napoleonicfrigates

 

The anchors were easy enough to put together though threading the thick rope through the hawser hole was a nightmare. I actually removed some of the deck furniture so I would have some chance of grabbing onto the rope and pulling to the correct location. Drop one end in water first and use wax if you have major difficulties.

The spars were again relatively simple and all I can say is follow the guide. Tips I would provide though are that the spars must be filed to the given size which is small. This is needed so the equally titchy spar ends can be fitted onto them. When tying knots I tended to use figure of eights or double hitch knots dependant on circumstance. Usually completing with a dab of super glue.

I have rapidly learnt that my knots are not the best. No instructions seem to exist that are easily viewable and the knots advised by the ship instructions tend to be messier. What I did find was that my knots became better the more I did so rather than pull all your hair out I would recommend doing your best and you will improve..

The Masts were enjoyable to build up. A couple of words of warning are that force cannot be used on the intervening bits. Lots of snappable items. Also make certain the mast above can fit through the relevant hole before gluing as they also need a surprisingly large amount of size reduction to even fit. After tying the knots for the seemingly endless amounts of blocks I was not looking forward to starting the rigging proper..

FUTURE TIP - Even after adding the blocks to the spars I hit problems later with all the un-marked blocks. Looking back, now is the time that you should attempt to attach all the blocks to the masts and the best way to do this is to go through each rigging sheet after you have built the mast and spars and rig accordingly. There are a lot of extra blocks and attempting to tie them when rigging is already up causes rigging to be loosened and much swearing.

Another tip is that though it seems easy to tie a simple overhand knot and superglue the blocks in place try and get in the habit of always doubling up the knot and then super gluing. This prevents blocks where you forgot to super glue or the glue was weak from coming undone mid-rigging plus increasing the strength of the model.

The instructions ,stuck onto the end of the masts and spars section, provide the command to attach the lower trusses now. This involved attempting to drill holes in my cluttered deck to add eyelets required but not seemingly marked on the plans. I got them in though and relatively tightly at that.

Next up rigging..