Found a great rigging string at Hobby Lobby

Sounds like this may indeed be good stuff.  I'm a little nervous about cotton rigging line, though.  It has the reputation of being extremely hygroscopic - i.e., shrinking and stretching with changes in humidity.

A lot of baloney has been written by self-appointed experts in various places about threads for ship modeling, and I don't want to add to that literature.  I've heard stories about ship model rigging going slack because it was made of cotton, but I can't recall having actually seen an instance of that happening.  In the relatively short lengths we're talking about it seems unlikely that normal changes of humidity could actually make much difference.  (I suppose if one built a model in the middle of the Sahara and then took it to an Amazonian rain forest the rigging probably would be affected, but a person who did that would have enough other problems to make this one seem trivial.) 

It's also been suggested that cotton doesn't hold up well.  That argument probably has some truth to it - in that cotton fabric seems to start showing its age after twenty or thirty years.  Whether that's important to the ship modeler is up to him or her.

There's a fairly widespread consensus that the best material for rigging is linen.  I agree that linen thread is an excellent rigging material, but I don't think it's appropriate to be dogmatic about it.  Linen line is hard to find, and these days most of it has slubs (irregularly-spaced bulges) in it.  Bluejacket ( www.bluejacketinc.com ) sells some nice linen line, but it's pure white and only the smallest diameter in the catalog would be of much use for such a small-scale model.  One or two other ship model companies sell linen, but again it doesn't seem to come in really small sizes - and it's quite expensive.

In any case, I'm not convinced that linen is the eternally-surviving wonder-thread it's often made out to be.  In the maritime museum where I used to work I encountered several old models whose linen rigging was starting to fall apart after fifty years. 

My own personal preference, as I've mentioned in a couple of other threads (oops) in the Forum, is silk.  That museum had some silk-rigged models too, and I couldn't detect any consistent pattern of deterioration.  Some silk thread seemed to be lasting longer than some linen thread, and vice-versa.  Quite a few tapestries from the middle ages and the Renaissance have survived.  Most of them, as I understand it, are stitched with silk thread on linen fabric backing.  In my opinion the environment in which a model is kept and the treatment it gets are far, far more important to its longevity than the material used for its rigging.

The problem with silk thread nowadays is that it's hard to find.  Twenty years ago sewing stores carried it in dozens of colors, but no more.  I've done Google searches on it a couple of times and found a few mail-order sources, but I haven't tried them.

Model Expo ( www.modelexpoonline.com ) sells a "cotton-poly mix" that I used on my last model.  On the basis of that limited experience I really like it.  It comes in quite a few diameters (including some extremely fine ones) and appropriate colors, and is spun up in a manner that makes it look like real rope.  (That can't be said about all brands of thread.)  It has a good, workable texture and ties easily in knots.  And so far (the model in question is about three years old now) it shows no sign of reacting disagreeably to the rather extreme humidity changes here in North Carolina.

If you do decide to use cotton I'll offer one tip:  wax it.  Sewing stores sell chunks of beeswax in plastic containers that have slots molded in them.  Get in the habit of dragging each line through the slot, coating it with beeswax.  That will settle any fuzziness in the thread, and help protect it from the humidity.  From the standpoint of most modelers, I suspect, waxed cotton would be a perfectly satisfactory rigging material.

I'll take the liberty of offering three other tips. 

One - a real ship's rigging consists of line in many, many different diameters.  The more different sizes of thread you use, the more realistic your model will look.

Two - if in doubt regarding size, err on the small side.

Three - if in doubt regarding color, err on  (with apologies to Darth Vader) the dark side.

Good luck.

Thanks Mr. Tilley. I guess as you can tell by my enthusiasm, this is my first Ship since I was a very young man. Alot has changed. I guess back then, I had no knowledge and today still learning all these fantastics tips from people like you. I guess my approach is still having fun with this boat - it is enjoyable to work with. I do like being authentic, but for me I am just choosing a balance in doing something relaxing while trying my best at it, but at the same time, the directions in the kit are very lackluster in giving the modler any choices or any directions. I do have a drawing that was part of the instructions that look like came from some authentic 'plans' but there again, no clear instructions and the 'plans' are very hard to read. The plans are only one side view and that is it. no details for the belaying pins, cleats or anything. Allot of research, you , and others, and just plain using my common sense is helping me here.
Thanks again so much for your help.

Donnie

Sounds to me like you've got precisely the right attitude - a major ingredient of success.

I sometimes wonder whether the model manufacturers realize how much damage they do with their silly, incomprehensible rigging diagrams.  The best I can recall seeing were in the old Imai kits; those designers understood how to simplify rigging without making it into an arbitrary collection of lines.  At the moment I'm ogling an old Revell Golden Hind kit, which I got from a good friend whom I met through this Forum.  That kit has good rigging instructions - a series of step-by-step perspective sketches that, if followed closely, will produce a reasonably accurate (though slightly simplified) model.  Would that the other companies would follow those examples.  (I long ago concluded that the people responsible for the rigging diagrams in Heller kits had no idea how a real ship's rigging worked.  Some of those diagrams go beyond the realm of mere inaccuracy and into the realm of the totally irrational.)

