Bob Cleek

True that, but the great models we see from the 17th and 18th centuries were built with human powered tools. They certainly had lathes and perhaps even pedal-pedal powered scroll saws. The Egyptians were using human-powered wood turning lathes in 1,300 BCE and fret saw blades were in use from the early 1500's. My comments regarding the POW bone models were in response to an assertion that, "Prisoners used to make accurate models of square riggers from bone with no tools at all."

I believe so. I pulled the photos off of Google images, but they look like the POW bone models I've examined in various museums and these were made of bone, bovine, I believe. That would include the cannon and whatever other material is colored white. The rigging is sometimes made of horse hair, or so I've read.

Ah, but which color "bronze?" Crescent Bronze, a leading powder-coating manufacturer, has a good bronze color chip card that is worth adding to one's collection of color chips: Crescent Bronze - Color Card Request The standard option for obtaining painted metallic effects is the "real deal," actual colored bronze metal pigment-ground powder sold for the purpose of producing a bronze, brass, copper, gold, or silver metallic finish for painting. (I'm don't know exactly why they use bronze for all these other metals, except that perhaps bronze is easiest to manipulate the color by adjusting the alloy formula.) Schmincke Pigments is the leading manufacturer of ground metallic pigments which are sold in most all artists' supplies stores. They come in a range of shades, colors, and finishes as raw pigment (sold as "oil bronze"), as well as premixed in an oil base and tubed like artist's oil paint. They can be used like any pigment, either mixed in a carrier, e.g., clear varnish, to make a paint, or dusted onto a tacky surface after a sizing is applied and lightly burnished with a cotton ball after the sizing dries, in the same method used for gold leafing. The base metallic color can be thereafter "weathered" to tone it down to a desired appearance in the usual fashion if necessary. See: Schmincke's website for detailed information on their "oil bronze" product line: Bronzes: Schmincke Künstlerfarben (They also sell lines of premixed colored bronze powders in an acrylic medium and powders for use with watercolors. I've never used either of these, so you're on your own there.) Of course, a lot depends upon what appearance you are seeking. In some instances, metallic colors wouldn't be required because standard colors would serve to produce the desired effect. This video below demonstrates an easy and very effective way to create a convincing faux bronze patina finish using metallic bronze powder which is rubbed on using carnauba wax as the "carrier." The tone of the finish can be adjusted by modifying the background color from black to a flat "penny brown." "Verdigris (green)" weathering powders can thereafter be applied to achieve a very convincing weathered bronze patina appearance. This method can also be used to create a very convincing representation of a copper sheathed hull over a base of scale thickness paper "copper plates."

So the story goes and I suppose stranger things have happened, but the fact of the matter was that the Eighteenth-Century prisoner of war handicrafts, including ship models, were in many instances a rather finely organized production operation with all the contemporary tools suited to the task available to the prisoners building the models. It's been written that many, if not most, of the prisoner of war ship models, bone and otherwise, were built on a "piecework" and "assembly line" basis in much the same fashion as are today's commercially built ship models from Vietnam and Madagascar. (See: Model ship workshop „Le Village“ - MADAMAGAZINE and " Sail into the World of Handmade Model Ships" – OMHVN (vietnamshipmodels.com) ) It behooved the captors to supply the prisoners with the tools and to some extent the materials to fabricate items for sale to the general public because the proceeds of their endeavors provided the prisoners with an income with which they could to some extent support themselves, thereby reducing the cost of their keep which otherwise would have had to have been paid by their captors. This was and is a long-established prison industry business model still practiced today. (See e.g., : About » CALPIA Website ) Although some remarkably accurate POW bone models have survived from the Napoleonic period, in general, the term "accurate" as applied to them remains a relative concept. They presented quite a range in terms of visual and historical accuracy, although all are true folk art treasures today. Many were entirely fanciful... and then some!

Thanks for the video! These certainly look like quality tools. They aren't inexpensive, but money spent on a good tool is money well spent. I doubt that there is anything better than these on the market today that isn't electrically powered, and the powered tools are often overkill for the needs of many modelers.

Byrnes Model Machines recently came out with an adjustable speed 4" disk sander with variable speed settings between 200 and 2,000 RPM and it also features reversible disk rotation. Byrnes Model Machines - Variable Speed Disc Sander It is otherwise similar to the earlier Byrnes 5" disk sander. Getting rave reviews. It's not shipping at the moment due to Jim Byrnes' sad passing, but I expect they will be up and running in due course. The price isn't listed on this unit at the moment, but, as one might expect, it's not inexpensive. That said, all of the Model Machines products are monuments to the principle that "you get what you pay for." They are the finest of their kind to be had anywhere. I'm not comparing the Byrnes disk sander to the Ultimation sander, of course. The Ultimation products are less expensive, being hand-powered, but still have earned an excellent reputation for quality.

There are lots of 45 degree dental engine handpieces in different styles, as well as other angles. Take a look at Paul Budzig's YouTube video above. He explains how an air turbine dental drill can be run off of a shop air compressor, which was news to me. The turbine drills are high speed / low torque, of course, so they are available at much lower price points than the heavy-duty bench engines used for making bridges and dentures, etc. There's also now a whole generation of "micro-motor" motorized handpiece technology on the market now. The older-style belt-driven "dental engines," which are still used for lab work, can really put out the torque at slower speeds which is best for micro-carving with shaky old hands. I scored my Buffalo Dental engine (picture below) on eBay for seventy-five bucks. Heavy Duty Bench Engines - Buffalo Dental Manufacturing Co. Inc. It was described as "not running," but it looked brand new and it came with a handpiece that I knew was worth about $250, so I took a chance that it was something I might be able to fix. I checked it out when it arrived and, BINGO!, The motor brushes were gone and it was otherwise brand new! A phone call to the manufacturer and a new set of brushes and a drive belt arrived in the mail and it was good to go. My guess was that it was in stock in a large production dental lab and somebody's engine needed brushes and none were in stock, so they just cannibalized this new machine in the supply room to get the brushes and forgot to order replacements for the ones they took. I got lucky on that one. Must be my clean living. I just checked eBay out of curiosity, and somebody's got one listed as "buy it now" for $138.00 + $25.00 shipping. BUFFALO DENTAL BENCH ENGINE NO 10 JEWELRY HOBBY POLISHER GRINDER ARTICULATED ARM | eBay Below is what my Model 16 looks like. It has a 1/5 HP motor. The one for sale on eBay is a Model 10 and has a 1/10 HP motor. The Model 16 which is currently in production retails for $800.00. The interchangeable handpieces are separately priced and retail for around $200.00 and up, but there's lots of them on the used market, as well. These are expensive, very high quality tools and because of changes in the dental lab technology these days (3D printing of custom dental prostheses) they are showing up on the second hand market with some regularity. If you can find a used one in decent shape, you can score a great modeling tool at really great savings.

