Hi, I'm Greg, longtime ship modeler that wants to build better ships

Welcome to the Forum.  I use stretched sprue and white glue for attaching lines on ships.  I personally find superglue too "unforgiving."  If I don't get the line at just the right spot, I've got glue where I don't want it.

I find white glue (like Elmers), once it's dry, holds just about as well as superglue.  It's sturdier than one might think.

Welcome aboard. Afraid I can't help you with your ship building, but there are plenty that can, CMK among them.

 Welcome, ships4ever! You've definitely come to the right place. 

Welcome to the Forums! Glad to have you aboard!

I use invisible thread for that rigging. After the glue (whatever kind you use) dries, I just pass a small soldering iron under it to shrink it. I've been building for 67 of my 73 years and I build whatever strikes my fancy at the time. I use that process for rigging WWI biplanes too.

Jim 

Welcome Ships4ever. Come on over to "ships" and we'll get a lively discussion up.

Rigging WW1 ships is really a blast, as is rigging pre-dreadnoughts.

See you there and we can get into it. Caenis is a great choice, because among all of the nylon mono-filaments its about the best at taking a knot and holding it. Another good choice is EZ line.

See you on deck!

Thanks, I'll definitely bop over to Ships. I've never considered rigging to be something to look forward to, but it makes such a difference in the finished model, just like PE. With the excellent rigging diagrams I have for several of the models in my stash, I really don't have an excuse not to do it anymore.

Thanks for the tip. I have tried stretched sprue, but like some others I have seen in FSM, I find it hard to stretch them to a consistent size. I guess it's like the old joke, "How do I get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice!"

welcome aboard

Nice to see someone who has been modeling about as long as I have!

 (Prospective Evil Scientist)

Welcome, sir!  

ships4ever

Thanks for the tip. I have tried stretched sprue, but like some others I have seen in FSM, I find it hard to stretch them to a consistent size. I guess it's like the old joke, "How do I get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice!"

Thanks for the headsup on superglue. I use it for PE, although I think I have had better success with white glue, and may revert to that for my next build. As always, I am test-building something cheap so I don't mess up on an expensive model.

You're welcome, Greg.

I also use white glue for the PE parts, including the railings on the NO-boat above.  It seems to me that superglue on paint doesn't hold appreciably better than white glue.  

Please post photos of your work, so we can all admire your results!

I have found that superglue isn't holding well at all. I paint the decks and the PE first, then apply the rails to the decks. I had a case yesterday where the section of railing I placed came off along with the superglue. I re-did the area with a new section of railing and white glue, and it worked much better.

I'm not ready to post anything yet, as I'm not terribly happy with this effort. It's a 1/700 IJN Wakatake, a small destroyer. I love the older ships, and I picked up her half-sister Momi at the same time. I'll take what I learned from Wakatake, and I'm sure it will turn out better. Unfortunately, the carpet ate one of the lifeboat davits, so I will be short a lifeboat on Momi, but I still think it will turn out better than Wakatake.

I realized superglue wasn't holding very well when I got a drop where it didn't belong.  I was going to sand it off, when it just popped off at the first touch of sandpaper, and left the paint underneath completely intact.

That's when I decided that white glue was good enough--and if a part did fall off, water would clean it up and I could start over.

My current test model is a 1/700 IJN Wakatake DD, and I have tried both superglue and white glue with the railings. Overall, the white glue held better, and wasn't quite as messy, (although the messiness may have more to do with my clumsy fingers than anything else). I paint the decks and the railings before I put the railings on, and maybe superglue doesn't so as well in those circumstances. One superglued railing came off with the superglue! I'm not sure I'll post anything on this model, but I also have her sister ship Momi, and I am using what I learned to make Momi better.

I do the same thing:  paint the deck and railings before installing.  I cut a few strips of low-tack masking tape (nothing special, just from Walmart) and tape the railings in place in a few spots; just to hold them where they belong.

Then I use some thinned white glue--it's very thin, maybe up to 50% glue and 50% water.  I apply it to the joint with a very small paint brush.  It's probably a 10 0.  I let that dry for a half hour or so, then I remove the tape and apply glue along the whole length of the joint.,

After that's dried for a while (1/2 hour to an hour, although you could even wait overnight), I dampen a q-tip with water and wipe it along the joint to remove excess white glue.  Here you have to be very careful not to knock the railing off.

You can even go over the joint again with more thinned white glue, to strengthen the bond.

Sometimes, not always, I make a thinned wash of acrylic black or dark blue paint (whatever comes close to the basic color of the ship) and run that into the joint.  It helps hide the shine from the white glue if there is any.

Here's an example from USS Enterprise I'm still working on.  It's in 1:700 from Tamiya.  

One helpful suggestion I found on another forum (I think it was http://www.modelshipgallery.com/index1.html) is to use lengths of railing no longer than two (2) inches.  It makes them easier to handle.  In the starboard photo above, the rail around the odd platform is one piece, then two straight pieces make up the rest of the walkway heading aft.  I think I'd have failed miserably if I'd tried to do all that in one long piece.

Enterprise is only the second ship model I've used railings on.  USS New Orleans was the first one, for the 2013 Pearl Harbor Group Build, so I'm really not all that experienced with the little devils.  Sometimes they frustrate me to no end, and I think they're not worth the effort, but they do spruce up the look of the ship.

And one thing about white glue over superglue--you get to practice on the same kit.  Any errors can be removed with water, and you can try again.

I guess I need to get over my fear of tape! I have had some terrible luck with it for masking. I wash the model thoroughly with formula 409, rinse, then use plastic prep before I apply primer. For the last 3 models I have done, the paint and primer come right off when I remove the tape. It was so frustrating that I just stopped working on those models. Maybe I will go back to them again in the future, but for now they are off my radar. I fear that if I use tape to hold the rails, I'll damage the paint. I will try your method on my practice Wakatake and see how it goes. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

If it's helpful, the tape I use is called "Duck," by ShurTech Brands.  I get mine at Walmart.  It's very low tack, and doesn't (usually) lift any paint.

I use enamels, though, thinned with lacquer thinner.  If you use acrylics, that could be a problem.

I haven't had any paint come off the rails, except where I cut them off the sprue and sanded the stub; and at the point where they have to be bent.

I switched to using acrylics about 10 years ago, and though they don't cover as well as enamels, the ease in clean up and lack of odor make it the best choice for me. I have used Tamiya masking tape as well as 3M blue painters tape, and even low tack removable cellophane, but with similar results. It has gotten to the point where I fear the masking I need to do for boot topping on ships.

I've read here on the Forum that acrylics can have a problem sticking.  Maybe somebody over in the paint forum has some advice, but I'm completely in the dark about acrylics.  I use them for washes and some very minor painting (like prop tips in yellow for 1/700 planes), but that's the limit of my experience.

Well, I have finished the Wakatake, or at least as much as I am going to do before mounting it to its base. I haven't tried to make a water base yet, but I've read a few articles, and I am going to try using gel medium. Once I have the paint on the base, I'll apply gel medium and attach the model to the base. Then I can finish adding the masts and jackstaff to the model, as well as doing whatever touch up needs to be done. Let's hope this works!

Fair winds and following seas!