The key to succeeding - and getting enjoyment from - this hobby is to strike a balance between learning and having a good time.  If that happens, little else matters.  Good luck.

What makes you decide on the Revell Golden Hind rather than the Heller one. That is one strange looking vessel. But then again, I do not know what all is out there as far as ships go. I have knowledge about the most common ones, but this one, don't know. I think it looks interesting, but I hate to copy your idea and go out and get one.

Donnie

The plastic sailing ship kit market is a morass of reissues, reboxings, and, in some cases, outright deceptive marketing.  (Your "Jolly Roger" is an example.  It was originally released as La Flore in the late 1960s.  What innocent modeler of the twenty-first century would know that a "pirate ship" in a brand-new-looking box is actually a 35-year-old model of a French frigate that may or may not actually have existed?)  The vast majority of the kits on the shelves today are reissues of old ones.  Revell, for instance, hasn't made a genuinely new sailing ship kit since 1977.  The two other once-big players in the game, Heller and Airfix, dropped out soon thereafter.  But many of their kits live on, in new and sometimes re-labeled boxes (as well as on e-bay).

To my knowledge Heller has never made a Golden Hind of its own.  The Revell one came out in 1965.  It was reissued several times, most recently in 1978, and is now a collector's item.  (My source on the dates is Thomas Graham's fine book, Remembering Revell Model Kits.  He gives the Revell Golden Hind in its original box a market value of $20-$30.  The one I have still has the original price, $2.77, marked on the box.)  Airfix made a Golden Hind in, I believe, the late seventies or thereabouts.  I think it may still be on the market; I've seen it in hobby shops recently.  I can't recall having seen the contents of the box, but I have seen photos of it.  It appears to be a reasonably sound kit, but a bit on the basic side compared to the Revell offering.  I think the Airfix one is also a little bigger.

For a while, some years ago, Heller had some sort of agreement with Revell; a fair number of Revell kits appeared in Heller boxes.  More recently, Heller and Airfix (along with Humbrol, the British hobby paint company) came under the same management.  (Heller's enormous H.M.S. Victory is now being sold under the Airfix label.  There will be a short quiz on all this at the end of the period.)  I'm not sure what might be in a Heller box with the name Golden Hind on it; it might be either a Revell kit or an Airfix one. 

Michel - are you reading this?  You know the Heller line better than anybody else I know.  I seem to recall from a recent thread that Heller did in fact sell a modified version of the Revell Golden Hind in a strangely-labeled box of some sort fairly recently.  Did the Airfix Golden Hind ever turn up in a Heller box?

What I do know is that the Revell Golden Hind is a beauty - one of the very finest plastic sailing ship kits ever.  I'm not sure whether the design originated with Revell or somebody else. (It looks similar to Golden Hind reconstructions by at least two draftsmen, Franco Gay and George Campbell, but I don't have either of those plans to compare it with).  But whoever was responsible knew what he was doing. 

There are no contemporary plans of the Golden Hind; the only more-or-less contemporary graphic representation of her is a tiny sketch on the margin of an old map.  The designer of this kit, however, quite clearly worked from the Matthew Baker Manuscript in the library of Cambridge University.  It's a most interesting treatise on shipbuilding from just about the time of the Spanish Armada.  The lines and decorations of one of the ships in the Baker Ms. correspond closely with the Revell kit, and the kit's dimensions check with the few of the originals that we know.  (The measurements of the ship haven't been found, but for several years she sat on public exhibition in a shed on shore - and the length and width of the shed are known.)  

The detail of the plastic parts is superb.  From the touch holes on the little gun barrels to the interior detail of the ship's boat to the carving of the coat of arms on the transom, it's a real gem of the industry.  And those 3/4"-high crew figures, including Sir Francis in his helmet and breastplate, have to be seen to be believed.  The vac-formed "sails" and the plastic-coated-thread "shrouds and ratlines" have to go, of course, but what's left are some of the finest parts to appear in what now looks to have been a "golden age" of plastic model production.

Forty years of additional scholarship have cast some doubt on some of the details.  (The latest biography of Drake questions whether he actually did rename her Golden Hind; she may have kept her original name, Pelican, throughout the voyage around the world.  That would make Revell's pretty little deer figurehead dubious.  And if, as the documentation suggests, she spent much of her time masquerading as a Spanish ship, the distinctly English scheme of decoration is questionable.)  I'm not sure whether I'm actually going to make it my next project, but just looking at the parts and planning how to make it into a serious scale model is fun.  (The bulwarks are too thin; have to do something about that.)

My suggestion to any plastic sailing ship enthusiast:  if you have the chance to acquire a Revell Golden Hind, grab it.  For that matter, the same goes for the Revell Mayflower - in either of the two scales in which it was released.

As Jtilly has said, get a block of beeswax.  I have been using, cotton, nylon, and poly-cotton for years from fabric stores and have also waxed my lines.  The beeswax does a few things. It makes the thread tacky and rigid, which makes the line easier to handle when tying hitches and knots, it also seals the thread and protects it from moisture, and it seems to give the thread a scale like appearance.

Scott