I was quite looking forward to this stage. For me, this was the point at which it first started to look like a sailing ship.

I worked through the plan, starting with the largest masts and spars and marked off the required lengths on the dowels supplied. I wrote the name, length and max & min diameters on each piece and ticked them off on the plan.

A word of warning at this point:
The plan showing the masts and spars is supposed to be full size. It is printed on the reverse side of the plan and elevation drawings of the hull. These drawings are full size but they do not include the bowsprit. The drawing showing the masts and spars does include the bowsprit and in order to make it fit on the sheet, it has been reduced to approximately 90% full size.
Don't scale anything from this plan, use the dimensions printed against each component

All went smoothly until I came to the 5mm diameter components. The total length required was significantly greater than the quantity supplied so even if I could cut the parts with no wastage whatsoever, I obviously didn’t have enough
This wasn’t a major disaster as I had plenty of ¼” and 6mm dowel which wouldn’t have required much more shaping than the 5mm dowel, but in the event, I found the local model shop stocked 5mm dowel.

I first cut the three lower mast sections and the bowsprit to a little over the required length and tried them in place.



There are three plywood rings that fit round the base of the masts. These fitted very well, but I sanded the top outer edges to give a rounded profile.

The masts are simply tapered towards the top and remain round where the fit into the mast caps. These are simply laser cut plywood rectangles with two holes to fit the two relevant mast sections. These fitted the base of the upper section very well. (The holes to accept the top of the lower section were also accurate, but the mast itself needed to be reduced to this size).

I had left the pieces slightly longer than necessary as I intended to taper these in the lathe. I could hold the base in the collets and use a centre in the top. That way, I could cut off the excess, with the hole for the centre, later. My first idea was to set over the tailstock centre by the required amount and turn the taper that way. I soon gave up on the idea as the dowel flexed too much and was giving a convex shape with a rough finish.
I then tried conventional wood turning techniques and although this worked for the lower main mast, I didn’t fancy it for the thinner sections.
Finally, I tried sanding the dowels to size, in the lathe, using progressively finer sandpaper. Although this worked, it was comparatively slow as over enthusiastic use of the coarse sandpaper gave circular scratches which were hard to remove.
At this point, I gave up on power tools!
I resorted to a miniature hand plane and found I could get a much nicer finish very quickly this way. Only very light sanding was required to finish off the shaping.

Next job was to assemble the tops. These are built up from a plywood base and a curved plywood front edge piece. The side edge pieces are cut from 2x4mm walnut strip. At least they would have been if any such strip had been provided As the fronts were made of ply, I simply cut the side pieces from the leftover part of the same sheet.
The tops are planked using 0.6x5mm walnut strip.
The tops sit on a frame made up of plywood ribs. With the top positioned on the frame as shown on the plan, the platform butts up against the rear of the mast. I found out later that I needed a gap here for the stays to pass through. It would have been better had the platforms been positioned as far back as possible on the frames.
No blocks were shown fitted to these platforms.
At a later stage, I had to cut holes for the slings, trim the edge of the platforms behind the masts and fit a number of blocks under the platforms. However, none of these modifications proved to be insurmountable.
(At this later stage, having looked at other peoples work, I also added radial ribs on top of the platforms).

The guard rail at the rear of the tops is made from a perforated brass sheet which is framed top and bottom by a grooved 3x3mm mahogany strip. The side posts are made from 3mm dowel. The grooved strip is provided, but I opted to cut matching grooves in the dowels. I also drilled through the ends of the rails and pinned through these into the dowels.
I considered blackening the brass grill, but don’t find it objectionable so I’ve left it as is.
The following picture shows the masts tapered and the tops dry fitted in place.



The plans, together with the picture on the box, show the bowsprit lashed to the prow with a lashing running round the outside of the decorative boards at the bow. This not only looked untidy, it looked an inefficient method of securing the bowsprit. I therefore opted to re-position this lashing so as to avoid this problem. I’m very pleased that I did.
The following photo shows the lower masts and the bowsprit in place. The tops are secured to the lower mast sections, but topmasts are only dry fitted.



The edge of the platforms was one of those places where the laminations of the plywood were obtrusive. Had I used the 2x4mm strip on the edges, it might have been less so, but the edge of the platform itself would have still shown. Again at a later stage, I painted these edges, together with those of the caps, black.

