To jtilley (and anyone else with a comment) Re: Bonhomme Richard post below

Doug,

Yes that's a good plan, use a jewlers saw and trim as close as possible to the yard. Then file/sand down the rest. Visit a well stocked hobby shop and buy a "Flex-i-File", pickup a pack or course and medium file for it, this is great for working on curved surfaces. You can use wood, but after you sand down the wooden yards, give them a coat of sealer then after they dry sand them down again then paint them the color you want. By doing it this way you will "hide the grain and make the yard look smooth like the rest of the plastic parts.

Jake

That approach to the yard problem probably would work, but it strikes me as far more difficult than necessary. If my memory of that kit is correct (as it may not be; it's been a long time) the yards with the integrally-molded "sails" are pretty primitive. To make them round, after slicing the "sails" off, would be a challenge.

It really isn't difficult to make spars from wood. You can buy dowels with the taper already turned in from places like ModelExpo. As a matter of fact I believe MicroMark, which has a website, is currently offering a special price on a bundle of tapered spars for ship models. If the spar is too long, you can shorten it by chopping off identical lengths from each end.

It's also quite easy to turn your own spars - especially on a ship of that period, where the basic shapes are simple and the ironwork attached to them is minimal. Start with a good, hard dowel of a diameter that's not too far off what you want the finished product to be. Dowels sold in hardware stores and hobby shops these days seem to be of two species, birch and oak. You want birch. (Oak is, generally speaking, a lousy wood for ship modeling because the grain is too coarse.) Pick a stick with nice, straight grain. Cut it an inch or so longer than you want your finished yard to be. Clamp your electric drill in a vise on your workbench and chuck the end of the dowel into the drill. Then fire up the drill and go to work on the dowel with a sheet of fine-grit sandpaper. You'll be amazed at how quickly you can learn to turn a nice taper. (The first one or two tries may have to be discarded, but I'll bet you can turn all the spars for the model in an evening.)

While you're at the hardware store, pick up one or two felt-tip wood stain pens, which are excellent for staining birch. Each spar probably will have some iron bands on it; you can represent those quite effectively with strips of black paper, held in place with Elmer's glue.

Believe me, it's easy. Sometimes people who are used to plastic kits have trouble making the Great Leap to wood, but the leap isn't really very big.

Good luck.