects to learn a bit about rigging and model weathering techniques—on my way to building more ambitious wood kits. This is a customized version of the old Lindberg “War of Independence Schooner” (No. 70711), out of production for 30+ years, but sometimes the kits pop up for sale on Ebay. My model is inspired by the U.S. revenue cutter “Alexander Hamilton,” which was based in Boston from 1830–1850, and lost in 1853 in a storm off Charleston, South Carolina. I did not like the Lindberg cannon supplied with the kit, and I’m looking for metal cannon at the appropriate scale. I also haven’t decided how to add scale ratlines, but I now have the Model Shipways ratline kits to work with.

Thanks all for the warm welcomes, and for the valuable information.

Allan, thank you!

I'm Patrick Lynch, an author and artist, retired from Yale University, and I'm resuming scale ship modeling after a gap of 30+ years. My goal is to build wooden ship models. I'm currently doing the Model Shipways introductory wood models series, but I also decided to build a series of plastic sailing ships to limber up my fingers and learn more about ship rigging. My background is in biology and natural history, so I'm particularly interested in Darwin's ship, the HMS Beagle. I have both the Mamoli and Occre Beagle kits, but I'm far too inexperienced with wooden ships to launch into either kit right now. I'd welcome any advice for newbie wood modelers, and any thoughts about the available HMS Beagle kits on the market.