The instruction for step 23, the bowsprit, is really informative. It tells you to remove parts 57 -58 from the plywood sheets and assemble them with instant resin. It was at about this point where I finally abandoned the instructions

I decided to simply work through the masts, spars and rigging following Lennarth Petersson’s book (Rigging Period Ship Models) and deal with each element as I got to it. The book itself deals with the various elements in what proved to be a very practical order.
I was fortunate to be modelling a ship that very closely resembled that described in the book.

The first job was to make up the chain plates. Three parts were supplied for this purpose: a set of banjo shaped wire loops for the strops, a series of elongated loops to form the chain and a set of dumbbell shaped brass plates for the chain plates.
All the loops were blackened and split at one end. The banjo shaped loops for the dead eyes were split at the lower end on the small loop. These required soldering, so it was first necessary to clean off the black finish from the ends of the loops. This was quite difficult on the loops forming the chain as the ends were quite rough and miss-shaped.
To simplify the work and to give some strength to the chain, I decided to arrange it such that the open end of the first link was matched with the open end of the strop and the open end of the second link was in the end of the chain plate. However this meant I had to hold the strop and the chain link at about 30 degrees to each other whilst I soldered them, to allow for the angle of the shrouds. I simply cut a wedge shaped piece of wood to the correct angle, glued it to a larger block and then loosely assembled each set and pinned it down whilst I soldered it.
At this stage it should have been a simple matter of blackening the brass plates and the ends I’d had to clean for soldering, but a trial fit revealed a serious problem, the brass pins supplied went straight through the holes in the ends of the chain plates.
Although I could have soldered the pins in place, I instead opted to do a little panel beating of the ends of the plates to close up the hole together with peening over the head of the pin to increase its diameter.



This is a recent picture. It also shows the chain plates for the back-stays. No parts were supplied for these and at a later stage I had to make them from scratch.

Following suggestions I had seen, I fixed a sheet of balsa wood above the channels by pinning it through the dead eyes. I was then able to draw the line of each shroud on it and pin the upper dead eyes to it.



I repeated this procedure for the opposite side. I made up each pair of shrouds by seizing a loop in the centre to fit over the mast and then seizing each end in turn around its dead eye.
Petersson’s book caught me out at this point. I later discovered I should have served the section of the shroud that loops around the mast, together with the full lengths of the foremost main and fore shrouds. Although this is shown in the book, there is no note to this effect and I failed to spot it.
In practice, the serving of the centre sections would be almost impossible to see but that on the foremost shrouds would have been visible. I don’t think many people will notice its absence though.
I laced up each shroud temporarily so that I could adjust the tension at a later stage when the shrouds had finished stretching.



By the time I came to the mizzen shrouds, I had decided it was easiest to just make the throat seizing for the upper dead eye in approximately the right position rather than try to get it exactly right. Even with it tight, it was still possible to slide the shroud through the seizing to adjust the position of the dead eye. Only when I was happy with the positions of all the dead eyes did I complete the remaining seizings on the shrouds.

At this point I assembled the bowsprit, but with wood glue not resin glue.
I next fitted the main and mizzen stays. These are served where they pass round the mast. Similarly, the loops to which the lower ends of each stay are lashed are also served.
Not a job to be done by hand, fortunately we have a drawer full of Technic Lego that the kids no longer play with. I now had an excuse to play with it again!
This was what I came up with:



This worked extremely well.

The plans show the stays with blocks connecting them at the lower, forward ends. I opted to fit hearts at these points, but these were not supplied in the kit.
I took a short off-cut of dowel and shaved the sides to the give the correct outer profile. I then drilled a hole down the centre. The next step was to carve a groove round the outside of the dowel. I finished off the groove with a small file and then sliced off that section with a cutting disc. Finally I squared off the bottom of the hole I had drilled using a sharp knife followed by a small triangular file.
I’ve no idea where Mantua intended the main stays to be anchored. The lanyards for the blocks on both main and preventer stay just disappear behind the bulwarks at the bow. I fitted slings around the mainmast and through a hole in the prow below the bowsprit.



