Barry, i did soldiering only for main "spars" of mast tops. I used thick (approx. 1mm at this scale that is) copper wire and it shows in picture as the thickest parts. All the thinner parts are made from stretched sprue, using some CA and lots of swearing. Railings are made from stretched sprue and finest fishing thread. I calculated approximate distance between columns from a photo and drilled a light recess for every one of them. Still, paper, styrene and CA is not a very firm combination. For deck rigging it was good enough, but when i tried to apply the same scheme for cabin railings, trying to bend fishing thread at almost right angle, the columns would break off. So i used very fine copper wire - it bends easily, and that is both good and bad. Bad, because it bends even when it's not desired. I must say, that when i saw photos, i was a bit shocked - macro mode shows all the flaws
As i wrote before, not averything is absolutely to scale, because many things were made with approximate calculations based on photos, which adds some level of distortion. I also apologize if my writing is hard to understand, as english is a foreign language to me.