MY Niagara model arrived yesterday. Man, is it small. the ship hull itself is as thin as the sails. I think I will double the thickness of the top deck to give me enough hull to work with. It might be wise to order two hulls and glue them together. It wouldn't be accurate, but I think it would allow just enough space along the bulwarks to paint a white stripe . The sails and masts are far better than anything Ares puts out. There are no holes in the deck for the masts, which is just as well. It will allow me to drill holes at the proper rake. I read an article that said the minimum rake for a brig was 1" per foot and the maximum rake was 2" per foot. The article also said that the foremast was sometimes raked less than the main mast. Looking at pictures of the replica Niagara, that seems to be the case. Anyway, I'm raking both masts 1.5" per foot, which translates to 5 degrees aft of vertical. It should look great when I'm done.
The last pic is the hull placed next to the American sloop ship Thorn. The scale is actually pretty good. Niagara was about 110 ft long and the Thorn was around 97 ft long. Niagara had a lot more beam than Thorn, too.
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