It's been my understanding that the 1/8" shaft "plastic collared" micro-bits are designed for drill presses and break very easily when used in a pin vise. I must confess that I have never used them, though. Brass comes in different hardnesses, and some alloys are easier to work than others. Have you tried annealing the brass you're working on? Sometimes that helps the bit "bite" into the metal better. Just thoughts, for what they are worth.

Greater specificity would be helpful, but based on a guess as to what you want to accomplish with a "miniature angle drill / drill adapter," I'd say you won't find much of anything that will do the job other than an inexpensive dental drill. You can go with a relatively inexpensive air-turbine model or a more substantial and more costly (although not on the used market) belt-driven dental lab "dental engine" and handpieces. They come in many different angles and styles. The burrs (bitts) come in many configurations, as well. Dremel makes a right angle attachment, but it is generally too large for "getting in close" in modeling applications. Amazon.com : dremel right angle attachment These videos may help to answer your question.

Fascinating post! I think you've really hit on an interesting thing here with the perception of lions in various cultures. I wonder why, as well. You've got the makings of a great "coffee table" picture book or a TV travel documentary. The similarities between various cultures are really surprising and yet they don't really look like lions at all. Just to drive you really, really, crazy if you haven't been there before, have you checked out Chinese lions? Particularly the "lion dancers" in the Chinese New Years parades. Some of the Chinese lions look a lot like your "wide" Russian lions. I wonder if the Russians got their stylized lions from the Chinese, or did the Chinese get theirs from the Russians or the Byzantines. The interesting thing is that there are no native lions in China. See: Lunar New Year: Lions aren’t native to China, so where did the traditional lion dance come from? | South China Morning Post (scmp.com) \ And the Chinese also use lions in their architecture. There is a Chinese custom, as it seems there is the world over, of placing "guardian lion" statues at the entrances of buildings. Here again, the Chinese "guardian lions" have the same sort of look as the Russian lions you've been studying. Perhaps it's some primal impression in the human DNA that goes back to when we all were lion food. A Jungian anthropologist would have a lot of fun musing about this subject. Somebody could probably write a doctoral dissertation on it.

Merry Christmas! Keep up the good work!

Zinsser's Bulls Eye prepared shellac is definitely what everybody seems to use here in the U.S. unless they are mixing their own shellac with flakes and alcohol. HOWEVER, what is shown above is amber shellac. Shellac comes in a range of colors on the "honey brown" or "amber" spectrum. Amber shellac is "amber colored." A single coat of Bulls Eye amber shellac will color the shellacked surface with a transparent film that has an "amber colored" or "light orange/brown" cast. Additional coats of amber shellac will add additional layers of this coloration to the point where a half-dozen or so coats will result in a very dark brown color. If this coloration is undesirable on your model (and I've never seen an application where I would have desired it on a model at all) Zinsser's Bulls Eye Clear Shellac should be used. The amber shellac is shellac's natural color. The clear shellac is bleached so that the shellac adds no coloration to the surface to which it's applied. For the purposes of sealing wood in modeling applications, I would strongly recommend that clear shellac be used. If a change in the appearance of the wood is desired, a thinned stain or dye should be used, followed by a coat of thinned shellac to seal the surface. Other than for finishing large flat areas without surface detail, such as bright finished hulls, model bases and cases, and the like, I would not recommend the use of any "wipe on" finish such as an oil commonly used to finish furniture. Such oils, unless greatly thinned, are thick and tend to collect in the nooks, crannies, and details of a model and are very difficult to apply in a sufficiently thin coating. Application of oils is also very difficult because they cannot be "rubbed" very effectively and rubbing always risks accidentally doing damage to small detail parts applied to the surface. Finally, most rubbed oils take time to fully polymerize and so tend to attract and collect dust and dirt that are very difficult, if not impossible, to remove. Finishing scale models well requires a "scale" finish coating. The thicker the coating, the more the thickness of the coating impairs the crispness of scale detail that is to be desired. This means that paints should be of high quality with a relatively high content of finely ground pigment. High quality commercially bottled "scale model paint" is made to meet this requirement, as are quality "tubed" artists' oils and acrylics which can be suitably thinned by the user for bristle brush or airbrush application. Thinned clear shellac ("2 pound cut" or less) provides an advantage in this respect as a clear finish or sealer over opaque paints, stains, and dyes in that it provides an extremely thin coating which soaks into the wood surface and is virtually invisible when the alcohol solvent quickly evaporates. (Shellac is also an excellent fixative for rigging knots and "starching" rigging line to shape catenary curves in the line. Thicker "cuts" of shellac, which can be obtained from pre-mixed shellac by simply allowing a sufficient amount of the alcohol solvent to evaporate, is also suitable for use as an adhesive which, where the occasion demands it and can be easily dissolved and removed with the application of alcohol. Where bare wood is to be portrayed on a model, such as is frequently the case with decks, and the wood species used fails to provide the required scale appearance of bare wood, which is often the case, I would recommend the use of a thinned stain or a dye. Achieving the effect desired from the application of a stain or dye can be tricky and testing and experimentation is essential before application to be sure the effect one wishes will be achieved. If one isn't familiar with working with mixing finishes, they should find that one of the bottled premixed stains offered by the model paint manufacturers will provide a more certain outcome than mixing their own. Finally, the necessity of testing all finishes and finish combinations on a model before application to the model cannot be stressed enough. Frequently, correction of a "disaster" in the finishing process is near impossible to accomplish. Due consideration must be given to the compatibility of finish materials is critical. While shellac somewhat uniquely can be considered a "universal" sealer that "plays well" with any subsequent coating applied to it, dissimilar coating products often are not compatible with each other and the application of one over the other can result in disastrous consequences. Particularly, oil-based finishes and water-based finishes (e.g., acrylics) should never be presumed to be compatible with each other without testing. Even similar types of coatings from different manufacturers must be tested for compatibility with each other. Notably, some acrylic paints are thinned with water, others with alcohol, and still others, according to their manufacturers, are thinned with proprietary thinners. As the saying goes, "For best results, follow the manufacturer's instructions!

Right you are. Gyros is another Chinese pirate product. The "real deal" original is the U.S. made V.F. Rogers Drill Bit Set - #61 to #80. However, V.F.Rogers, the original manufacturer, doesn't seem to be in business anymore. MicroMark is selling the Rogers Drill Bit Set which they say they get from Excel hobby knives company. Excel's catalog says they are made in the U.S.A., but I don't know if Excel is now making them or just wholesaling them or what. They've been around for a long time. Another mystery thanks to the world of "offshoring" and Chinese import tool clones. $30 from MicroMark. The Rogers Drill Bit Set, #61 - #80 (Set Of 20), 20 drill bits from #61 to #80, Includes an indexed drill bit stand, Ultra-sharp high-speed drill bits (micromark.com) $30.00 USD from MicroMark. $53.51 USD from Excel Hobby Blade Corporation, which makes or wholesales them these days. 20 Piece Drill Dome Set – Excel Blades You can get individual wire gauge bits from McMaster-Carr, but they aren't cheap! drill bits | McMaster-Carr. MicroMark sometimes sells little plastic tubes with ten or a dozen wire gauge bits of the same size at dramatically reduced prices as "loss leaders" when they have their big annual sales. I bought the whole range of 20 bits for the Rogers' stand in tubes of ten from MicroMark some time ago. So far, they seem to work fine. Buying them singly to replace broken bits in the drill stand can get painful quickly. McMaster-Carr wants $5.54 USD apiece for an 80 ga. 3/4" long uncoated HSS bit and $1.39 USD for a 60 ga. 1 5/8" one. I don't doubt that the McMaster-Carr bits will cut better and be better all-around in terms of quality control, but I have no idea if they break any less than the cheaper (and probably Chinese made) bits from the hobby outlets. There's a break-even point there somewhere, but I have no idea whether paying top dollar for U.S. made commercial quality bits is worth the money for general modeling use. Original V.F. Rogers Drill Bit Set. Note "Drill Stand" embossed on top of base center, not "Gyros" letter "G." Original Rogers drill stand bottoms: Manufacturer's ID and patent number:

