by blw » Sun Apr 06, 2014 10:05 am
I'm working on this one now, with the complete kit - all three parts, including brass barrels for both main and secondary armament. In general, the PE is excellent. I have a few issues, some of which the vendor could correct pretty easily. Despite the issues, I'm having a fun time and it looks like it will build into a quite nice model. Comments in no particular order:
- The relief etch is very nice, perhaps not as extravagant as some of the 1/350 stuff, but extremely nice nonetheless.
- The barrels for the main guns have no instructions, which is ordinarily not much of an issue. However, it's most logical to use the kit's original mountings, which becomes quite a chore to drill properly. The kit parts are relatively complex shapes and at least I wasn't able to drill them accurately enough. Then I tried making similar trunions from plastic rod and tubing. That too turned into quite an undertaking, due to the size of the pieces and the fact that they're round. Finally, discarding the "logical" or "obvious" I simply took a piece of square plastic shape, drilled it accurately and then gently sanded the corner to the right inclination. FAR easier, FAR better results, FAR less frustrating. A quick note in the directions would have saved me a lot of exasperation.
- The directions for the kit do not mention a pretty fair number of the parts. Some are quite obvious, like the range clocks. Some are less obvious. I'm not sure if it's just a bonus or not, but there was an entire plastic bag of searchlights, but no mention of such in the directions. They seem a bit overscale, so I used the kit parts instead.
- The directions claim to tell you when to replace original kit parts, and which ones. Sometimes they do, but mostly this is overlooked. In most cases, I found this merely annoying, but in at least one case, I was genuinely at a loss for a while. Maybe this was just me being tired that day, but if the instructions were better done, the whole situation would have been avoided.
- The kit includes brass barrels for the secondary 6" guns too. These are very fine! I have not installed them yet as they seem to require a #82 drill, which I haven't been able to locate. And furthermore, the kit mountings would need to be drilled, a task of which I'm not excited about attempting. The kit mountings are frankly pretty mediocre as they don't include the sighting ports (admittedly trivial) but mostly because of the way they were cast onto the sprue makes cleaning them up quite a chore. As these will not need to be drilled at an angle, I think I'll just make new ones from brass tube. Once I find a #82 drill bit! Anyone know where to find #82 drills?
- I would guess that the following is typical of PE upgrades, but there are a LOT of replacement bits that require removing cast on detail from the original kit. The bow breakwater pieces are exquisite, although they look like they'll be hell to install. The supports for the boat on the shelter deck are at least much easier to install, but there are SO MANY of them. I will probably skip most of these pieces, replacing only about half of the cast-on bits.
- One thing that I disagree with in the design of the PE set is the inclusion of handrails on some of the PE pieces. The aft director structure is entirely replaced, which is delightful, as the PE bits have far finer detail and are also more accurate. However, the top deck includes PE railings that are extremely fine, and which necessarily have to be installed before all of the bits around and on it. Even using which I believe to be good PE technique, I had a lot of trouble getting this off the fret without mangling the railings. The problem is not so much that the railings are tiny (they're of comparable size and strength to regular railings, of course), it's that they're attached to a much bigger and heavier piece, making it hard to work on without a bit of distortion. And I've already mashed one of the railings in the process of installing details around it. Fortunately there are parts provided for both pre-1918 and 1918 fit. I mangled my 1918 part, so I will probably go back and try the other part and rework it to match the 1918... ugly. I dunno... maybe it would have been just as hard to put the railings on later.
- A minor issue is that the directions are explicitly contradicted by Burt's British Battlesships of World War I a couple of times. The most notable example is that Queen Elizabeth explicitly never had flying-off ramps on B and X turrets. Her sisters all did, though. There are a couple of other cases that I noticed too.
For a number of these reasons, this doesn't seem like a great upgrade kit to do as a first attempt. However, despite all of the complaining I've just done - note that most of the problems are with the directions and not the parts - the detail is exquisite and it is building into a nice model.