The stays for the foremast were also shown running to blocks, this time lashed to the bowsprit.
To replace these, I had to make two horseshoe shaped saddles to fit over the bowsprit.
I cut these from off-cuts of plywood and carved a groove around the outside of each. Each groove had to be wide enough to accommodate two served ‘ropes’ side by side. These are held in place by a served, closed loop whose ends are lashed together under the bowsprit. I had seen discussions on how to make these closed loops and adapted some of the ideas I had seen.
I measured the circumference of the loop I needed by simply taking two turns of cord round the saddle and bowsprit and deducting a bit to allow for the lashing. I then took some of the thinnest cord supplied (0.25mm polyester) and cut off exactly 4 times that length. I then glued the ends together with super glue. Next I took the resulting loop and formed it into a double loop. I hooked this into my ‘serving machine’ such that I had four parallel strands. I started serving from close up to one end thus binding all four strands together. When I reached the other end I applied a drop of glue just to stop things unravelling. I cut off the thread some distance from the end of the serving and removed the served section.
I now had a served length with a couple of short loops sticking out of each end. I used a separate piece of thin cord to lash these end loops together, thus making a large closed loop. The final job was to complete the serving over this joint with the extra thread left earlier. Unfortunately, this bit had to be done by hand.
Although there was a bit of a bulge where the ends had been joined together, it wasn’t noticeable.



This final picture shows the fore stays fitted. It also shows the figurehead in position. (My dog modelled the colour scheme).

I still had some work to do on the lower masts, namely the crow’s feet on the tops.

First problem, I discovered that I only had three sizes of rigging cord, although there were supposed to be four sizes in the kit. The missing size was 0.75mm. The smallest cord supplied was 0.25mm which I had used to rig the guns. This was a man made fibre (polyester?) and although it is extremely strong, has no fuzz and is brilliant for seizing, it just doesn’t look right. So, off to the model shop.
I bought a bubble pack of 0.5mm AL cord (8142) and two small (flattened) reels of 0.25 AL cord.

I made up the crows feet by taking a piece of 4x2mm strip and drilling a line of holes along it and finally shaping it into an ellipse. I laced it up with the AL 0.25mm cord. I wasn’t particularly impressed with this cord, it only has two strands and is actually 0.4mm diameter. It was also fuzzy.
It was at this point where I tried the match flame trick for de-fuzzing the cord.
After I’d put the fire out, I re-laced the crow’s feet

I omitted to take any photographs of these at the time but this was the result:



Time to move up a level. Now for the topmasts.

Second problem, no futtock plates were supplied for the topmast shrouds. I opted to cheat slightly and bent a piece of brass rod to form a loop around the deadeye with a smaller loop below it for the futtock shroud. I soldered the ends of these loops together. I then attached the futtock shroud directly to this smaller loop with an eye splice rather than via a hook.
I again omitted to take any photographs of these at the time but they can just about be seen in this recent picture:



Now for the lower ends of the futtock shrouds.
Actual construction of the futtock staves and catharpins was relatively easy – once I got the length of the catharpins right! The trick seemed to be to tie one end loosely in place and then make off the other end properly with a clip holding the lower end of the futtock shroud below the futtock stave. Seizing these ends to the lower shrouds was the final job.
Again, this is a recent picture:



The next stage was more or less a repeat of the rigging for the lower masts.
At this point, I would like to thank whoever came up with the idea of using liquid shoe polish on the standing rigging. I know it’s black, not dark brown, but it does a wonderful job.
This time the photograph is contemporary with the ship at this stage:



Quite a bit of rigging was required on the bowsprit at this point as I wanted to fit travellers for the fore staysails and these needed to be in place before the fore topgallant and royal stays. A bit more bending and soldering of brass rod was again required.
The first pieces of running rigging were required at this time, the jib stay and flying jib stay and their outhauls. For these, I used the 0.7mm AL cord I'd bought and was very impressed with it. It is either man made fibre or contains a high proportion of man made fibre, but it is grey, quite soft and has no fuzz at all. Unfortunately, when I later attempted to buy some more, they had sold out. When I now search for this on the web, it looks different and is advertised as being cotton so the specification may have changed. I subsequently bought some Graupner cord locally which looks reasonable but the dreaded fuzz is back

Yet again, this is a recent picture with the spritsail yard in place:



Moving up once more, a change of plan was called for in shaping the topgallant/royal masts. These have a ball finial on the top. I could either make the ball separately, which would allow me to taper the masts as before using a plane, or make them in one piece and taper them some other way.
I opted to make them in one piece. I turned the ball in the lathe and turned the taper in stages, progressively increasing the amount protruding from the collet and finally sanding it smooth.
The topgallant shrouds are not made off at either the cross trees or the futtock stave. They continue down to the lower top where lashings connect them to the back of the futtock plates.
I made the cores for these from the tube of a ballpoint pen by simply filing a groove round the outside and then cutting off the pieces with a sharp knife. Very quick and cheap.
The ship had now reached its full height and length:



Another milestone reached, that completes the standing rigging.
(Well, almost, there’s just a small item outstanding, the ratlines).