You might want to check out Model Building with Brass by Ken Foran. Model Building with Brass book by Ken Foran (thriftbooks.com) This relatively new book contains a wealth of information on the subject. There are surely those with far more experience that I who will weigh in, so for what little it may be worth, if it is the "fork on a rod with a hole drilled in a thick spot just above the neck of the fork" in the diagram that you want to make, you might want to "do the math" first. While I can't tell from the drawing whether the hole is to be drilled through a "flattened" section of the rod or through a round sectioned "swelled" or "ball" section of the rod, either way, I don't think you can fabricate a 1.70 MM flat (or "ball") with a .50 MM (or slightly larger) hole on a length of 1.15 MM brass rod without adding material to the 1.15 MM rod stock. There doesn't seem to be enough "meat" there to work the available material do it. I don't know if you have a suitable lathe, which would make the task relatively easy, but even without a lathe, the task is possible, but will take more care and time. Simply put, the fork, neck, and "ball with a hole in it" is formed from square bar machinable brass and the 1.15 MM wire stock is silver-soldered into a hole in the end of the "ball with a hole in it. As the part looks like it's not the only one on the model, machining it as explained below makes the uniform fabrication of a number of the same part a lot easier "on an assembly line" basis. You can modify the following suggestion to suit the tools you have available if necessary. 1.) Cut a section of solid machinable square brass bar stock of the exact square section size as the forks and as long as the distance between the open end of the fork and the "ball with a hole in it, plus a suitable length to permit drilling a tailstock center and parting off at the end of the "ball with a hole in it." If the forks are not square in section, use square stock the same size as the widest dimension of the fork. If you can't find square bar stock exactly the size of the fork's (widest) outside dimension, use square bar stock of the least-oversized bar stock available. 2.) Using machinist's "Prussian blue" or alcohol soluble permanent marker ink, carefully layout the placement of the two holes necessary the shape of the fork ends, the "notch" in the solid square bar to be removed to form the two sides of the fork, the shape of the ends of the fork sides, the "neck" of the fork, and the diameter of the "ball" section. If you must use bar stock that is oversized and/or the fork is rectangular in section, layout the amount of waste to be removed to reduce the fork to the proper outside dimensions taking care that the amounts to be removed are equal on both sides of the stock retained in order to retain the concentricity of the forks, the "neck" and the "ball with a hole in it. Also mark the dead centers of each end of the section of bar stock. 3.) Preferably using a drill press or mill/drill (preferably with an x-y table) to ensure perpendicularity, drill two holes of the required diameter(s) entirely through the flat-sided solid bar stock in the appropriate locations, one to form the eyes of the fork and one to form the hole in the "rod." (These two holes are drilled parallel to each other through the centerline of the bar stock.) Carefully drill a suitably sized center hole in the "ball with a hole in it" end of the bar stock to accommodate the lathe tailstock center, which would preferably be a live center if one is available. 4.) Chuck the fork end of bar stock into the lathe headstock and mount the tailstock center into the other end of the bar. Turn the shapes of the fork shoulders, "neck" between the fork shoulders and the "ball with a hole in it," and the "ball" itself following the layout forming the "shoulders and neck" of the fork and the "ball" shape as per the layout and the detail of the part shape as you've laid it out. (The .50 MM hole will end up exactly in the middle of the "ball" section if your layout and drilling was accurate.) Turning the "ball" shape can be done using a file to shape it by eye (and template), by a custom half-round cutting tool, or a template and "duplicating" attachment on the lathe, or even a "ball turner" if one is available. However, the shape of the end of the ball where the hole will be drilled to insert the 1.15 MM wire must be decided first. If it is to have a "sharp" transition, the end of the ball can be perfectly round. If it is to appear to transition gradually to the diameter of the 1.15 MM wire, the curved transition will have to be formed when turning the ball. The completion of the forming of the end of the ball, however, is best done by parting off the surplus end of the bar and doing the shaping "in the open" free of the tailstock center. When the "ball with the hole in it has been parted, but the "bottom end" not completely turned, leaving the workpiece in the headstock chuck, place a tailstock chuck holding a 1.15 MM drill bit in the tailstock and, using the tailstock advance, drill through the center of the end of the ball end and through to hole in the ball. Then finish the turning of the ball end. If a curved shoulder transition between the ball and the 1.15 MM wire is desired, a short piece of the 1.15 MM wire can be inserted and the "shoulder" between the ball and the wire worked right up to the wire to turn a seamless transition. Note, however, that there isn't a lot of "meat" in the "ball" to hold the 1.15 MM wire. The larger you can make the "ball," the more space there will be for the 1.15 MM hole. By your measurements, there will only be .275 MM on either side of the 1.15 MM hole into the 1.70 MM ball. This won't matter once a good silver-soldered joint is making it all one piece, but the size of the hole will impact the appearance of the ball and you may have to do some drawing and planning of the shape of the ball so the appearance of a "swelled ball on a 1.15 MM shaft" is achieved. An experimental "dry run" on the wire to ball connection is probably indicated and it may be necessary to turn down the diameter of the 1.15 MM wire to provide a "peg" at the end to be soldered into a smaller hole in the "ball." + 5.) Remove the workpiece from the lathe. If the fork is smaller than the bar stock on two or four sides, carefully remove the excess material to yield the proper dimensions of the fork. This is a piece of cake if you have mill or even a drill press with an x-y table as it is light work. Otherwise, a flat belt or disk sander or file should do the trick. With the dimensions of the fork established, shape the ends of the fork (simultaneously) using whatever tools are available. (They appear to be half-rounded.) 6.) After forming the ends of the fork sides, using a mill if you have one, or a jeweler's saw and files if you don't, remove the waste center of the solid bar to form the space between the two fork sides. This is tricky If not using a mill. Using hand tools demands that care be taken to cut sufficiently "wide of the line" to permit accurate filing or using abrasive tape to ensure straight and perpendicular faces of the jaws on either side of the open space between them. The "slot" between the fork sides has to be accurately machined if the resulting fork is to look good. Accurate layout is essential. If the slot cannot be milled, a drill press (preferably with an accurate x-y table) can be used to drill a series of suitably sized holes through the square stock to remove most of the waste between the fork sides. Assuming the "waste removal" holes are accurately drilled, they can provide a valuable index for hand-shaping. The bulk of the waste can be roughly removed by sawing with a jeweler's saw to "connect the holes" and files can rough out the rest, taking care not to remove any material deeper than the edge of the drilled holes. Once "roughed out," machinist's "Prussian blue" or an alcohol-soluble permanent marker can be used to mark the faces of the exactly drilled "waste removal" holes. Thus marked, final shaping can be completed very accurately using the "bluing" to indicate the desired "flat" to be formed. 7.) Polish the part as required. Clean the part well as per standard silver-soldering procedure paying particular attention to the inside of the 1.15 MM hole in the end of the "ball with the hole in it. Insert a suitable length of 1.15 MM wire in the hole in the end of the ball to a depth which is not less than the inside edge of the drilled hole inside end of the 1.15 MM hole. This is essential to provide as much of a contact surface between the two parts as possible for the solder joint as discussed above. Silver-solder the two pieces together. Using a drill and/or a round jeweler's file, remove the end portion of the 1.15 MM wire inside the hole in the "ball with a hole in it" so that the inside of the hole is smooth all around. Remove any excess solder from the face of the piece. The silver-solder joint on the face of the "ball" and inside the hole in the ball, should be invisible if you are better at it than I usually am. As usual, it's easier done than said. Hope this helps.

