Just got this one today, and I must say, Trumpeter just gets better and better at casting really clean, sharp and crisp moldings. This one will be a real joy to assemble, and I can recommend this one to everyone! No doubt the real accuracy fans will find some porthole slightly out of place or some other quibble, but from what I can see so far, this is a real gem, and doesn’t cost the moon and sun like some of the Japanese offerings of late…
I do not have the kit in person, but have some remarks based on the photos I have seen.
Trumpy screwed the pooch on the 5 inchers. They are simplified and out of proportion. They appear to be scaled up versions of the skywave pieces.
The 1.1s look decent but could benefit from some AM PE or L’Arsenal resin replacements.
The 20s match Tamiya for quality.
BIG plus are the one-piece turrets and the open bridge windows. Rafts, though not as detailed as some, actually capture the “feel” of these parts better than most kits IMHO. Funnel detail is good. Open searchlight tower lattice is a nice touch, though it will probably be replaced by most. Planking is excellent.
Searchlights, directors and small fittings look OK. Splinter shields are average, nothing to write home about. Cats and Cranes are only Ok, basically the sames as the North Carolina kit. Painting calls for MS12 when she carried MS21 (IIRC). Can’t comment on accuracy. Surface detail is about Tamiya quality and you sure can’t beat the price. Overall, about on par with the North Carolina and Essex kits, but better engineered and with some big improvments, but some shortcomings (5 inchers) of its own. Looks like it will build nice OOB and with some new 5" and 1.1 guns and a good PE set it will be a show stopper. And a very good value for the money.
I’m a ship novice, but I have been looking forward to hearing about this kit. I’m happy to hear that it’s a quallity kit. Some faults will probably be addressed by Tom’s MW, Gold Medal Models, and L’Arsenal. It’s a relief to hear that this kit isn’t a dog like Trump’s “The Sullivans.” I think it’ll make a good 2nd step after my first ship (a destroyer) is finished.
Semper Fi,
Chris
Boy! You guys are tough! Then again, I suppose some people won’t be satisfied until a kit jumps off the shelf, and sets sail for Guadalcanal with all guns blazing (with scale gun flashes too!)! The main thing I was pleased with is that it had sharply molded parts with no flashing that fit well, and it didn’t have CAD program lines engraved all over the hull like that 1/350 Hasegawa Nagato kit!!
I don’t really think so; talking about areas that can be improved merely helps other modelers who want a better representation.
For my part, I saw a little flash, much less than I have on past kits such as the North Carolina. Some of the splinter shields, particularly those on the aft superstructure, look to be about knee or waist high in scale; mainly because they’re setting the outside height from the bottom of the deck piece and not compensating for the thickness of that piece. The shields are complex inough on the aft super structure that it’ll be a bit more work to whack them off and rebuild from scratch.
I wish they’d done the wind deflectors as separate pieces so we could have a better representation of the venturis, but oh well.
At a scale of 1/350, the difference in height between a 3’ splinter shield, and a 6’ splinter shield is .0085713, if I have done my math right… Tricky business! Do you plan to simply cut new ones out of sheet brass and bend to shape, or is there (more likely) a super-detail set coming out for twice the price of the original kit? This brings me to a particularl sore point; if kit companies are going to issue a kit, it seems to me to be a case of price gouging to also issue a ‘super detail’ set that really should be included in the original kit! It is particularly aggravating to have the super-detailing set to be issued by the same company that produced the original kit, and is issued at the same time! It’s not such a big issue if some other outfit comes up with it (WEM, Eduard, etc.), but it seems a bit rude, if nothing else, to be selling a kit that in fact, does not contain all the pieces!
you get an C and no extra credit for not showing your work
6’ - 3’ := 3’
3’ * 12 in/ft := 36"
36" / 350 := 0.1028" ~= 0.1 inches
At 1:350 scale, the differnce between a 6 foot shield and a 3 foot sheild is very noticeable.
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I changed the grade. Your answer of 0.008 is correct for the units of feet. But there are very few, if any, measuring devices which are calibrated in thousandths of feet
I haven’t seen this particular kit, but I think the general subject of components like gun shields is worth a little discussion. It may indeed be that somebody at Trumpeter measured from the bottom of the deck instead of the top, but such components present other problems for the manufacturer, and as modelers and purchasers perhaps we ought to take those problems into consideration.
In the first place, consider how thick the plating of, say, a 40mm gun tub actually is. I don’t know the precise figure, but I suspect it’s less than half an inch. On 1/350 scale, that’s about 0.0015". Say the fitting in question is four feet tall; that’s about 0.14 inches. In practical terms, a scale reproduction of such a thing in styrene would be extremely brittle; it would be thinner than the typical piece of flash. A big part like a deck with a bunch of scale gun tubs molded integrally with it would be unlikely to survive the packing and shipping process without getting damaged.
