I am working on the old Lindberg Minesweeper (modeling it as the USS Pirate AM-275 at the time of it’s loss) and am approaching the time to start rigging. I have never been able to stretch sprue too consistently-so that’s out. I’ve seen posts for fly tying line, nylon thread, and fishing leader, but have also found out that there is a wide variety of diameters available. What have you used in 1/144 scale or 1/125 scale in the past that works best for you? Main applications will be for the antenna wires, flag lines, etc.
I have used this stuff for rigging on a 1/350 battleship and 1/144 subs.Looks fine in both scales.
I have usually used nylon monofilament for most of my ship rigging of modern warships regardless of scale. I do use regular thread for really large scale sailing vessels, even some 1:150 scale, but wound thread is just too big for the modern warships. I use two monofilament sizes, 7 mil and 3 mil. The 7 mil stuff is a smoke colored that looks fine. The 3 mil (the fly tying thread) is white, but in that size it is too small to see the color well anyways, else I would like a smoke color on that. The smoke color looks basically like a dark to medium gray.
In spite of having made ship models for about sixty years I have never been able to make stretched sprue look right either.
Count me among the group–I, occasionally, can make one piece of stretched sprue look good.
Trouble is, you need three identical per flag bag alone (and, somewhere around 1/96, that ought to be pairs of lines for signal hoists).
At 1/144, that 3mil is very close to 1/2" diameter–which is going to be a good all-around size.
Thanks for the suggestions!