Excellent point for newer modelers contemplating modeling sails to consider! It's not enough to just pick a few sails to attach flying because you like how they look. To achieve the desired illusion of reality in miniature the sails must be set and drawing as they woud have been if the ship were on a particular point of sail in a particular weather condition. Square rigged ships rarely, if ever, flew all their sails at the same time. Consulting photographs (not necessarily paintings or drawings, which can contain errors due to "artistic license") of similarly rigged ships under sail is an excellent resource. Google Images is your friend!

Yes. At 1/8" to the foot, things start getting rather small sometimes. For this reason, rigging details are sometimes "abbreviated," which is to say, omitted. If you are going to put sails on a model, though, assuming you are committed to accuracy, most all of the items you've listed should, in my opinion, be portrayed. All would require rather fine thread, but nothing that would be particularly difficult to obtain. You would probably want to forego spinning your own scale rope because it would have to be so small. Nautical nomenclature is indeed a foreign language for most. As far as foreign languages go, it's fairly easy to master because the words and pronunciations are in English. It's only when you run into one of the older foreign made kits that you start having to learn all the terms again in French, Spanish, or Italian. That can be really crazy-making. Some of us were fortunate enough to grow up on and about ships and boats and picked up the "lingo" as we went along. Even then, fluency is difficult to attain because the names change at different times and places. "Different ships, different long splices." as the saying goes. It's actually much easier if you have a conversational use for a language and can "learn by doing," rather than by trying to memorize words in a vacuum. That said, modelers who stay with the hobby any length of time inevitably build research and reference libraries that are essential to more advanced modeling. If you posted an inquiry in an appropriate section of the forum (don't ask me which one!) asking for suggestions on basic reference books one should require, I'm sure you'd get a lot of suggestions. Keep in mind that the subject spans several centuries, so one has to acquire reference works for each of the periods relevant to the models they are building. Le Soleil Royal was French and built in 1668 and launched in 1670. She was then placed in ordinary (laid up unused) until recommissioned twenty years or so later in 1690 and burned in battle by fireships in 1692. You should probably decide at which point you want to portray her. When she was just built and launched or during her short two-year "working life." That means you'll have to research what she looked like at that time. One would hope that a kit would have made that choice for you or at least given you options and relevant details, but in the case of this kit, I have no idea if the plans do. The years this ship was afloat are at the beginning of what might be considered the reliable recorded history of sailing ships when the drafting of plans came into practice, construction started becoming standardized (in warships, at least,) and designs started "getting scientific." So, in this case, you'd have to find reference works that cover early French ships of the line of the time you are modeling. I don't have any detailed experience with late Seventeenth Century French warships, but I'd expect reference books written in English may be somewhat hard to find. There are some very fine works on French warships which have been translated to English, but, as I recall, they address Eighteenth Century French warships. In contrast, English reference works are plentiful compared to the French and Spanish naval fleets of the period and the rigging details of the warships of different nations are quite similar, but a "knowledgeable eye" (which I don't have in this instance) will quickly notice the inconsistency of English rigging and construction details on models of foreign ships. As you probably know, and I just learned, there is a highly detailed near-1/4" to the foot model of Le Soleil Royal built in 1839 which is nearly contemporary to the vessel itself, or at least soon enough that there must have been those who knew her firsthand still living at the time. The Wikipedia entry for Le Soliel Royal has some pictures of this model in the French National Maritime Museum in Paris and this model is probably the best source of information available at this time. (Which is why the manufacturer of your kit picked this vessel as a subject and based the kit on this model.) You'd probably want to acquire any reference books that contain plans of the vessel or photographs of the model. There may be some available from the French National Maritime Museum. The list of various ship modeling reference works is huge, but off the top of my head, if you haven't already, I would suggest you obtain copies of the following classic reference books. Fortunately for you, they have all now been reprinted in trade paperback format and are quite inexpensive. Prior to that, there was a time when they were scarce and expensive hardcover out-of-print "unicorns." The Rigging of Ships: in the Days of the Spritsail Topmast, 1600-1720 by R.C. Anderson (Dover Maritime Press - paperback reprint.) This one does cover both English and French ships of the line. The Rigging of Ships: in the Days of the Spritsail Topmast, 1600-1720 (Dover Maritime): Anderson, R. C.: 9780486279602: Amazon.com: Books The Art of Rigging by George Biddlecombe (Dover Maritime Press - paperback reprint.) Originally written in 1848, this book contains an excellent glossary of all the English terms and phrases used in rigging sailing ships of the line and is profusely illustrated. It also contains what Biddlecombe called "the progressive method of rigging ships" which is a logical sequence of rigging complex sailing rigs. This method is helpful for preventing you from "stringing yourself into a corner," as it were, by installing the various rigging elements in a logical specific order. The Art of Rigging (Dover Maritime): Biddlecombe, George: 9780486263434: Amazon.com: Books Rigging Period Ship Models: A Step-by-Step Guide to the Intricacies of Square Rig by Lennarth Petersson (Seaforth Publishing) Hardcover and paperback. This book is basically a collection of clear drawings of rigging details with a brief explanation. It has met with slight criticism regarding a few errors, but it is written for ship modelers for use in "looking up" what a particular rigging detail looks like and it is generally very well received by modelers using it for this purpose. The author has also written a companion volume addressing the rigging details of fore-and-aft rigged vessels. I consider it a "Field Guide to British and North American Sailing Ship Rigging." The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea (The Oxford Reference Collection) 2nd Edition C.B. Dear and Peter Kemp, Editors. Published by that Oxford, the university, which famously publishes the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language ("The OED"), this is a very scholarly dictionary/encyclopedia of all nautical terms. First published in 1976, the second edition published in 2006 added a lot of content on oceanography, marine archaeology, and marine biology developments since the first edition's publishing. It's basically the nautical segment of the OED, the authoritative standard dictionary of the English language. It's got darn near everything you can think of in it. It is now available in both hardcover and paperback. If money is tight, a used copy of the first edition which I've been using since its first printing continues to prove entirely adequate for my modeling and nautical technical writing purposes. Amazon.com: The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea (The Oxford Reference Collection): 9780198800507: Dear, I. C. B, Kemp, Peter: Books Between these four books, you should be able to look up and find a written description of any rigging detail you might encounter in a period ship model along with a clear picture or diagram of it and the definition of any nautical term you might ever encounter. There are plenty of copies of all of these books on the used market, making them quite affordable. If you shop around by checking Amazon and eBay for used copies in good condition, you may be able to acquire all four for less than a Benjamin. The more you read, the more you'll learn! Like many of us, you may find doing the research as fascinating as building the models.

