Anyone know? I’d love to see this kit reissued at some point. One of the reasons is that I like injection plastic sails which can be painted up nice.
there are a bunch of other kits that use the vac-formed plastic sails if that’s what you’re looking for.
Bit of a misunderstanding there enemeink! I don’t like vac form sails at all. I’ve recently finished the Lindberg Sovereign of the Seas and that has ‘hard’ plastic injection moulded sails which I think are much better than vac form sails. I’ve also recently picked up the old Pyro USS Alliance which has hard plastic sails. After I’ve finished that I wouldn’t mind getting hold of the old Aurora Sea Witch which I’ve seen on Ebay. The recently released Lindberg Sea Witch has vac formed sails but as I don’t like vac sails I thought I’d try the old Aurora Sea Witch instead but I was wondering if it will be reissued again.
There are several questions that maybe should be addressed here. One is the “heritage” of that Aurora Sea Witch kit. We’ve had several discussions about various representations of that ship here in the Forum recently. I’d always assumed that there was only one Sea Witch in plastic, and that it had appeared at various times since the early fifties in at least three different boxes: Marx, Aurora, and Lindberg. Recently I’ve started to have my doubts. I think the Aurora one may have been a completely different, smaller kit. But I’m honestly not sure.
I have the general impression that Monogram acquired Aurora’s molds when the latter company went out of business, and that they eventually passed to the Revell-Monogram label. Recently the name “Monogram” seems to have disappeared from the Revell website. Logic suggests that Revell USA now has the Aurora molds, but that’s just surmise on my part. The manufacturers don’t seem to like talking about such things. And so far as I know, those four medium-sized Aurora sailing ships (Sea Witch, Bonhomme Richard, Wanderer, and Hartford) have never been reissued by anybody since their original release (unless the Lindberg Sea Witch is in fact the same kit - which I doubt).
I bought the Aurora one a very long time ago, when it was new, and had big reservations about it. I’m sticking my neck out here; my aging memory is far from the most reliable. But I think I remember that the sails were injection-molded all right - but that they were astonishingly similar in shape and detail to the vac-formed ones of the Revell Thermopylae. In other words, they were made like vac-formed sails, but a whole lot thicker. The “seams,” “reef points,” and other details that were molded into the original vac-formed versions appeared the same way on the injection-molded copies: as raised lines on the fronts of the sail and grooves on the backs. To my eye that arrangement looks silly on a vac-formed sail and downright ridiculous on an injection-molded one.
The other problem with those hugely thick, injection-molded sails is that they’re extremely heavy. I never tried seriously to rig such things to a model, but every single photo of a finished model with injection-molded plastic sails that I’ve ever seen has suffered from the same problem: the weight of the jibs and staysails makes the supporting rigging sag to a degree that is, to say the least, extremely unprototypical. I suspect that if the stays were set up taut enough to keep them from sagging, they’d bend the masts out of line.
To each his own. A careful paint job could, I suppose, camouflage at least some of the drawbacks to injection-molded sails - at least when viewed from some angles. And maybe the judicious use of wire for some crucial rigging lines could solve the weight problem. But in this particular case I’d strongly recommend getting a good look at the kit before paying any significant amount of money for it. It’s entirely possible that my memory is playing a trick on me, but if I’m right about those “grooves” all over the backs of the sails I don’t think many serious modelers would want anything to do with them.
my bad [oops] sorry for the misunderstanding. the only ship that i’ve done that has the hard sails was the Revell pirate ship. It had only one.
No problem! Easy mistake to make.
You could well be correct about Revell now owning the moulds and I’ve been wondering myself if the Lindberg Sea Witch was the same as Aurora’s (minus the injection sails) and I seem to remember doing a few comparisons from Ebay a while back and coming to the conclusion that they might well be 2 different kits too. I’m surprised that none of the kits you’ve mentioned (Wanderer, Hartford, Bonhomme Richard) have been released along with the Sea Witch. It makes me wonder if they no longer exist or were lost perhaps?
I see what you mean about injection sails, about the thickness and the weight etc but after painting up the sails on the Revell/Linberg Sovereign of the Seas I think they look really good. I know they aren’t totally accurate etc but I find vac form sails as I said a waste of time as they just never look right, cloth sails can look good with a bit of work but often don’t and even though I’ve built ships like Revells HMS Victory without sails I now wish these kits would all have the option of billowing injection sails. I’ve even been buying quite a few old Pyro kits as I’ve got the billowing sails bug, though some of those Pyro kits as you’ll know are pretty innacurate, horrendously innacurate in some cases. I’ve found with the Sovereign that because I’ve built it straight from the box and used the plastic ratlines which stick to the masts, the sails (touch wood) haven’t really made the masts bend. With the Pyro USS Alliance that I picked up I can forsee though your point about the staysails which could be difficult to stop from making the rigging sag badly but I might try your suggestion of wire.
By an odd coincidence I saw the Sea Witch last week in a hobby shop. I’m sure it was in the Lindberg name. HUGE box. Has it been re-released? If it’s not shrinkwrapped (unlikely) or sold, I’ll have a peek in the box tomorrow.
Michael
It’s described and illustrated on the new Lindberg website: http://www.lindberg-models.com/water_model70812.html
How many of the kits illustrated there are actually on the shelves of the hobby shops I have no idea. I can’t recall having seen many, if any, of them yet - but my neighborhood, eastern North Carolina, is hardly a major stomping ground for finding plastic kits.
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that this kit and the old Aurora one have nothing in common. But I’m not sure. Does anybody out there actually have an Aurora Sea Witch in hand?
I think you’re right about them being different. Be interesting to see some good pics and especially a built up one.
I have one of the Lindberg-issued ‘Sea Witch’ kits, and it is to the same scale as the much better known Revell ‘Cutty Sark’ at 1/96, and therefore quite large. However, as it is a Lindberg kit, it is pretty crude in most respects, and I have been (slowly!) ‘kit-bashing’ it to represent a three-masted Maine schooner instead. The flat transom, enormous flare of the bows and almost straight/square lines of the hull of this particular model all say ‘lumber schooner’ to me! I have no experience of the Aurora kit, but my guess is that it is of smaller scale. When Aurora went out of business (got re-named KPG for a bit), as I recall there was some sort of a fire that destroyed a number of molds, such as the Bonhomme Richard, and most of their WW1 aircraft mold collection as well, and perhaps the Sea Witch comes under that category…
Drat! I was hoping we’d see a reissue of the BonHomme (plus the others) as well, but if they’ve all gone up in smoke then bang goes that. Knowing my luck the Sea Witch got fried too!
I took a look at the side of the box the other day to refresh my memory on the detail. If you look on the box sides, the modler did a really decent job on the ratlines by tieing the ratlines to the shrouds, but for the love of mike did you notice that he simply ties the shrouds to the top of the deadeyes through some sort of hole drilled/molded in the top of each deadeye?
Talk about a waste of effort, that distraction aside the weathering looks some passible although a bit heavy on the deck houses, I suppose what period in her life he/she or they were trying to create. If I do the model I will hand tie the ratlines to the shroulds also but probaly change out the deadeyes to something better.
Jake