Well, finally grabbed a ship kit to work on, we’ll see how it goes. I grabbed a Revell Mayflower. Not sure of scale but it is the H-366 and finishes about 20 inches long (I read). This isn’t my first sailing ship, I did the big Revell USS Constitution about 25 years ago but she was destroyed when my dad moved accross state. I plan to be as thorough with the rigging as I can, haven’t tried threading tiny blocks in a while but it sure looks better when done right. So I’m all ears for any tips on this ship. I’d like to kow scale if anyone can tell me and if there is any aftermarket to dress it up. Thanks, Chris
Okay, my Mayflower has made it in and looking the parts over, does anyone made decent ratlines? Big, plastic checkerboard ratlines don’t look very nice.
Edit
Disregard, I think I will rig them by hand. I found a lot of good articles on how to do them yourself and this kits is large enough I think I can handle it.
You’ll be happy you did. Hand built shrouds & ratlines always look better than any pre-made or “made on a jig” ones. Tedious work but worth it. You get the hang of it pretty fast. First set may take forever, but once you do one set the others will go a lot faster- you’ll be up on the learning curve and your fingers will start doing it automatically.
Good idea, and you should look at Bluejacket and some of those sites to buy real blocks and better line. And even if you just rig the shrouds and leave off the ratlines, it’ll look great. Or, take your time since it’s probably the last step, or do one side etc. Just don’t let it get you down.
The best part of that kit are the figgies. You could probably arrive at a good guess of the scale from them.
Good catch! I built that kit, when I was a kid, along with Revell’s Golden Hind, which I think was the same scale. I agree with Bondoman, you can estimate the scale from the figures–maybe around 1/100, perhaps? They’re smaller than HO, but bigger than N-gauge figures.
If I were building her today, I’d scratch the ratlines, too. Though, I regret now that I long since lost the spools of black and jute line that came in all those kits (I built the smaller-scale model of Old Ironsides, too), great item to have in the parts box.
Best regards,
Brad
Looking at my kits H-366 in my collection is the larger 24" hull kit. Larger than the H-327 kit which was the more common kit. The H-327 is about 1/96 scale. Now according to Tom Graham’s book " Remembering Revell Model Kits" the H-366 kit was a “Simplified series” with a one pc. deck and injected molded ratlines but was the size of the H-327 kit 1/96 scale. At the time Tom wrote his book he didn’t know about the larger scale kit if my memory serves me right. Appears that Revell issued two totally different kits under the same number. If you got the 24" hull kit its quite rare. Good luck with your build.
Rod