Yes, as shown in the second picture. This is the way the sails are hung in order to dry them before furling when they won't be used for a period of time, whether they will then be "sent down" and stowed, or furled on the yard. The pictures show the way sails are dealt with when the ship is not sailing and the sails are not drawing. It was necessary to dry them before such storage in order to prevent mold and rot deterioration to the sails. If you intend to display the model with sails "set and drawing" as if the vessel were sailing, you have a much more involved task, since the sails will have to be formed to be "full" and all rigging set up to correctly portray the angles of the yards given whatever point of sail you want to show that the vessel is on (i.e. the direction from which the wind is blowing) and the model should be mounted at the proper angle of heel, if not sailing directly downwind. That portrayal is generally considered to require a few figures on board attending to the tasks required to sail the vessel to provide realistic detail. Such "sailing" presentations are usually seen on "waterline" models mounted on a molded "sea" base with appropriate bow waves and such.

A plumb bob would be a huge PIA to try to use for this purpose. It will get in the way and you'll probably knock it around trying to measure the angle off of vertical while it's hanging there. John is 100% right that, for several good reasons, you don't want to glue your mast rigidly in place. It is best to use your rigging to adjust the angle of the masts as is done in real life. How this is done depends upon the construction of your model. If your hull is a solid block, you're going to have to drill a hole, a bit larger than the heel of your mast and (hopefully) at the angle necessary. If your hull is hollow, you'll have to deal with however that hull is designed to hold the mast. For your purposes, you want a loose fit. To set up your mast, you must have your hull positioned dead level on its waterline in all directions. Note that some lines are drawn with the bottom of the keel parallel to the baseline and others not. You need to measure the rake of the mast on the plan using a level waterline as your point of reference. With your hull perfectly level on its waterline, build yourself a card stock jig against which you can compare your mast's positioning. Think "carpenter's or machinist's square with a fixed angle matching your mast rake, or a fancy "double ended" one with one side of the "arm" at a right angle and the other side cut to the angle of your mast rake. (Get out your Martha Stewart hot melt glue gun for this job. ) Select a convenient flat physical reference point on your hull. Usually, there will be a space from rail to rail where a flat base for such a jig can be laid. If you are using a building board and can mount your hull on an even keel with its waterline parallel to the building board, you can also build a reference jig which stands on the level building board, possibly straddling your hull. In this fashion, you can compare your angles "from the top down rather than the bottom up.") To build a cardstock jig, just erect from a flat reference base a perfectly perpendicular "fin" running fore and aft relative to your hull to form a "T" section. Use bracing triangles at the joints if you have to make it rigid, but you want this "fin" to stand perfectly plumb on your perfectly flat base that is perfectly parallel to the hull's waterline. The forward edge of this "fin" should be cut to the same angle as the mast as shown on the plans. The aft edge of this "fin" should be perfectly perpendicular to the base. The perpendicular edge will serve as your reference right angle for the mast's fore and aft perpendicularity and its angled edge will serve as your reference for your mast's rake. When you duplicate the mast rake angle from the plans, be sure to measure it from the center of the mast! Because the mast will usually be tapered, if you measure your rake angle from the outside edge of the mast section drawing, it will be wrong because of the error created by the additional taper angle of the mast. When you use this jig to set the angle of your mast, again take notice of matching the angle of your jig to the center of your mast. I suppose you could just measure the rake angle on the plans from the edge of the section drawing of the mast and then just compare that angle of the side of the tapered mast to your tapered mast and get the same result, except that the opportunity for error seems greater in the latter approach. There are a few ways to adjust your mast using your jig. The most obvious is to adjust your mast by using your standing rigging as it is done in real life. One uses the stays to adjust for rake and the shrouds to adjust for perpendicularity port and starboard. This is primarily done by taking up on the deadeyes and headstay and backstay lashings. This process will be necessary in any event if your rigging is to be properly taut and not hanging slack, but it's often difficult to accomplish in practice without the mast being fairly rigidly oriented as you would wish to begin with. For that reason, I advise leaving your rigging slack and using one of the following methods to orient the mast somewhat rigidly first, and then take up the slack in your rigging. One way to secure your mast independent of the rigging is to adjust the angle of the mast at the mast step and mast partners at the deck by using the mast step as the fulcrum and placing wedges or shims between the partners (or hole in your deck or solid hull... whatever)) to adjust the orientation of the mast. Another less tedious way to do this is to use a malleable material such as soft wax or modeling clay packed between the side of the mast and the mast partners. This will allow you to position your mast by moving it, with the malleable material repositioning itself to accommodate the mast's movement, while still holding it in position after it's moved. I would not advise using a "malleable material" which will harden over time if it is going to make it difficult to remove the mast if that is ever necessary for servicing or repairs. I suggest that the non-hardening "malleable material" be supplemented or replaced by wedges or shims to ensure greater rigidity once the mast is properly oriented. After the mast is properly oriented, the slack in the standing rigging can be taken up. Be careful not to overdo the tightening, though. You don't want to pull the mast out of its proper position. Don't forget as well that sometimes the mast rake isn't the same in each of a vessel's masts. Check the rake of each mast independently to be sure. It may be off only slightly, but it may make a significant difference in the appearance of the model. Also remember that the longer the mast, the greater the distance of movement at the far end when adjusting it. Keep in mind that it only takes a very small bit of movement at the partners of a mainmast to move its topmast truck a noticeable amount. If you are only setting up a "baldheaded" mainmast, it can look fine, but be noticeably out of whack later after you've rigged all the tophamper! You can come very close but understand that you'll probably never get it perfect. Few, if any full-scale ships can say their masts are perfectly oriented and sailing ships are meant to pitch and heel in a sea, anyway, so who's going to know the difference? The inexact positioning of a mast is but one of the factors which virtually guarantees that every sailing vessel will always be faster to windward on one tack than on the other. .

