David_K:Well, my first attempt to install homemade furled sails is complete. I'm actually not very impressed with my work.
JTilley, I can absolutely understand the reasoning for preassembling masts, yards, and rigging as much as possible OFF the model! I now realize that following the order of the inlcluded instruction sheet is a dangerous game! As I learn more and begin to feel more comfortable in my abilities, I plan to totally *deconstruct* the instructions and rewrite them in a logical fashion.... :)
As far as the sails go, I feel a big part of my problem is that I got impatient, and instead of abandoning the trial when I saw things going south, I persevered. They don't look BAD bad (in my opinion), but in comparison with the rest of the ship, and my success with other areas of it, they are lacking. Just a little too uneven, and the texture doesn't seem right. I think for the next furled sail attempt, I'll try the Silkspan material, and also do more of the installation with the masts OFF the kit, with much less obstruction! Retrospective!
Also, the yards are up. I know, I know, it's heresy. Just out of curiosity, when altering the yard placement of a kit which is intended for them to be raised, how does one actually attach them to a lower part of the mast? Is it a matter of modifying parts, adding notches and tabs, etc.?
My preferred method for sharing pics on Finescale is to just place a link to my facebook album, which is public. If anyone reading this has a facebook account, feel free to visit this page to see pics of the Vasa build...the last 5 pictures are of some of the new sails....I'd love any feedback, but I already know some of what I'm trying next time! Be warned- the color scheme is not authentic! haha
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tnmn#!/media/set/?set=a.10150652386816312.389965.582946311&type=1
David
I'm not on Facebook (and, in view of the experiences my kids have had with it, I don't particularly want to be), so I'm afraid I can't see the photos David posted. Regarding the shifting of yard positions - it all depends on how accurate and detailed you want the finished model to be. In a real seventeenth-century ship, the yards would be fastened to the masts by gadgets called parrals (or parrels). A parral is a pretty simple apparatus consisting of ropes, ribs, and trucks (wood rollers) that lets the yard swing around the mast and slide up and down it. My recollection is that the old Airfix
Wasa has decent representations of the parrals mollded in with the masts; I have no idea about the Revell one. Making a set of parrals to scale isn't particularly difficult (the aforementioned book by Dr. Anderson shows just how to do it), but it gets trickier as the scale gets smaller.
A simplified alternative is to pin the yard to the mast in the right place with a piece of fine wire. (You've got a set of small drill bits and a pin vise - right?) Add a drop of CA adhesive, and the result will look fine except at very close range.
I'll take the liberty to offer an opinion that differs from that of several Forum friends. I don't recommend the big Revell Constitution to newcomers. I really like the kit, but to do even a reasonable "out of the box" job on it takes a huge amount of time. I've never heard of anybody doing it in much less than a year. Newcomers improve fast; by the time you get to the mizzen mast you'll think the work you did on the foremast isn't good enough. That's one big reason why (as I learned firsthand when I was working my way through grad school in a hobby shop) so few of the big, plastic sailing ship kits ever get finished.
I've been preaching for years that the best way to get started in sailing ship modeling is with relatively small ships in relatively large scales. Unfortunately few such plastic kits are available at the moment. The Revell Golden Hind (one of my all-time favorites) isn't bad for that purpose. Neither is the old Revell yacht America - if you can find one. An excellent kit that is currently on the market is the Revell Viking ship - a beautiful representation of the real Gokstad ship. Another, if you aren't too bothered by the fact that it's based on now-outdated research, is the Revell Santa Maria.
Many years ago, Pyro made a series of really nice, basic ship kits that were, I think, just about ideal for newcomers: the revenue cutter Roger B. Taney (AKA "Independence War Schooner"), the fishing schooner Gertrude L. Thebaud (AKA "American Cup Racer"), and the revenue cutter Harriet Lane (AKA "Civil War Blockade Runner"). For a long time they were sold under the Lifelike label, and most recently by Lindberg. They can still be found on hobby shop shelves, at modelers' conventions, and on E-bay. Any of those kits, with the help of a good book or two, can be turned into a fine model of a handsome, important ship in a few weeks. In the process, the modeler will learn about the basics of sailing ship construction and rigging, develop the necessary skills - so his next model will be better. To my mind, that makes a lot more sense than shelling out a big wad on a big kit, starting it, getting discouraged at the amount of repetition, getting frustrated when cannon number 50 looks so much better than cannon number 1, and finally sticking the whole thing on a closet shelf to be forgotten about - and never trying a sailing ship again.
Those are personal opinions, with which anybody is, of course, free to disagree. But I will say that I've never known anybody to regret starting with one of those kits - and I know the vast majority of the big Constitution, Cutty Sark, Victory, and Soleil Royal kits I sold never got built.