I'm working on this one now, with the complete kit - all three parts, including brass barrels for both main and secondary armament. In general, the PE is excellent. I have a few issues, some of which the vendor could correct pretty easily. Despite the issues, I'm having a fun time and it looks like it will build into a quite nice model. Comments in no particular order:
[list][*]The relief etch is very nice, perhaps not as extravagant as some of the 1/350 stuff, but extremely nice nonetheless.
[*]The barrels for the main guns have no instructions, which is ordinarily not much of an issue. However, it's most logical to use the kit's original mountings, which becomes quite a chore to drill properly. The kit parts are relatively complex shapes and at least I wasn't able to drill them accurately enough. Then I tried making similar trunions from plastic rod and tubing. That too turned into quite an undertaking, due to the size of the pieces and the fact that they're round. Finally, discarding the "logical" or "obvious" I simply took a piece of square plastic shape, drilled it accurately and then gently sanded the corner to the right inclination. FAR easier, FAR better results, FAR less frustrating. A quick note in the directions would have saved me a lot of exasperation.
[*]The directions for the kit do not mention a pretty fair number of the parts. Some are quite obvious, like the range clocks. Some are less obvious. I'm not sure if it's just a bonus or not, but there was an entire plastic bag of searchlights, but no mention of such in the directions. They seem a bit overscale, so I used the kit parts instead.
[*]The directions claim to tell you when to replace original kit parts, and which ones. Sometimes they do, but mostly this is overlooked. In most cases, I found this merely annoying, but in at least one case, I was genuinely at a loss for a while. Maybe this was just me being tired that day, but if the instructions were better done, the whole situation would have been avoided.
[*]The kit includes brass barrels for the secondary 6" guns too. These are very fine! I have not installed them yet as they seem to require a #82 drill, which I haven't been able to locate. And furthermore, the kit mountings would need to be drilled, a task of which I'm not excited about attempting. The kit mountings are frankly pretty mediocre as they don't include the sighting ports (admittedly trivial) but mostly because of the way they were cast onto the sprue makes cleaning them up quite a chore. As these will not need to be drilled at an angle, I think I'll just make new ones from brass tube. Once I find a #82 drill bit! Anyone know where to find #82 drills? :heh:
[*]I would guess that the following is typical of PE upgrades, but there are a LOT of replacement bits that require removing cast on detail from the original kit. The bow breakwater pieces are exquisite, although they look like they'll be hell to install. The supports for the boat on the shelter deck are at least much easier to install, but there are SO MANY of them. I will probably skip most of these pieces, replacing only about half of the cast-on bits.
[*]One thing that I disagree with in the design of the PE set is the inclusion of handrails on some of the PE pieces. The aft director structure is entirely replaced, which is delightful, as the PE bits have far finer detail and are also more accurate. However, the top deck includes PE railings that are extremely fine, and which necessarily have to be installed before all of the bits around and on it. Even using which I believe to be good PE technique, I had a lot of trouble getting this off the fret without mangling the railings. The problem is not so much that the railings are tiny (they're of comparable size and strength to regular railings, of course), it's that they're attached to a much bigger and heavier piece, making it hard to work on without a bit of distortion. And I've already mashed one of the railings in the process of installing details around it. Fortunately there are parts provided for both pre-1918 and 1918 fit. I mangled my 1918 part, so I will probably go back and try the other part and rework it to match the 1918... ugly. I dunno... maybe it would have been just as hard to put the railings on later.
[*]A minor issue is that the directions are explicitly contradicted by Burt's [i]British Battlesships of World War I[/i] a couple of times. The most notable example is that Queen Elizabeth explicitly never had flying-off ramps on B and X turrets. Her sisters all did, though. There are a couple of other cases that I noticed too.[/list]
For a number of these reasons, this doesn't seem like a great upgrade kit to do as a first attempt. However, despite all of the complaining I've just done - note that most of the problems are with the directions and not the parts - the detail is exquisite and it is building into a nice model.