To put a bit finer point on it, the purpose of reef tackles is not to "pull the sail up when the wind is blowing." The reef tackles are attached to the garnets on the leeches of a square sail at the reef bands for the purpose of pulling the garnets of the "new" head of the reefed sail, i.e. the ends of the reef band, tautly out to the ends of the yard from which the sail is hung. This is done prior to tying the reef lines, which serve to gather up the surplus canvas created by the reef. The reef points also serve to secure the new "head" of the sail created by the reef tackles stretching the reef band to the ends of the yard to the yard itself. While the reef tackles do haul the reef band upward and outward on the yard, gathering the reefed sail up isn't their primary purpose. When reefing, first the buntlines are used to haul up the body of the sail to the yard, while the sheets are tailed from the deck to keep the clews under control, so the sailors aloft on the yard can attach the reef tackles to the garnets on the sail's leeches, haul the reef band tight along the yard, and then tie off the reef points. Without the buntlines hauling the body of the sail up to the yard, the sailors would in most instances never be able to reach the garnets at the reef bands on the sail in order to attach the reef tackles! The reef tackles attach to the garnets on the leeches at each reef band. There is just one reef tackle for each leech, port and starboard, and it is moved to the appropriate reef band when a reef is taken in. To take a second reef, the sheets would be cast off and tailed by deck crew to better control the sail during the reefing evolution, the buntlines would be used to haul up the foot of the sail so that the reef tackles could be removed from the first reef band and attached to the second reef band and the new "head" of the sail at the second reef band stretched tightly between the ends of the spar. The reef points on the first reef are left in place where they continue to secure the surplus canvas created by the first reef to the yard. The reef points on the second reef band would then be tied off around both the previously tied-in reef with its reef points left tied, and the surplus canvas created by the latest reef to secure at the same time both the first and the second reef to the yard. The buntlines would then be slackened, and the clews of the sail sheeted to set the sail. To "shake out" a reef, the process was simply the opposite: The reef tackles were cast off the leeches and generally secured beneath the yard, perhaps attached to the head cringles on each side, although the head would be secured to the yard or jackstay separately and remain so unless the sail were to be removed from the yard. The reef points would be untied, and the sail let fall, or the reef be "shaken out," and the sheets hauled to set the filled sail. Note, however, that if only the most recent of multiple reefs taken was to be shaken out, the reef tackles would be moved to the reef tied in immediately previous to the one being shaken out the clew garnets of the previous reef hauled tightly outboard, rather than securing the reef tackles beneath the yard. In this fashion, when the reef points of the most recently taken reef were cast off and the buntlines slacked, the sail was set, reefed, and ready to be trimmed without any further attention to the preceding reef. There was no problem identifying the reef points of each reef because the latter reef's points are obviously the ones tied over the former reef's points. (Depending upon the size of the sail, the length of a square sail's reef points may vary, with the reef points on the second, and third, if there is one, reef band(s)' points being longer than its predecessors to accommodate the greater volume of gathered canvas it must secure. This detail is very rarely seen in modern models and perhaps is dependent upon the period. I can't say for sure.) If the sails were to be dried (often in port), they were frequently loosely gathered up by the buntlines and their clews triced up to the center of the yard to keep the clews from flailing about (or the sails filling if the wind kicked up and the ship sailing off on its own!) This practice is seen in many period photographs. Cutty Sark with crew aloft in the process of setting sails to dry in port. Note the fore and mizzen courses with their buntlines brailing up the leeches. Note the crew at the ends of the foretopsail yard apparently in the process of securing the clews to the center of the yard. What that looks like when completed is seen in the second photo below. When the job is finished, it will look something like this if done "shipshape and Bristol-fashion:" When a sail is stowed furled on a yard, whether with a reef or more already tied in, or without any reefs tied in, the sail is secured with gaskets which work much like reef points, but are not permanently connected to the sail. Rather gaskets live attached to the yard or jackstay and when in use they are tied all around the yard and gather the sail at points as required along the length of the spar in the same manner as reef points. However, as gaskets must circle the entire sail and spar (unless tied through a jackstay,) often with more than a single turn taken (unlike reef points,) they must be considerably longer than reef points and when not in use are coiled and left hanging from the yard (or jackstay.) I am not certain whether this practice is applicable to all periods, though. In earlier periods, the gaskets may have been sent aloft with the topmen when needed. One would have to do further research on that one, but if you are shooting for building a "hundred pointer." details like properly coiled and hung gaskets are not to me overlooked! This video better illustrates the use of the sail gaskets and provides a good idea of how a life-size square yard looks and works:

Great progress, Keith! Congratulations on the great outcome on your surgery. Just a thought in passing: These days (in the US, at least) many of the surgical instruments used are "disposable." It's not worth the cost in time and labor to autoclave and sterile package them after each use as was done in the good old days. Regrettably, I expect some of these discards are piled up for sale in large lots to resellers on eBay or to be resold in Third World countries and a lot of it is now sent to the landfill as "bio-hazard waste." You might mention to your surgeon that you'd appreciate it if s/he would save the disposable instruments for you. There's probably a nice Castroviejo iris scissors in your surgical tray, along with maybe some nice tweezers. The eye and micro-surgeons have the best medical instruments to repurpose for modeling use. Unfortunately, I lost my "connection" for "dull," (a relative term) dental burrs some time ago when my friend, and institutional dentist working for the state, told me they were now under an order to "bio-hazard bag" all their discards without exception. I suppose that's a prudent protocol, but I hate to think that for every kid that makes a trip to the emergency room, there's a nice needle holder that goes into the trash bin.

That was exactly what I thought. Once you get down to eight or sixteen sides, rounding it up is a piece of cake with a sheet of sandpaper. (In real life, they might rough out the shape of a solid mast or spar with an adze, but the finish work would have been done with a spar plane, which would have a concave sole and iron sized to match the circumference of the spar. It would take a set of these to get an accurately rounded spar.) I was thinking of a similar arrangement, but rather than a shim that slid under the spar, there would be a grooved "bench hook" base to hold the spar for planing and a threaded "jack" that could be finely adjusted to raise the base and the degree of taper one desired. Once the measurements were identified, an "inches per foot" taper index for each of the scales one used could be attached, making setup even less tedious. A plane would run on a "sled" or in a level track to cut the taper set by the amount of rise above the track set by the "jack" adjustment. This sort of a jig could also be used for cutting scale scarfs. It's the way many scarfs are made in full-size construction these days, often with a router base mounted on a sled running on an angled base.

