Period Ship Modeling

This little book is intended mainly for the newcomer to ship modelling, who has, perhaps, purchased ans assembled one of the numerous "galleon kits," and realizes that, while the finished article is decorative and ornamental, it has small pretensions to accuracy in detail or rigging, but is, nevertheless, sufficiently interesting and attractive to inspire its maker to do something really worth while. For this is, I think, the real virtue of these kits; very few of them have more than a nominal resemblance to any ship which ever sailed the Seven Seas, but they do arouse interest in a most absorbing and inexpensive hobby, which has almost unlimited scope, and may, if sufficient care be taken, make a real contribution to public knowledge of the ships of long ago. Except in the form of models, we shall never look upon their like again, and their sheer beauty alone makes them worthy of preservation. But there are, for the beginner, very many pitfalls, of which he should be wary, in methods of construction and details of rigging, and here the kits are of little assistance, since most of them contain hulls which are ready made, or nearly so, and their rigging plans and instruction are usually rather sketchy. It is to help him in there difficulties, so far as I am able, that I have written this book.