Then think about what the mold to produce such a part would look like. It would have a bunch of tiny grooves, .0015" wide by .014" deep, all over it. (These numbers are based on the assumption that we’re talking about 1/350 scale. In 1/700 the problems are even worse.) I suspect modern, computerized mold machining technology is capable of producing such a thing, but in practical terms it wouldn’t work. The molds for kits like this are expected to have hot liquid styrene injected into them, at high pressure, every few seconds. The parts are then ejected from the mold in a great hurry - in many cases before the styrene has completely hardened. (For it to harden completely inside the closed mold would take hours, if not days. The manufacturer can’t afford that.) There’s just no way a styrene kit manufacturer is going to cast gun tubs of scale height and thickness integrally with a 1/350-scale cruiser’s deck.
There’s also the problem with “draw angles.” If you take a close look at a plastic warship kit, you’ll see that scarcely any of the features cast integrally with a deck or other major component intersect it at a 90-degree angle. If they did, the part would have trouble getting out of the mold. Close inspection will reveal that those integrally-molded gun shields are tapered - they’re thicker at the bottom than at the top. The taller they are, the thicker their bottoms have to be. If that gun tub were of scale height, the bottom of it would be so thick that people like us would scream bloody murder.
So the kit designer has to decide on some sort of compromise solution. One of the best, obviously, is to cast the gun shields as separate pieces. That drives up the parts count, and thereby makes the mold and the kit more expensive - in an economic environment where people like me are having second thoughts about buying kits because they’re so expensive. (Here I’m in danger of getting out of my depth, because I know scarcely anything about how the economics of the plastic kit industry work. Dr. Graham’s fine book on the history of Monogram says that when that company was designing its famous 1/48-scale B-17, back in the late seventies, the designers struggled to keep the total number of pieces to an absolute minimum because every additional part added significantly to the cost of production. I’m not sure how universal that situation is. The typical 1970s Heller kit, for instance, sure doesn’t give the impression that anybody was worried about putting too many parts in it.) And a certain segment of the market, which the manufacturer has to worry about, doesn’t want the parts count - especially the number of really small parts - to rise above a certain number.
The near-ideal solution to the gun shield problem, of course, would be to make them out of photo-etched metal. (.0015" is pretty thin even for photo-etched stainless steel, but anything less than .005" probably would make most of us happy.) Some of the manufacturers are moving in that direction; I hope more of them do. But here again they have to be concerned about money.
In order to stay in business, the manufacturer has to find an extremely delicate balance between the practical limitations of the manufacturing process, the level of difficulty the customer wants in a kit, and the price the customer is willing to pay. If I remember right, most of the 20 mm gun shields (the ones mounted on the deck - not the ones attached to the gun mounts) in the Trumpeter 1/350 North Carolina kit are cast as separate pieces. (I don’t remember about the 40mm gun tubs.) They’re ludicrously out of scale in terms of thickness, but about the right height; I could certainly live with them. I’m a big fan of the North Carolina, but I haven’t bought that kit because I can’t afford it. (I’d only buy it if I was prepared to abandon all other projects and work on that one till it was finished - and I’m not going to do that.) I have bought the Trumpeter 1/700 version, which I really like - though its integrally-molded gun shields and tubs are tapered, way too thick and a bit short. That one’s on my disgustingly large pile of kits I’m going to build some day. (If the only kits that got sold were the ones that actually got built, I suspect most of the manufacturers would go out of business in a couple of months.)
Bottom line: the warship kits being cranked out by companies like Trumpeter, Tamiya, Dragon, and Hasegawa these days represent a mind-boggling advance over what modelers tolerated thirty, twenty, or even ten years ago. (Compare the revised Tamiya 1/700 Yamato to the same company’s 1970s version of the same ship on the same scale. The very fact that the management decided to issue the new, improved version says a great deal - especially when one looks at the Revell-Monogram website and sees that firm’s 1/535 Missouri being promoted as a “new” kit.) One reason why the standards have risen is undoubtedly that the consumers have become so much more demanding of accuracy and precision - and we need to continue acting that way. But at the same time that we’re using phrases like “Trumpy screwed the pooch,” it wouldn’t be a bad idea to acknowledge (a) how much better the kits are than they were a few years ago, and (b) the practical problems that the manufacturers have to confront in making them as good as they are.
