We've had a good, ongoing discussion of sailmaking techniques in this Forum, in a thread titled "real cloth sails?" I've just moved the thread to p. 1; it should appear just below this one on the topic list.
We've talked about ratlines in a couple of threads, but I'll take the liberty of climbing up on my soapbox again here. The Great Ratline Problem is a silly myth that's been foisted on the modeling community by plastic kit manufacturers over a period of about fifty years now. The manufacturers, with their injection-molded "shrouds and ratlines," plastic-coated thread, and Heller-type jigs, seem to have convinced everybody that the ratlines on a plastic sailing ship model have to look phony. They don't. And making them look realistic isn't anywhere near as hard as lots of people seem to think. Some people, it should be acknowledged, don't have the dexterity - or the eyesight - necessary to do it. Those people really ought to pick another hobby. But if you can put all those Heller gun barrels and carriages together, and paint them, without going crazy you probably can rig ratlines effectively.
To begin with, the parts and techniques provided in the Heller kit simply won't work. The injection-molding process is a wonderful thing, but there are certain kinds of parts that it just can't reproduce. A deadeye has to have three holes in it and a groove around its circumference. Such an object cannot be made in a rigid, two-piece mold. The Heller deadeyes don't have grooves around them for the strops. Just about every serious modeler I've heard of who's tackled this kit has replaced the deadeyes with either wood or metal aftermarket parts.
Heller's idea of molding the deadeyes on the sprues with the upper and lower deadeyes the appropriate distance apart, so the lanyards could be rigged before the deadeyes were removed from the sprues, was ingenious - but that doesn't work either. By definition, the aftermost shroud on any mast runs at a considerably steeper angle than the foremost one. That means that, in order for the upper and lower rows of deadeyes to be parallel, the aftermost pair has to be noticeably farther apart than the foremost pair. Rig a gang of deadeyes all the same distance apart, as Heller suggests, and the sheer pole (which Heller omitted - but would be better made from wire anyway) will slope downward toward the stern and look ridiculous. There's just no shortcut around rigging the deadeyes and lanyards like they were rigged on the real ship. To me, that's one of the trickiest operations in building a sailing ship model. Rigging the ratlines is easy by comparison.
I know of two good-looking ways to rig ratlines on 1/100 scale. The simpler is the "needle-through-the-shroud" method, which is pretty self-explanatory. Rig the shrouds first. Cut a piece of white paper (such as file card stock) so it fits behind the shrouds, between the channel and the masthead. Draw on the paper a series of horizontal lines, about a scale foot apart, and fit the paper in place behind the shrouds. Take a piece of the finest black (or dark brown; there's room for argument about that) thread you can find and thread it into the smallest, sharpest needle you can find. If you're right-handed, start with the righthand shroud. Shove the needle through the shroud where it crosses the first line on the paper. Then through the next shroud, then the next, etc. When you reach the last shroud in the gang, put a tiny drop of white glue on the first and last intersections of the shrouds and the ratline. Let the glue dry (really dry), and slice off the excess with a razor blade. (That's the most nerve-wracking part of the exercise. If you accidentally slice through a shroud, you have to start over.) That method is reasonably fast, and will produce a neat, clean set of shrouds and ratlines.
The most authentic way to do it, of course, is to tie each ratline to each shroud. That isn't nearly as difficult, or as time consuming, as lots of people seem to think. Use the same piece of lined paper as a guide. This time, if you're right-handed, you'll probably find it most convenient to start with the lefthand shroud. You'll need a good, sharp pair of tweezers, a good light, and some soothing music on the stereo. The authentic knot is the clove hitch - arguably the easiest, quickest knot there is to tie. I find it helps to start with the bottom ratline in the gang, then do the top one, then one halfway up, then two that bisect the distance between the ones I've already done, etc. Before you know it, you'll have a row of clove-hitched ratlines marching all the way up the mast.
Many modelers, I think, give up on rigging ratlines because they underestimate the phenomenon of the learning curve. Your brain and your eyes aren't the only parts of your anatomy that get educated; your fingers do too. Making all those clove hitches on the first ratline of a model like the Victory may take fifteen or twenty minutes. My guess is that the tenth one will take ten minutes, and by the time you're done with the first mast you'll be rigging one ratline every two or three minutes. A model like that can be "rattled down" in about a week of evenings. (My own personal preference is to vary the work as much as possible. I'll set up the rigging of the main lower mast, then the main lower yard, then the foremast, then the fore lower yard, then the mizzen mast, etc. That way I rarely, if ever, find myself rigging ratlines for more than one evening in a row.) That's not a lot of time, in comparison with the total amount you'll be spending on the model. And believe me, the improvement in the finished model's appearance will be more than worth the effort.