decent sailing ship model

Someone else recommended the Revell kits of Columbus'  ships.   I've never owned any of them, but I've always had the impression that they are fairly decent, and the amount of rigging isn't too much for a first timer.  And you end up with a model of a ship that everyone has heard of....!

I would also vote for the Revell America.  I built one about 40 years ago.   It is a nice, simple rig,  but looks good when finished.  And as a schooner, it doesn't take up a ton of room.   My only minor complaint is that it is an oddball scale-- 1/56 IIRC.

If they were to re-release it,  I'd grab one.  If I was to build it again, I might replace the masts and spars with wood parts, and make a more robust stand.  (The cause of the eventual demise of my first model.)

That's one I really wish Revell would bring back. It would be a terrific newcomer's project.

If you can find one second hand or auction site, the Revel America is by far an excellent first model.  But it has been OOP for a few years now.

Pressure sensitive copper tape can be had in many widths on the stained glass hobby sites, cheap.

A member of our club bought the current Model Shipways version. I have to say I wasnt imressed much. Apart from the paddle wheel problem, one feature that bugged me was the awful splintery oak dowel from which the modeler is supposed to make the funnel. How much would it have cost to toss in a piece of brass tubing?

One point where the wood kit does score: it has a correct eagle figurehead. The Pyro one, if I remember right, just has a simple billet head.

The wood kit comes with a spool of pressure-sensitive copper tape for sheathing the hull. I think the same stuff - which Model Expo and Bluejacket both sell separately - would work fine on the plastic hull.

I've thought of that. But if you have the plastic version, I find it hard to think of a reason to spend money on the wood one. (It's not cheap.) Apart from the wood spars and the plans (which MS sells separately), I can't think of anything the wood kit has to recommend it over the plastic one.

Thanks for the correction, RCBoater. I've corrected my original post.

Those Pyro and Model Shipways kits make an interesting comparison. One big difference: in the plastic version the paddle boxes are hollow, with full styrene paddle wheels inside. They can be rotated, so the moving parts can be seen through the holes in the boxes. The wood kit has solid wood blocks for paddle boxes; with the lower portions of the wheels represented by metal castings stuck on their bottoms. The openings are blocked off. To be fair, the MS kit is very old. (I think it first appeared in the very early fifties.) But to my eye it's clear that the plastic kit more accurately represents the ship.

Either kit makes a pretty decent starter project.

or even a Bermuda Cutter, or perhaps a Ketch--in the 1/72 to 1/60 scale range--but I dream.

Despite my reservations, if Zvezda (or Tamiya, or Hasegawa, or Revell Germany) were to release a 1/96 or 1/100 American clipper ship (Flying Cloud, Challenge, Red Jacket - take your pick) I'd find the necessary $200 or $300 to buy it. But I'm afraid it's just a dream.

I'll drink to that, Dave!! Cheers!

Agreed.

If Zvezda would put as much time and effort into making another compelling sailing ship model (read Constitution, Victory, or how about a Sovereign of the Seas?!?) as they did with the Black Swan/Pearl, I'm sure they'd sell a bunch of 'em!

I especially wish there were more good sailing ships for newcomers. Maybe Round 2 will eventually bring back the old Pyro Taney and Thebaud. They were basic, but sound.

Airfix has been advertising a new 1/400 Mary Rose (which would be about 4" long) for quite some time now. The company has two of its old, super-small sailing ships in its catalog: the Victory and the Cutty Sark. It's pretty clera that the management is aiming at the restored ships' gift shops.

My longing for plastic sailing ship kits, as I've said several times in the Forum, has always been tempered by my uncertainty as to whether styrene is really a good medium for sailing ships. Styrene spars aren't ideal; there's not a lot of room for argument that wood ones aren"t preferable. I've ogled several times the 1/8"=1' Morris-class revenue cutter from Cottage Industry Models. It has a resin hull, cast metal fittings, and wood spars. I think that mixed-media approach has enormous potential. But apparently not many people agree with me; the idea doesn't seem to have caught on.