I elected not to do the ratlines at this time, partly because I didn’t fancy the job and partly because I saw it as a ‘finishing off’ job.
Although this decision didn’t cause me any particular problems, I should have tied them at this stage. It would have been slightly easier as the yards and their rigging did subsequently get in the way to some extent.

I started by constructing the spanker boom and its gaff.
These were apparently quite straightforward, requiring only that the dowel be tapered the requisite amount followed by cutting a slot on the end to accept a ‘Y’ shaped plywood yoke to fit against the mast. Having done this however, there seemed to be no way to locate the spanker boom vertically on the mast.
After seeking advice on this forum, it transpired that not only should there be a saddle on the mast for the boom to rest on; the plywood yoke was a very poor representation of the way the boom end should look. I therefore opted to see if I could manufacture something a little more accurate.
The following picture shows the gaff, with the modified boom below it. Rather than use a simple cord loop around the mast, I turned some parral beads as shown:



After comparing the two ends, I decided to carry out the same modifications to the gaff . The sequence is shown in the next picture:



The next job was actually a mistake. I can’t quite say it was caused by following the instructions because there weren’t any, but it was caused by following the rigging plan and picture on the box.
The job in question was the construction of the cross jack yard, the mistake was to fit it with stun’sl booms. I later discovered that the cross jack yard doesn’t carry a sail and shouldn’t have stun’sl booms.
Things actually worked out well, the boom irons I made for this yard were my first attempt. I improved the design for the next ones and these prototype versions were later removed, together with the booms. I was able to re-use the latter as the lower main course stun’sl booms.
These were the stun’sl boom irons I made for the cross jack yard:



The method of constructing these (later version) can be found in this post:
http://forum.drydockmodels.com/viewtopi ... t=+stun'sl

The yards themselves are simply tapered lengths of dowels. They are circular section throughout their length.
The kit contains some long brass eyelets to use as stirrups for the footropes. Instead, I opted to make my own. I used some 0.5mm cord and tied a loop round a 1mm drill. I applied diluted glue to the loop and about 12mm of the cord. I finally cut off about 75mm of the cord, applying a spot of glue to the cut end. I repeated the procedure for the next three stirrups. I then drilled a 1mm hole through the yard at the position of each stirrup.
When the glue had dried, I trimmed off the loose end from the loop and then threaded the glued end up through the hole in the yard. The width of my tweezers handle served as a gauge for the distance of the loop from the yard. It was then simply a case of winding the free end twice round the yard, crossing the turns over at the bottom where the stirrup emerges. This allows the surplus cord to be cut off just where the stirrup emerges on top of the yard. Some more diluted glue holds the turns in place.
The assembled cross jack yard can be seen in the next picture:



From this point, fitting these parts wasn’t too much of a problem. I made two fiddle blocks for the vangs as only conventional blocks were provided in the kit. I also had to cut two slots in the mizzen top for the cross jack sling.
This view of the mizzen mast shows these parts in place:



The construction of the main yard was virtually the same as that of the cross jack (except that this time the stun’sl booms were supposed to be there!) The difference lay in the method of fitting. The yard is hoisted into place using two pairs of blocks and tackles, the jeers. These apparently could be removed once the yard was attached to its sling and hence whether to model these is optional. As the model may end up without sails, I opted to include these.
This picture shows the main yard being raised and about half way up:



By this time, I was on a roll. Progress is much quicker when you know what you’re doing
The fore yard was simply a repeat of the main yard. This picture shows the first of the fore jeers in place. The other two lines are the truss pendants.



The lifts for the other yards can also be seen in this picture

I realised fairly soon after I started on the running rigging that I would need some cleats along the way. I ordered what I thought would be a suitable selection at the time of another order.
When I received them, I was very disappointed. The smallest ones were metal castings and didn’t seem to be of very good quality. The larger, wooden ones, were well made but much too large and looked far too ‘modern’.
I therefore decided to see what I could manufacture.

