This was my first ship. A list was made of all the things to correct on the model after it was finished. If this helps you is some way, they were not made in vain.
1) The violin blocks are not installed upside down on the cargo lifting pendant tackles on the fore mast and main mast, port and starboard.
2) I forgot to install the decks and cannon carriages for the escape guns on the stern. Had to use some clever means of lowering the deck pieces with glue on them into the ship's stern from the top on the end of a stick.
3) Sail reinforcement bands for the reef points go on the rear side of the sails, not the front.
4) Tying running rigging lines first to belaying pin racks on the bulwarks behind the shrouds, letting the lines hang off the side of the hull, and wasting countless yards of line cutting them to the proper length when you're ready to rig them up in the masts is a better way than trying to belay lines onto easily broken pins using rigging tools through the holes in the shrouds. And, it's a LOT faster. I did
La Couronne's rigging 100% the HARD WAY, one line at a time.
5) CA glue doesn't allow wood to stain. Get the staining of all wood done BEFORE assembly.
6) Many blocks (all Corel ones) were stained after rigging. Some of the standing rigging was stained black with leather dye after rigging. I'll make sure to use the correct color line and blocks from the same sources next time. Model Expo "beautiful blocks" and Falkonet blocks should replace crappy Italian kit blocks.
7) the decks should be sanded smooth, or better yet scraped smooth with a razor blade scraper,
before making trenails with a pen or pencil and varnishing. You can feel the planks edges on the decks on
La Couronne.
8) Using a Sharpy pen to blacken the edges on all sides of the deck blanks makes pitch sealing lines far too noticeable at 1:100 scale. Use graphite pencil next time to make deck lines subtle, and only darken one edge of each plank. That's all that is necessary to make plank seams stand out.
9) Change the sewing stitch method for bonnet and drabbler lacing to a simpler, less bulky stitch, so it appears to scale better.
10) Use CA glue on rigging more sparingly. It stains line and sails and turns lines into concrete. Use PVA instead unless you need quick drying of the glue.
11) Make custom sized kevels, and don't use the monster oversized kevel parts provided in this kit. The kevels extend far above the gunwale, which is really ridiculous.
12) Don't use CA glue anywhere near the clear plastic used for windows because the fumes fog them permanently.
13) The robands which tie the sails to the yards must be inboard of the brace lines where the brace lines are tied to the yardarm ends. Many of my sails came out too wide, and some of the robands lie outboard of the brace lines.
14) Never insert your shears or scissors into the tangled web of rigging with them open, or lines will mistakenly get sliced. I mistakenly sliced 5 lines, including a backstay which is hard to rig. God help you if you slice a shroud line after ratlining! That's really difficult to splice.
15) The breech rope loops on all the cannon cascabels are upside down. I learned later that there were some cases in which rigging them that way was correct.
