Ratlines

This kit comes with a loom and instructions for making and attaching the shrouds or "Ratlines" as they are sometimes called. To illustrate how complex this is, the instruction sheets dedicates 3 1/2 pages to this process! I've done this a few times on other models but it's still a challenge to get good results. In fact this particular model tested all my patience over the course of several nights and I'm still not completely satisfied with the result. The first thing I do is glue 2 thick pieces of spru to the bottom of the loom. The reason for this is the foot ropes, which run horizontally will not touch the vertical shrouds because they are too high. The spru bolsters will raise the shrouds to touch most the footropes for gluing. It looks complicated but it's important to follow the numbering on the instruction sheet when wrapping the thread on the loom for them to fit on the model correctly. Normally I wax all thread used in rigging but in this case it's better to leave the wax off for the glue to stick to the thread. After all the thread was wrapped I applied a heavy coat of Testors Clear Acrylic to cement it all together. I used to use diluted white glue for this step but this time I went with the Airfix suggestion and it worked pretty good. Testors flat black was painted on when the clear dried. When removing the finished ratlines from the loom I found quite a few stuck to the loom and some footropes the missed the shrouds. Still it was mostly a success though I'll have to repair the missing footropes. While trimming off the excess thread I almost cut through the shrouds more than once due to trying to trim too close. So I left a little excess. A small price to pay to keep from ruining all that work.