Used to Love Her, But Now I Have to Rig Her

I'm on a roller lately with pop culture references in my titles, for which I apologise.

Anyway, my labours on the Zvezda 1/350 Revenge model slowly come to fruition. I put this project off and on for a while now, but seeing the finish line is always satisfying. This is a snap-fit kit originally with plastic masts, sails and shrouds. But of course I had to do it the complicated way.

First of all, I installed bamboo masts because the original ones were a bit bendy. Then I painted the model and added a raw umber oil wash. I omitted the geometrical patterns shown on most models because masking and painting it would have been a chore, so I went with a teal/white striped version.

I kept the lower shrouds and attached them once the hull was painted because honestly, I tried doing ratlines in 1/500 and it's not a good experience.

All the yards are, again, bamboo sticks tapered at both ends. The furled sails are tissue paper soaked in PVA and rolled into a bundle. These were added after painting the rest.

The unfurled sails are my custom colour prints which you can download and use from the 'Block Galleys' page at the header of the blog.

Now once all this was done, it came to rigging the ship. I have good quality thread which looks just a little bit out of scale and found an okay quality rigging plan. Most of this is guesswork, especially on the running rigging, because from the start we know little about the real ship and anything but the standing rigging basically varied from ship to ship and captain to captain. 

So anyway, here's my humble attempt, I think it serves my purpose and does not make the masts look very bare.

One of my pet peeves is uncrewed ship models. It's okay for 1/1200 and smaller vessels, and also modern warships which would be 'buttoned up' in a combat situation anyway. But on a 1/350 scale vessel I just have to add a few crew to make the deck look more lively.

Now 'Revenge' does not simply make it in my book, so in honour of the real life ship lost in combat, I named her 'Revenge of the Revenge'. All I need now is varnishing the base and pronto she will be ready to fight some galleys.