I've heard good things about that HP-8 plane. (They also sell a stainless and titanium "commemorative model" for $300.) The Bridge City catalog is very entertaining. They seem to be the Tiffany's of tools and priced similarly as well! Real jewelry for tool nuts. See: Planes – Bridge City Tool Works (bridgecitytools.com) Bridge City offers a chopstick tapered planing jig that uses the HP-8 plane called the "Chopstick Master." It seems that with a little bit of re-engineering, it could be a really neat tool for making tapered scale masts, spars, and dowels. The catch, of course, is that this jig system would probably cost you more than a Proxxon wood lathe! It's worth taking a look at it if anybody is considering building a jig for planing "sticks." Bridge City makes theirs fancy, of course, but the principles of their jig may be adaptable for modeling use. See: Mini Workshop – Bridge City Tool Works (bridgecitytools.com)

Yep, what Jaager said. Twenty years old isn't as old as I had in mind when I started reading this thread. I was thinking more like maybe fifty or sixty years old, back to the old Model Shipways "yellow box" kits. Still and all, unless you are prepared to do a complete build from scratch, using nothing but the old kit plans (which are easy to come by without buying the kit,) and the price for the plans is not too dear or the plans not too inaccurate, old kits are almost certain to disappoint a modeler today. There has been a tremendous increase in the quality and sophistication of ship model kits in recent times. Even the difference between kits sold just twenty years ago (and which may have been designed twenty or thirty years before that!) and today's CAD-designed, and CNC-manufactured laser cut models is much the same as comparing the Academy Award winning quality of Ray Harryhausen's "stop-motion" model animation movie special effects of fifty years ago with the computer-generated imagery common in today's movies. The problem isn't just the quality of the wood. Even today's lower-quality kits are full of poor-quality wood. The older kits are nowhere near as well designed for ease of assembly, nor are their instructions, such as they may be in any event, anywhere near the quality of today's state-of-the-art kits. The fittings should be much better in modern kits. Older model kits frequently used lead-based cast parts which are prone to corrosion and turning to dust before your eyes in a few years. Older kits were notorious for period-inappropriate and/or out of scale fittings, as well and this is a problem that continues in lower-quality kits today. The old kit rigging blocks and thread will nearly always be so far beneath current expectations of quality and accuracy of appearance as to mandate their complete replacement. This isn't to say that a competent modeler can't turn out a rather nice model from an old kit, taking into account their ability to upgrade the kit from scratch as they go along, but at the end of the day, any modeler is going to have a much more pleasurable experience and a much better looking result assembling one of the higher-end American- or British-made kits which have been designed and produced within the last several years. As Jaager sagely observed, it's all about the investment in time. Even the cheaper cost of an old kit considered, I'd say anybody who is going to spend any money on a model ship kit will find both their money and their time better spent on a modern kit. In any event, do be sure to check the forum's model kit database for reliable reviews of any kit you might consider acquiring. REVIEWS: Model kits - Model Ship World™

Nice work! Your edges are crisp and your finishing is excellent. It appears that you are simply pushing up against the limits of what can be done with your kit at its scale. In real life, a shackle would slide on the sheet horse (metal bar) and the shackle would hold the block which would have an internal metal strop with a tab with a hole through which the shackle pin would run. In this case, the kit manufacturer has anachronistically "mixed apples and oranges." There would not have been rope-stropped blocks on a Banks schooner of Bluenose's period. You'll just have to dance with the gal ya' brought and "fake it." Perhaps the easiest way to accomplish the task is to take a length of thread and tie it first around the block, forming the strop on the block. Tie off the "strop" with two or three half-hitches going in the same direction at the bottom of the block. (If your "one-holed" blocks are like most kit blocks, the hole will be at one end of the block. Tie your "strop knots" at the end of the block which is farthest away from the end closest to the hole so that the run of the line through the block will look correct.) Leave the bitter end of the knotted thread free for the moment. You will now have a block which is "stropped" by the knotted thread. Now the other end of the thread with the block attached and tie that end closely around the sheet horse with two or three half-hitches just as you did the "strop loop" previously. You will want to tie the stropped block as closely as possible to the sheet horse in order to simulate a block fastened closely to the sheet horse with a seizing. The block should not appear as if it is on a pendant attached to the block. When you tie the half hitches for the knots holding the stropped block to the sheet horse, tie as many half hitches as you need (It shouldn't be more than two or three) around the standing part of the line until they fetch up against the side of the last half hitch tied on the block strop end. The appearance, if done correctly, will be of the stropped block attached to the sheet horse with a short series of half hitch knots spiraling up between the block and the sheet horse. The shorter this distance, the more realistic it all will appear. Use as fine a thread as you can manage, as the half hitch knots will increase the diameter of the knotted rope between the block and the sheet horse. You may wish to experiment and use two turns of your thread around the block and around the sheet horse before tying the respective half hitches. This may mimic the appearance of a single thicker strop around the block and sheet horse with the half hitches around the connection between them appearing closer to the diameter of the doubled thread visible around the block and sheet horse. Some thickened paint, shellac, or surfacing putty can be applied between the doubled thread around the block and sheet horse to mimic the appearance of a single piece of rope. When you have fastened the block to the sheet horse in this fashion, without cutting the two bitter ends of the thread, secure the knots, and the turns around the sheet horse and the block, for that matter, with a touch of thin shellac (two pound cut, i.e., "out of the can" if using prepared canned shellac) or thinned PVA glue and allow it to dry. When the shellac or glue has dried, cut off the two bitter ends of the thread as closely to the knots as possible with a sharp scissors or hobby knife. If the shellac or glue is dry, the knots will hold. If not, you run the risk of having one of your half hitches pop loose when the thread is cut and you won't have enough free thread at the end to tie it again, with will require you to start from scratch and do it over again. This is the technique that appears to have been used in the photo above. Note that the thickness of the thread used has created a thicker "seizing" around the throat of the "strop" between the block and the sheet horse than appears realistic. Use of a thinner thread, perhaps using the "double turn" method mentioned above, would have perhaps resulted in a thinner "throat" between the block and the sheet horse. Because the object of this exercise is to "fool the eye," the less prominent this attachment method can be, the better. What is wanted is that a viewer's eye will not be drawn to it and it will not get noticed, in which case, the viewer's brain will simply "fill in the blanks" with a correct assumption of what it thinks should be there. If that approach isn't challenging enough at 1:100 scale, another comes to mind which, although requiring a bit more work and perhaps skill, would produce a more period-correct appearing un-stropped block. You could make up an "eye bolt" out of suitably-sized wire, drill a hole in the end of your block closest to the "sheave hole," but not so deep that it runs through the "sheave hole," (or drill the hole at an angle so you miss the "sheave hole") and cement the shank of the bent wire "eye bolt" into the wooden block body. This will simulate a period correct wooden-shelled iron-framed block. Use something that holds well, like cyanoacrylate or epoxy to glue the shank in the hole. A faux "eye bolt" shank is best made by twisting the two ends of a length of wire tightly around a drill bit shank of the desired size and then removing the bit and cutting off the shank of twisted wire at the desired length. This results in a "spiraled" shank which will hold better than a smooth piece of wire when glued in the hole and provides an "eye" that will not bend open or need to be soldered to prevent its doing so. The drawback, however, is that the twisted shank requires drilling a larger hole to accommodate it, which may or may not be possible in a small block. Care should be taken to ensure that the eye is correctly oriented when glued into the block so that the when the block is attached to the sheet horse with a ring between them, the lead of the sheet running through the block's "sheave hole" will be fair. Once the eyebolt is firmly set into the block, its neck can be bent so that it appears to lead fair from the block, if necessary. You now have a block with an "eye" at its "top end" (closest to the drilled "sheave hole." and it is then easy to make a small ring of suitably-sized wire which will fit through the "eye" on the block and around the sheet horse bar, just as the shackle does in the prototype and the drawings. You can then "blacken" the "iron work" with a "blackening" agent (for copper or brass wire, liver of sulphur or the equivalent proprietary product) or with black paint. This method doesn't require that it be made as unobtrusive as possible because it is more realistically detailed than the knotted method described previously. One last point to mention is that, from an engineering standpoint, perhaps you may want to give a bit of thought to how strongly built you might want this (these?) block to sheet horse connection(s) to be. The sheet horse should be well-glued in place and, if a bent copper or brass ring is used to hold the block onto the sheet horse, that ring will be the "weak link in the chain." One of the most frequent catastrophic injuries ship models suffer is some sort of impact on the extremities of the rigging which is mechanically transferred to some structural attachment point which then breaks. You might question whether the ring connecting the block to the horse should be strong enough to handle the stress load of sudden tension from an impact that causes the sheet to yank hard on the block. A strong connection would usually mean soldering the ends of the ring together, which would be difficult to do if the sheet horse were already installed on the model. On the other hand, if the ring's ends aren't soldered, any pulling force on the block coming from the sheet is probably going to bend the ring's ends apart and pull the ring off the sheet horse. While "all the books" say such rings should be soldered for strength and appearance, leaving the ring's ends unsoldered would actually serve to prevent greater damage to the rigging structure in the event of a mishap. Reattaching the block to the sheet horse by bending a ring back into alignment is certainly a much easier than to broken sparts and rigging line elsewhere.