I started with a 4x2mm mahogany strip, made a saw cut to mark the appropriate length, and then shaped the top and one end of a cleat:



I then cut off the part finished cleat and shaped the other end:



I next cut the heads off some brass pins, drilled holes in the base of the cleats to accept these, and fitted the pins into the cleats with a drop of super glue.
I used a pin chuck to drill the holes, leaving just enough of the drill bit protruding to drill almost (but not quite!) all the way through the cleat.



The small cleats were intended to be used to secure the gun port lids.
I decided I’d been a bit harsh in my criticism of them. Simply rubbing the bases of them on a sheet of wet and dry for a few seconds made them look quite reasonable and once the line was secured to them, they would look even better.
I tried the brass blackening solution, more in hope than expectation as the saying goes, but to no avail. Dull black paint was called for.
I stuck a couple of strips of sellotape to a piece of wood, doubled back on themselves such that the sticky side was uppermost, and lined up my cleats:



If you look closely, you can see the distortion that had initially put me off, one end is higher than the other. In reality, it just isn’t noticeable.
A coat of paint later and this was the result:



After removing them from the sellotape I ran the bases over the sheet of wet and dry again, just to remove any adhesive prior to gluing them in place with super glue.

The kit doesn’t show the yards secured to the masts in any way. Each one is supported by a block and tackle with only the braces to locate it.
I opted to make up some truck parrals, although I had reservations as to whether I would be able to make small enough ones for the topgallant yards.
In the event, having ‘practiced’ on the topsail yards, all went well.

To make the trucks, I drilled four holes in a strip of 6 x 1mm hardwood (I don't know what it was - I selected it at the local model shop - but it looks like beech).

The holes are laid out to make 2 trucks lengthwise along the strip. I then used this as a template to drill a set of four holes in the other end of the strip. After I'd drilled those four, I slid it back slightly so the end holes of the 'template' were aligned with the inner holes of the lower strip, put a pin through to keep them in line and drilled 2 more holes. I repeated this until I'd drilled a dozen holes (3 pairs of trucks). I then cut off the 3 pairs and split them down the middle to give pieces for six trucks. I then slid them all on to two pins to line them up and carved them to shape.



I turned the beads from some small section dowel by simply inserting a short length in the rotary tool.



The holes were drilled at the same stage using a pin vice.



The trucks should be fitted using one continuous line, however I opted to use separate lengths to assemble the trucks and to attach them to the yards. This made assembly much easier.



The completed article looks like this:

I now found I needed yet more cleats, shroud cleats this time.
After a few abortive experiments bending pieces of wire and attempting to lash them to the shrouds, I finally settled on the following arrangement.

I started by bending a piece of brass rod to form the horns and soldered it to the end of a straight piece of rod. The solder is only to hold things temporarily.



The next step was to take a piece of thin copper wire and wind a couple of turns round the spot where the two rods were soldered together. After re-soldering this spot, the excess brass rod was cut off and the ends cleaned up:



Now, using the free ends of the copper wire as seizing, the cleat was attached to the shroud:





After the obligatory coat of tar (well, black paint), this was the result:



Finally, this picture shows the topsail lifts made off to the cleats. Honest, the cleats are in there somewhere!

And now for something completely different: Well, a bit different anyway.

The ships boat appears to be a revision to the kit. Rather than a lack of instructions, this section is almost over-kill. There are 21 colour pictures showing the assembly sequence and the accompanying text is reasonably well written and doesn’t appear to be the output of a translation programme. Looking at the pictures on the box and the one black and white picture in the instructions, it seems that the boat itself has also been revised.



As the instructions say, you can dry-fit the parts together in a couple of minutes.
(The light coloured band is where the layer was attached to the sheet. The edges were sanded later).



As I mentioned some time ago, I was quite impressed with this part of the kit, but also amused by a mistake that I found.
The construction method is intended to represent a clinker built hull and achieves this by employing a ‘bread and butter’ construction method. The nice little touch that impressed me was that the laser cut parts were actually cut at an angle to give each piece a bevelled edge, e.g. the aft end of each layer was cut at the same angle as the stern post.



Spotted the mistake yet?
The only layer that has to go a specific way up is the one with the laser etched planking, that layer is upside down! Ah well, a few minutes sanding reversed the bevel.

Now, back to the revisions. The boat shown on the box and in the black and white picture has three bench seats across the hull; the one supplied has only a single bench with two large circular bosses that are presumably intended to take rowlocks. With help from other members, I decided that these had to go and I would fit two vertical pegs as rowlock for each oar position. I opted to retain the single bench seat and fit row locks for oarsmen there and at the bow seat.