One of the people I work with, used to build “masters” for a plastic kit manufacturer, and also for a cast metal kit manufacturer. I have learned a bit about the art of mold making. Jtilley’s remarks about this kit should be required reading for all who build plastic kits. It is hard to appreciate the improvements we have seen over the years, without at least a little knowledge of how and why molds are what they are.
Evergreen makes clear and white styrene sheet in .005. At 1/350 thats 1.75 " which is pretty darn thin, if you consider a gun tub probably had a weld bead or such around the top- just guessing! What would be nice would be if the manufacturer cast the deck with a tiny ridge around the edge, which seems easy enough, and allowed for strips of sheet 0.2 " wide to be glued to it. As alternate parts in the kit.
And a little searching yields clear acetate thats thinner, but a little harder to glue.
Trimming off molded railings isn’t too hard. I’m of the “cut horizontal” school, which leaves a seam. But “cut vertical” is too hard for me around stuff like gun tubs.
Bill
Bondoman is right, of course: for a modeler of some experience, gun shields bent to shape from strips of styrene (or, for that matter, metal - or even paper) probably would be preferable to any representation of them found in a plastic kit. Now, what percentage of purchasers of the kit would agree? What percentage of them have the skill and practice - and the confidence - to trim and shape those gun shields? What percentage notices, or cares, that the integrally-molded gun shields on the Trumpeter North Carolina are too short, too thick, and thicker at the bottoms than at the tops? (For that matter - how many people reading this would have noticed those things if somebody on this Forum, or in an article or a book, hadn’t pointed them out to you? I’m not so sure I would have.)
I have no idea what the answer to any of those questions is. And to me it doesn’t make much difference; the only standards I have to worry about when building a model are my own. But the manufacturer has to ask those questions. If he guesses wrong about the answers, he loses money and, if he guesses wrong too often, goes out of business.
I’m not really right, thanks, but here’s my train of thought. If the manufacturer were to provide it both ways in the same kit, it would not seem to me to cost a whole lot more to make. The modeler would then be given the choice- and might be inspired.
I see this a fair amount in model airplanes, granted in the more expensive kits, and I am on record as harping about paying $ 50 for a big box of plastic that I only need half of. It’s just a thought.
Question that I hope is not Off T. I’ve got some exquisite little 20mm cannons that came on a big fret of all kinds of details from GMM thats lasted me two ships so far and promises to supply a third. But- where is a good source for quad forties? The kit ones are such cr*p. Either 1/350 or 1/400?
Bill
I believe that you can find these at L’Arsenal (AC 350 07), but they’re rather expensive; they look nice though…
Actually, I’m quite lenient compared to some people. The 5 inchers are a big sticking point because they look wrong, and are expensive to replace. The others are really minor quibbles, nothing that a casual builder would worry about and a good PE set should fix easily. I know I for one can’t wait to get one and was extremely pleased especially compared to pre-production samples I saw earlier that looked cruder. I will buy a Tom’s PE set and build it to my standards, with resin or scratchbuilt 5-inchers. You build yours how you want and have fun doing it because that’s what the hobby’s about.
Thanks! 10 euros for six sets? I’m there!
My LHS which isn’t so “L”, 30 miles away, had a one day sale today. I picked up the CA-38 for about $ 51 plus the governments share. Besides the obvious connection, I’m very excited about this model because I like it’s lines a lot, and it has a great deal of the deck area dedicated to aircraft operations, which are my first interest.
I’m going to spend some time researching colors, I want to paint her as she looked November 1942 at Guadalcanal.
The only obvious problem I can see after a quick peek inside is a big sink mark on the bows, just under each hawse hole. Must be something about the way the bows are joined, and looks pretty fixable.
I’ll order up the goodies I want and plan to start her later in March.
thanks Wiki
Bill
If you’re doing her in 1942 you want 1.1" guns, not quad 40mms
Bondo: Watch the fit on the front hull as well; my below-waterline hull pinched in a bit and is slightly narrower for about the first 1/4 to 1/3 of the hull. You might try some dowels to spread it out. I haven’t done more than test fit this joint and chisel off the anchor chains though.
Now THAT was an excellent analysis! My hat’s off Professor!
Yes, that was just about to be my next research- what’s a 1.1" and a 5" deck gun look like. The quad fortys from L’arsenal sure are nice looking though, but will have to wait another day. I’m planning a waterline build, I think, but am curious if the hull shape looked right. I guess it’s pretty hard to know unless someone has the drawings.
Thanks for your interest, Tracy.
Edit: Like this for the 1.1" , perhaps-
And look at the screen around it, on a DD in this case, apropos of our earlier discussion. More to follow, and this is fun!
Bill
White Ensign Models makes 1/350 scale 1.1inch AA guns.