Steel is correct and, although you appear to have misunderstood Steel, your color instincts are relatively accurate, it appears you are confusing Steel's "tarred yarn" with your own concept of "tarred rope." Natural fiber yarns used to traditionally make ordinary cordage for use in the marine environment were and are always "tarred" by being placed in a bath of thinned pine tar to impart a relatively thin coating of tar to the individual strands before they are laid up into rope. The thin tar coating on the yarns serves the important purpose of improving the water-resistance of the yarns, the greatest part of which are "inside the lay" and not as much exposed to the drying air. This light tar coating on the yarns increases the rope's resistance to decay in the wet marine environment, and to a lesser degree, the tar's "tackiness" helps to bind the laid-up rope together better. The greater the amount of tar applied, the more water-resistant the cordage will be, so, as Steel notes, "Yarn for cables requires more tar than for hawser-laid ropes." because cables spend a lot of their time underwater or stowed wet in the cable lockers, so the greater amount of tar provides a greater amount of water-resistance and hence resistance to strength-weakening decay. Most top-quality fiber for traditional marine rope making, such as sisal, flax, or hemp, is naturally quite white, or almost nearly so, whether naturally or from being bleached. The addition of the thin pine tar coating to the near-white yarns produces the characteristic "honey/straw" color of brand-new fiber rope (as well as its agreeable pine tar aroma.) In use, however, hawser-laid cordage (i.e., three-strand running rigging) will weather in the marine environment to the color of a light grey-tan. In other words, as you correctly expected, running rigging is "rope colored." On the other hand, all served standing rigging, served footropes, and any other rope requiring chafe protection, (as well as deadeye lanyards after the standing rigging had been stretched well and the lanyards more or less permanently set up,) was kept coated with routine applications of "slush," a paint made of pine tar, linseed oil, and lampblack, or the equivalent, depending on whatever was available, such as pine tar, varnish or paint, and lampblack. ("Slush" is sailor slang for any thick liquid residue. The word was also used to identify the thick sludge of fat and salt that remained at "the bottom of the barrel" of salted meat aboard ship. This residue was saved and sold to renderers upon making port with the proceeds then used to buy something for the crew's benefit... hence the term "slush fund.") As "slush" was often made up of leftover paint and varnish in the bosun's locker, lampblack was used to uniformly turn the concoction into a black paint. "Slushing" was the last step in the standard water-proofing technique known collectively as the "service" of a rope which kept the rope dry and protected it from being weakened by chafing. The technique was to first worm lengths of "small stuff," (appropriately sized laid cord) by tightly wrapping them laid in the larger rope's "contlines," (the proper nautical term here Bowdlerized for the benefit of delicate ears), then heavily applying thick pine tar to the wormed rope and parceling it by wrapping strips of canvas, bandage-fashion, spirally around the wormed and tarred rope, then, serving the wormed, parceled, and tarred rope by very tightly spirally wrapping a covering of tarred marline or other appropriately sized small laid line around the wormed, tarred, and parceled rope. (When steel cable came into use as standing rigging, the method of its service was exactly the same as with rope, although the thick tar applied before parceling was often replaced with a thick coating of white lead paste as a rust-preventing bedding compound.) So, the color of running rigging depends upon how the modeler wishes to portray the vessel. Is it to be portrayed as "brand spanking new" or as she looked once the "new car smell had worn off?" If the latter, taking appropriate color compensation for "scale viewing distance into consideration," running rigging would be a somewhat "grey/tan" for running rigging, or what might be called a "used rope color." As dirt tended to collect in the contlines of rope and the more prominently exposed outermost surface of the rope tends to bleach some in the sun, used rope on a sailing vessel will end up showing a darker color in its "contlines" than on the raised outer face of its strands. A particularly detail-oriented modeler may want to experiment with various stain-washing techniques to see if they can duplicate the contrasting light and dark areas of a warn piece of rope exposed to the marine environment. Any rigging that is served (or was in the prototype but was omitted in the model) should be colored flat black, not because of the amount of tar on it, but because the "slush" used to coat it was jet black. Now, the standing rigging of small craft was generally not served, in which case it would presumably appear the same as running rigging, so in any given instance with small craft, some research may be necessary to identify whether the standing rigging of a specific small craft was or wasn't served. A picture is worth a thousand words department: Having worked over the years on a few movies as a technical advisor and "boat wrangler" (responsible for the boats used), I always have a practiced eye open for the "production values" of any movie within my areas of expertise. More often than not, the job of a technical advisor is to tug on the set decorator or director's sleeve and say, "Excuse me, but that detail is incorrect" and not argue with the response, "Nobody'll notice it and we're on a budget, you know." Period naval movies are my favorite hunting grounds for catching directors "driving on an artistic license." It's a rare "swashbuckler" that doesn't have a few glaring rigging anachronisms with which to find fault, among the more frequent being synthetic cordage on period ships. (Note the Dacron line in the Hornblower TV mini-series example below.) I'd heard the scuttlebutt before its premiere that an incredible amount of effort was being put into ensuring authenticity in the Russell Crowe movie Master and Commander - The Far Side of the World and when I saw it, I was very impressed with their success in that effort. If you want to know what running rigging really looked like during the Age of Sail, they got it exactly right. (See: Master and Commander photo below.) I'm still not too sure what's supposed to be happening with that block and it's stropping in the foreground. I think it's supposed to be part of some shot-away top hamper that's fallen to the deck.