Sails or no sails?

[PvG Aussie]

I see many excellent 'tall ship' models being built but I would say that possibly 50% don't have sails even though the rigging is often in place. What are your thoughts? 🤔

[Dr PR]

Many models without sails do not have the running rigging associated with the sails. This is most of the rigging on a sailing vessel. Without the sail running rigging the model may look under rigged. There will be a lot of unused belaying points (cleats, belaying pins, etc.).

 

If you want to include the sail running rigging without the sails you can. There are procedures for hooking together the halliards, sheets and tacks on fore-and-aft sails, and tying up the square sail sheets, clewlines and other lines. This was done before actually hauling up the sheets so all the lines would be in place. So you can rig most of the running rigging without actually adding the sails.

 

Adding sails is a controversial topic. Many models have cloth sails that are ridiculously out of scale (thickness and weave of cloth, stitching, etc.) and just look silly to some modelers. If you use thin materials with no visible weave and avoid oversize stitching and such, sails can enhance the model.

 

Another problem with sails is that they obscure a lot of the details on deck. To resolve this problem many modelers furl the lower sails, either partially or completely. This is not unrealistic because sailing vessels often did this to reduce sail to slow down. Or you can rig the sails as the vessel would be in port with all of them furled.

Edited June 22 by Dr PR

[rwiederrich]

Furled sails are best when done realistically.  
Tightly furled sails represents those on ships in port for lengthy times. 
 

[rwiederrich]

Or fully set with internal access available for detailed viewing.

[ah100m]

It's  A LOT more work to add the sails, but I think it's worth it.  It's a SAILING ship, right?  

On my Revell Constitution I furled the lower fore and main sails as suggested above which allows most of the deck details to be seen.