Don was perhaps a little hard on Revell. It's true that Revell of the USA hasn't released a new sailing ship in almost 40 years. (The last was that beautiful Viking ship in 1976.) But it deserves to be noted that Revell of Germany has released several since then - and though I haven't bought any of them myself, they certainly appear to be good kits.

The other promising company, to my notion, is Zvezda. That pirate ship has all sorts of distinctly non-realistic features, but it appears to be an ingeniously-designed and well-executed kit. And the cog seems to be an excellent one. I think Zvezda has the people and technology to produce some really fine serious scale sailing ship models. I just wish they'd do it.

It would be nice to see a revival of sailing ship kits.  Heller seems to have dropped out of that market- haven't seen a new sail from them in ages.  Same thing with Revell- all their releases seem to be re-releases.

I particularly used to like the old 1:600 kits from Heller and Airfix.  Didn't take up much display space when you finished, and not a lot of work to build.  Rigging was a challenge, but with PE technology now, think of what those little jewels would look like now with PE shroud/ratline assemblies!  You could have a whole fleet or line of battle with those things.

Academy's "New Bedford Whaling Ship" is a decent entry-level plastic kit & can usually be found for a reasonable price. Got one for my dad to build (he was a docent at the New Bedford Whaling Museum at the time) & he liked it a lot. I don't remember the scale, You can keep it simple or detail it up w/a little extra effort.

Yep, that Pyro Taney is the one I was thinking of.

I agree with Don about the Midwest kits. They're well-disigned, are made of good materials, and score over just about every other company in terms of their instructions.

But do they qualify as sailing ships? That's in the eye of the beholder. I think starting with a small craft makes a lot of sense, but a lot of people don't like the idea.

If you want to start out with a wood sailing ship (i.e., something with masts and quite a bit in the way of rigging), There are a couple I can recommend with few reservations: the Model Shipways Sultana ( http://www.modelexpo-online.com/product.asp?ITEMNO=MS2016 ) and Phantom ( http://www.modelexpo-online.com/product.asp?ITEMNO=MS2027 ). Either of them will provide you with a good dose of what goes into sailing ship modeling, and produce a really nice-looking model without tying you up for a year or more. What makes those two particularly attractive for starters is that Model Expo offers online "practicums," by a fine modeler named Chuck Passaro, that guide the modeler every step of the way. Just click on "Documents" on either of those web pages and you can read the practicum before you spend any money.

The prices are a bit on the high side, but Model Expo offers sales just about every week - and one or both of those kits can be had for considerably less. (They're also sold by plenty of other online retailers.)

Monday morning edit: I just checked the Model Expo website. All its inventory is 40 percent off through this coming Friday.

There are so few plastic sailing ships on the market any more that it's hard to make a recommendation. I DON'T recommending starting with a big Revell Constitution or Cutty Sark, or a Heller Victory. To do a halfway decent job on those kits takes at least a year - probably more. (In the almost forty years that the Heller Victory has been on the market, I don't think I've seen a finished one in the flesh.) The problem with kits like the Revell Wasa (which, by the way, is a quite recent tooling) is that they represent big ships on small scales. That makes it difficult to do a decent job of rigging. (Generally speaking, in sailing ship modeling the smaller the model the more difficult it is to rig. And good rigging is what really sets that part of the hobby apart from the others.)

Some folks on the Forum disagree with me, but I always recommend starting out with a relatively small ship on a relatively large scale. Unfortunately few kits currently on the market meet those criteria. There are two that I really like. The first is the Revell Viking Ship, which (though not completely without omissions) is a superbly accurate reproduction of the Gokstad Ship, the biggest surviving Norse vessel. Here's a thread about the one I built: http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/7/p/155395/1701192.aspx#1701192 . Just about any competent modeler can turn this kit into a fine, serious scale model - and what beautiful lines she has! Even my wife likes that model.

There's another Gokstad Ship kit by Emhar. I haven't seen it, but on the basis of photos it looks like it's just about as good as the Revell one - in some ways better.

