No eight year old could succeed with this model without major adult assistance (and **experienced** adult assistance at that). The instruction sheets have far too many details per sheet, making it difficult to see where the parts attach. Many many parts which must be assembled as two halves (cannon barrels, masts, yards) have NO guide pins to aid alignment - one must carefully align before the glue hardens. The rigging instructions are given as unintelligible scattered details in micro-print and one is best to buy a good reference book such as Longridge in order to understand the rigging. Heller, unbelievably, forgot that the yardarms must somehow attach to the masts. There is no provision whatsoever for this. The lower yards in particular on a real ship had complex rigging dedicated to holding them to the masts. Heller has completely omitted this rigging. And in order to add this rigging one must add items like extra ringbolts on the decks, hence the need for a good reference book as mentioned above. The supplied rigging blocks are best discarded - they look nothing like blocks due to the way they are molded, and are unusable. Buy wooden blocks instead. To the experienced ship modeler, Heller's interpretation of the deadeye chains does not look realistic and they forgot about the preventer links. Despite all the above shortcomings, this kit still builds into the most impressive plastic ship model on the market, IF you can manage it. Just be warned that it is not easy. Also note that there are sets of etched brass parts available on the market specific to this kit, which for the experienced modeler can add much valuable detail.

The only other kit that can compapare is Revell's USS Constitution. I've built both and they look fantastic side-by-side The slight scale difference can't be seen and when fully rigged, these are a GREAT addition to any home ... not to mention a really good conversation peice. I the only caution I can offer is in the Skill Level ranking ... These are, by no means, Level 3 models A Level 3 modeler can build these and get an Ok model ... but if done right, these are Level 5 Just the Standing Rigging can take weeks to complete and is extremely detailed work. I spent 7 or 8 months building each model Oh ... don't forget the research that should be a MUST for color pix and tips on rigging.

When this kit is finished it makes a impressive model. But this isn't a model to be built in a day. Be prepared to not only spend months building it, but time spent researching to correct the inaccuracy in the instructions. There are wrong colors called out. Also there isn't any black thread included for the standing rigging. They instruct you to dye the white thread. Also the deadeyes are impossible to use. I ended up buying black thread and wooden deadeyes. I would recommend noting on the instructions where each rigging line starts and ends to avoid confusion when rigging. I also marked off each line in the rigging line size list then it was installed. This is not a kit for beginners but if you have patience you will be impressed when completed.