After a little surgery and some preparatory sanding, I glued the layers together. (Fitting the rudder to the keel is supposed to be the first job but I left it to the end as the tiller looked a little fragile).




I debated whether to paint it or not, but eventually decided to paint the outside and stain the inside. I did, however, opt to paint the keel, stem post and rudder black rather than red. (Despite the reflections in the picture. it is a matt finish).



I fitted the pins for the rowlocks and made up two pairs of oars, which I lashed to the seat. All that then remained was to make up a couple of slings and hang it from the stern.



Note: This part of the kit seems to be a bit of modelling licence on Mantua’s part. It seems more probable that Astrolabe carried two boats, one on each side on davits.
The position of the guns on the model doesn’t permit this arrangement.

The last items in the instructions are the anchors. There are four in all, two with wooden stocks and two with brass rods.
The wooden stocks are laser cut plywood parts. Although these are tapered on one axis, being laser cut from a plywood sheet, they are a uniform thickness and need tapering on this axis.
As I had, by this stage, come to dislike seeing the edges of various plywood pieces, I decided that plywood definitely would not do for these parts. I therefore opted to make new stocks from scratch. Now, I do have the technology to drill square holes in wood but unfortunately, not this small However a square needle file did the job with no trouble.
The instructions show two sets of bindings on each arm of the stocks but I opted to make metal bands from brass strip. The ends were simply butted together, soldered and then blackened.



The other two anchors are shown with a brass rod fitted as the stock. There was only one hole in the anchor casting, to which I had fitted the anchor ring on the fore anchors. If I fitted the brass rod through this hole, as shown in the instructions, it would not be possible to fit a ring to these anchors. The solution seemed obvious so I drilled a separate hole for the rod.
Pictures I have seen of these types of anchor show a ‘ball’ end to these stocks so a little experimentation was called for. The solution was surprisingly simple. I wrapped a single turn of copper wire round the end of the rod and soldered it in place. By holding the rod with the end downward, the solder naturally formed a nice ball on the end. It was just a matter of adding enough solder to form a suitable sized ball.



I opted to leave the fore port anchor hanging from the cat head with the others lashed to the channels.



There was one further detail I wanted to add. I had originally mistakenly fitted stun’sl booms to the crossjack yard, which I later removed. I realised I could use these as the lower main stun’sl booms on the main channels. I just needed to make the pivots and some saddles to support them.



The saddles and fixed parts of the pivots were made from brass strip, each with two ‘bolt’ holes to fix them to the channels. The end caps for the boom were also made from brass strip, a disc for the end and a small strip wrapped around the boom and soldered to the disc (like the lid of a jar). A hole was drilled in the centre for the pivot pin and this also was soldered into place. The parts were then pinned to the channels.

The following picture shows both the anchor and the boom in position on the main channel.



The lower fore stun’sl booms were apparently hooked into an eye bolt in the hull only when required, so I didn't need to fit these.

Having finally got more or less to the finishing post, what do I think of the kit?

You can build this as a first model, but I think it really belongs in the intermediate category. It was my first plank on bulkhead ship build and it’s a while since I built any models, but I did have some past experience and I do a fair bit of woodwork so I muddled through somehow.
The hull is single planked so if you want a finish that displays your handiwork you need to get it right first time. Having said that, the hull shape didn’t create any major problems. There was sufficient planking to comfortably complete the task and the wood was of reasonable quality.
The biggest problem for a beginner would be the poor quality instructions (although I’ve now seen worse). There are 30 pages but they are in 5 languages so that effectively means only about 6 pages. They look like the output of one of those translation programmes. Most of the pictures are low resolution and black and white although the pictures and instructions for the ships boat look like a modern revision.

I don’t think this is a particularly accurate model of Astrolabe, I think a bit of artistic licence has been applied to simplify things and increase it’s appeal but the kit can produce a quite presentable model.
Thanks to help and advice on this forum, I rigged it in what I believe to be a much more authentic manner than the makers intended but that did require the purchase of lots more blocks and other fittings and some custom fabrication.

There were some minor shortages in the kit, some dowel and one of the sizes of rigging cord but nothing significant. On the whole, I would say that the kit was quite good value for money.

And finally, some pictures of the completed model: