My favorite group of sailing vessels are the Topsail Schooners built at various shipyards in the early 1800's. The Hamilton was built in 1832 in New York, NY While looking through Google images of topsail schooners I found an image of this model and further investigated the company producing the kit. Previously I had seen several Civil War ironclad kits produced by Cottage Industries and they look outstanding. So I read the description of the kit and realized this may be one of the best kits so far of a topsail schooner. Similar to one issue by Model Shipways of the New York pilot boat it has a precast resin hull. Additionally it comes with everything needed to build the ship to completion(according to the company) including resin parts for the deck furniture, white metal castings of the cannons and carriages and many of the parts needed to rig the ship, wood dowels for the masts and yards and finally several sizes of rigging thread in two colors. The kit includes 4 large plan sheets (similar to those in Model Shipways kits) and a 16 page instruction manual
There are a couple of things I don't like so far. It doesn't have a dedicated box to hold all the parts, instead everything was bubble wrapped or in baggies and placed into a shipping box. Also the manufacturer doesn't include a stand of any type but they recommend supporting it with brass or steel rods embedded in a sturdy base. Finally all the resin pieces need to be removed from their support structure and cleaned up. Also most of the white metal parts need a lot of cleaning up. All of which is going to add considerable time to the build
There are a couple of things I don't like so far. It doesn't have a dedicated box to hold all the parts, instead everything was bubble wrapped or in baggies and placed into a shipping box. Also the manufacturer doesn't include a stand of any type but they recommend supporting it with brass or steel rods embedded in a sturdy base. Finally all the resin pieces need to be removed from their support structure and cleaned up. Also most of the white metal parts need a lot of cleaning up. All of which is going to add considerable time to the build