The other plastic kit I recommend in this context is one that originated with Zvezda and has also been issued under the Revell label. It's a medieval Hanseatic Cog (small sailing merchantman) on 1/72 scale. It's appeared with several names: "Hansa Kog," "Crusader Ship," and "Medieval Ship Thomas." (The kits do vary in fittings, color schemes, decals, and various other respects, but all use the same basic hull and deck parts.) They may look a little toy-like at first glance, but take a look here at what a couple of good modelers have done with them: http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/7/t/155458.aspx?sort=ASC&pi240=1 ; and http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/7/t/150254.aspx?sort=ASC&pi240=1 .

The big thing in this kit's favor, for the newcomer's purposes, is that it offers a taste of just about everything - wood grain detail, nautical fittings, shrouds, deadeyes, rigging blocks, deadeyes, etc. - without a depressing amount of repetition. Those two threads are remarkable among the sailing ship discussions on this Forum for a big reason: they follow the construction of excellent models from start to finish. That's rare, and a testimony to the quality of the kits and the nature of the projects.

I think the revenue cutter Don mentioned is the old Pyro Roger B. Taney, later reissued by Pyro and Lindberg under the label "Independence War Schooner." I agree that it's a good starter project, but these days it's hard to find. Two other ancient Pyro kits later sold in Lindberg boxes are in the same category: the fishing schooner Gertrude L. Thebaud (aka "American Cup Racer") and the steam/sail revenue cutter Harriet Lane  (aka "Civil War Blockade Runneri"). The "Civil War Blockade Runner" has supposedly been reissued recently by Round Two Models, but I haven't seen it in the flesh yet. The Thebaud and Taney are scarce - in any of their incarnations.

Hope that helps a little. Good luck.

For wooden ones I really recommend the Midwest series.  These are smaller craft, not so daunting as starting out with a full rigged ship (three masts).  Instruction manuals are picture based and very good.  A good way to start into wooden ships.

Unfortunately in plastic most kits are of larger, more complex ships.  Seems to me someone did do a Revenue Cutter (two mast brig rigged, I think) but I cannot remember whose kit that was.  It was awhile ago so likely to be a bit hard to find.  The smaller of the Columbus ships (Nina and Pinto) were each three-masters, I believe, but rigs were a bit simpler in those days, and there are a couple of mfgs of kits for those.

I'm pretty sure it's new patterns

Take a look at the Revell Wasa.

It's about $30 on Amazon and is a really nice looking ship.

You'd have to shop eBay, but the 1/200 Golden Hind (especially the Revell rather than Heller) builds into a decent enough kit.

It's a good dimension over all, only as fiddly as you care to make it, and can be customized without a microscope.  

Just don't get tied up in historical accuracy (which is two different cans of worms in one go).

thanks for the replies guys, im not quite sure what type of sailing ship im more interested in, but wood or plastic is fine

You might try something like one of these kits:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0&_nkw=Revell+Santa+Maria&_sacat=220

Mike

Tetraodon,

What type of sailing ship are you interested in building?  Are you interested in warships?  Tea clippers? Merchant ships?  Galleons?  Ancient Greek or Roman?  Are you looking for wood or plastic?

Bill Morrison

The Constitution (Revell - 1/96) would be one that's usually available. Also, on eBay, you can usually pick up a 1/96 scale Cutty Sark. Neither of the aforementioned ships are inexpensive and both kits have tons of parts and require an enormous amount of dedication to complete. I am sure there are other sailing ship kits that others will recommend.

Mike

Unfortunately, most of the available sail ship kits are fairly old.

I was looking the other day at my Endeaver kit. I believe it is a reasonably old release, but at least from what I could see handling some of the parts, but not actually into the build yet, it looks like a fairly good kit.

I love the big old Heller kits- the Victory and the Soleil Royal, but those are very involved and difficult kits.  I would not recommend them to anyone who has not completed a number of sail models.  Not that the kits are bad as far as molding, just thousands of parts- they are quite intricate.