1/700 Black Seas Brig; Standing and running rigging with sails

      Less than happy with my first attempt, and with criticism taken to heart, I gave it another go.  For starters the lack of sails on a square-rigger is akin to a lack of tracks on a tank; "Nice model, how does it intend to get about?" So sails were a must. If you have sails there has to be a suggestion of running rigging to go with them. There is no way that I'm going top have a go at properly rigging a 1/700 scale sailing ship but the masts look slightly absurd with billowing sails and no ropes controlling them, so a suggestion was an absolute must. A period of introspection and a bout of searching the internet for plans of rigging for a brig left me with a decent appreciation for what was in order, so off to the workshop it was....

 

first I went through the pile of stretched sprue and found the thinner sections

 I cut these into bits about one inch long

 

then I kinked them right about the middle by pressing my thumbnail 

against sprue while holding it between my fingers

 

tiny drops of superglue attached these to the masts, once they were dry 

I trimmed the end so that they reached the end of the yards and glued then to the tips of the yardarms

 

I cut the sails from standard typing paper and glued them to the yardarms and added the standing rigging as per the last model, then I added running rigging; this is best done by applying a tiny drop of glue to the deck and then inserting the sprue into it, then carefully lean the sprue against the tip of the yardarm and wait for the glue to dry, once set apply a tiny drop the the point where the sprue touched the tip of the yard, after all the glue is set the overhang is trimmed back using nail trimmers

 

the mainmast was left off while this work was taking place

 to make it easier to access the attachment points

 

while the glue was drying on this part I added sails to the mainmast 

 

I glued down the mainmast and then added the standing rigging

 before embarking on the running rigging

 

the ends of the sheet lines were threaded through the ports in the side of the hull

 

then I added the control lines for the yardarms, there are no pin racks at the back of the model so I just glued the end of the sprue into the rear corners and rested them on the tips of the yardarms

 

one of the big adavantages of using sprue is that it is rigid enough

  that it won't droop while the glue is setting, the overhanging bits are easily trimmed back

 

she still needs so touch-up  and a dash more paint on the sails 

but I think that I like this one better