Great suggestions:
To Donrobinson ... I wish I could offer a lifetime guarantee on all of our kits ... guarantee meaning you live long enough to build your entire stash in your closet. Since I came out of retirement I have felt better, lost weight, worry more, elevated my stress levels and heard my doctor say I'm doing far better than my younger friends. I also renewed a contract with my wife guaranteeing her 24 more years of mutual servitude. So the bottom line is to stay busy mentally, physically and with an end goal in mind. It works. I'm glad I'm no longer retired.
Your suggestions regarding blocks and rigging line. Chuck at Syren Model Co. is smarter than all of us because he realized that the blocks in all kits (ours and Euro kits) are terrible ..... and that goes for the rigging too.
Chuck makes 1400 blocks a day, which works out to about 30,000 blocks per month. Not a bad rate of production. If he could build up production to over 100,000 per month and drop the price down to two cents to sell them all to me then he could stick all his forks in his eyes as the $2000 per month sales wouldn't allow him to buy food anyway. I think his blocks are marvelous and if were building kits for fun I would throw away the kit blocks and buy Chucks'[. When you spend 100's of hours to build something beautiful you can spend a few more $$$. Like putting jewelry on a beautiful woman.
The same goes for rigging line (rope). By the way ... I would love to hear suggestions on where I can buy decent rigging. I've had nothing but disappointments with rigging for decades. I would even elevate cost substantially for a decent supplier of linen. Know a good source? Let me know.
We use about 5,000 ft. of rigging per day.