My first ship

Do you want to try wood or plastic?? If you've built lots of armor, there's nothing wrong with doing a plastic sailing ship before diving headlong into an unknown project in a new medium...

Revell has some basic ship kits like their Cutty Sark, which, if you're good with plastic, is a great first time kit. Try to avoid something as daunting as the Revell Constitution or the Heller Victory, bigger ships tend to create more unfinished models...

Big Jake and Bruce LeCren are our resident sailing ship experts. They can steer better in this area than I can, but that's my take on your first kit.

Jeff Herne
Modelwarships.com

The kits that Jeff is refering to are Revell's 1/150-260 scale series. These are good kits to start out on since they have a lot of detail yet many of the hard assemblies are done such as pre-molded shrouds. Ebay is a good source for these kits at resonable prices. The Bounty, Constitution, Cutty Sark, Charles Morgan, Mayflower, and Spanish Galleon are on the auction block now. These are old kits that are great because they have finer molding and hardly no flashing. As a armor builder, you will enjoy painting and detailing these kits.
Scott

My sailing ships are usually wood, so I'll defer to the other experts here on what would be a good plastic sailing ship kit. Claymore 68 was working on a CW Morgan, haven't heard from him in a while but the hull photos he posted looked good.

The last one I did in plastic was the Revell Pedro Nunes (Thermopylae); and I would not recommend that as a first kit. For a first kit I would look for a simple rig; don't try the full rigged clipper straight off.

Regards,
Bruce

If I were you, I would find a Revell Mayflower kit from between 1960s to the early eighties on ebay to start with. I have just recieved a 1977 Revell Mayflower kit (it apears to be around 1/100 scale, not sure though, 14-3/4" long including bowsprit) that I ordered for spare parts for my Airfix Golden Hind's lack of detail on the decks. The kit is complete so I will build it and the detail is astounding for the size of the ship.

Rigging will be the thing to grit your teeth through and this kit has three thicknesses of thread/yarn and has blocks and eyebolts. I am very impressed. The moldings have very nice detail including the treenails at the end of each plank and board on the deck.

I am going to use it as a warm up for my Heller 1/100 Le Soliel Royal.

Lon