Subject: SMML VOL 1474
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 00:17:48 +1100

shipmodels@tac.com.au

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MODELLERS INDEX

1: Re: Subject: LCI(L)
2: Worst kit no, worst modeling habit yes!
3: Re: Worst ship kits
4: Re: Worst Ship Kits?
5: Re: Hasegawas's 1/700 Kongo class
6: Where to buy 3M Acryl Blue Putty?
7: Why did you become a ship modeller
8: Thoughts on ship modelling
9: Bad kits
10: Re: Akagi boot top
11: Re: USS Forrestal Doomed
12: Other worst kits
13: Re: LCI(L)
14: Worst kit candidates
15: Re: Olympia kit? / Maine Kit?
16: Re: Best/worst kits

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TRADERS, ANNOUNCEMENTS & NOTICEBOARD INDEX

1: Landing Craft are on active duty at Naval Base Hobbbies

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MODELLERS

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1)
From: ALROSS2@aol.com
Subject: Re: Subject: LCI(L)

>> Looking for model kits, plans, photos and any useful gen on this type of vessel. <<

 You can get plans from The Floating Drydock (www.floatingdrydock.com). Basic plans and a number of photos can be found in Allied Landing Craft of World War Two (U.S. Naval Institute Press).

 Al Ross
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2)
From: Keith Butterley <keith_butterley@telus.net>
Subject: Worst kit no, worst modeling habit yes!

 Hi,

 Having only built 11 ship kits (that's 11 more than Robert Lockie though <g>) in my current modeler's life, I can't say I have come across any thing that was truly abdominal, yet.

 I do however have this terrible habit that I dragged over to ship modeling from my 35 years as a winged thingie modeler. I seem to enjoy throwing the parts tree away once I THINK I have used all the parts on it, only to discover three months later that I now need part 14 on Tree A to finish the project and of course Tree A is now buried under a 100 tons of garbage at the landfill.

 Happy modeling and save everything!

 Keith Butterley
 warshipbooks.com
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3)
From: Gmshoda@cs.com
Subject: Re: Worst ship kits

 I second the nomination of the Pyro Maine. I remember that, given the sparcity of very old battleship models in the late 1950s and 1960s, I was thrilled to obtain a model of what was advertised to be the Maine. Only later after having noticed differences between photographs of the Maine and the actual appearance of the model did I realize that I had been snookered. I guessed that it might be the Olympia instead. At least it was a model of a real ship. However, the parts fit was horrendous. I remember that I had never experienced such extreme problems with the countless other ship and plane models that I bought and built. The 2 halves of the hull just would not match up.
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4)
From: Charlie Jarvis <tanuki@execpc.com>
Subject: Re: Worst Ship Kits?

>> Horrible ship kits, huh? I wonder if manufacturers of fine models ever write to each other asking who has seen the worst butcher job done to one of their beautiful kits? Do they have nightmares about their kits on fireplace mantles done up with thick, hairy rigging thread from the wife's sewing basket and glue fingerprints over gloppy paint on the hull? <<

 Nightmares of running with their money to the bank and finding it closed, I think. :>)

 As ever thinly, hairless, and hopefully none too gloppily:

 Charlie
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5)
From: Tom Kremer <tkremer@sonic.net>
Subject: Re: Hasegawas's 1/700 Kongo class

>> Do Hasegawa's four Kongos (more or less) accurately represent the differences between the ships, or are they of the "one mold fits all" type? <<

 I've got two (IIRC Kongo and Haruna). The kits are definitely not the same, they represent different ships at different periods of time.

 Tom K
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6)
From: JKrakow@aol.com
Subject: Where to buy 3M Acryl Blue Putty?

 After nearly 20 years of intermittant use and faithful service, I'm finally laying to rest my mid-1980s vintage tube Doctor Microtools Putty.

 Where can I order or buy a tube of 3M Acryl Blue to replace it?

 Thanks
 Dave
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7)
From: Fernando Espinoza <feed@entelchile.net>
Subject: Why did you become a ship modeller

 Hello fellow smmlies.!

 I got some questions for you all.

 Have you ever asked yourselves. What is the real reason you have becomed a ship modeller? I think it is more than a hobby. Are you agree with this statement?

 Fondly
 FEED
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8)
From: Fernando Espinoza <feed@entelchile.net>
Subject: Thoughts on ship modelling

 Dear fellow smmilies

 I think building kits it is more than getting the right scale,the real color or the right scheme camouflage for that era, or just get the right stuff for the next contest or competition and therein succed. I believe building ships kits it is very correlated with the lifetime you are going trough. It might sound weird but I am pretty sure you can get a close relationship between the model you have built and the good or bad times of your life you spent building it.

 FEED
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9)
From: JohnVCP@aol.com
Subject: Bad kits

 I was able to recently pick up several old (circa 1940s) Stromberg solid wood ship models and did the real "no no" and opened the boxes and built them! Yes, I made them and took the loss of the "kit collectors" prices. While working on them I was transported back about sixty some odd years to a time when I was making these as a youngster - the loss of collector's value was well worth the great time I had assembling these. Talk about lack of scale - the USS Nautilus, the USS Warrington and the USS Buckely are all about the same length and just crying for some correct details - but they were a joy to build.

 I also have a sixty year old kit of a Coast Guard cutter that I am trying to restore. Lot's of fun and not too much to scale - but fun nevertheless.

 My latest acquisition is a circa 1940 model of the Wasp (CV7) with (are you ready for this?) a molded wooden composite hull!!!! Lots of printed balsa wood sheets and you get to make things out of "scrap balsa, split bamboo and toothpicks"!!!!

 If you grew up being a "Balsa Butcher", as I did, there is nothing quite as satisfying as hacking out parts with a single-edged razor blade and smelling Ambroid glue. I just wish you could still buy the old fashioned "dope". How many of you remember making "balsa filler" out of clear dope and your Mom's talcum powder?

 John Heasel
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10)
From: SteveWiper@aol.com
Subject: Re: Akagi boot top

 Tim,

 According to the drawings that I have from Fuji Art Models, considered to be the best, of the Akagi, there was a boot topping. This boot topping also tapered at the center of the ship (amidships). I would hazard a guess that the width (height) was 6ft. at the bow and the stern, tapering to 4ft. in the middle, at a very gradual rate. About 2/3 of the vessels length had the boot topping at the 4ft. height.

 Steve Wiper.
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11)
From: "Keith Bender" <propmeup@worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: USS Forrestal Doomed

 Hi SMMLies,

 Yes it would be nice to have the Forrestal around as a museum but if we couldn't save a small CVL like the Cabot, (which I'm still very P.O.d about)  what makes you think they could make the Forrestal work. You could put four CVL's on CV 59 flightdeck. and then there is the Midway. Best of luck to em'. Cabot is gone but I won't forget her.

 Keith
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12)
From: "RAY MEHLBERGER" <research@mcleodusa.net>
Subject: Other worst kits

 I already voted for the worst model ship kit I ever done, with the Revell Olympia.

 But for the worst kit of all the plastic types of kits out there...Combat Models vacuforms and the vacuformed kits by Schmidtmodelbau of Germany have to be the lousiest things around. Bad molding, parts that don't mate up...nohow. Clear parts (in the Combat kits) that have a surface like sand and are as clear as mud. I had one aircraft kit by them that had two totally different sized and shaped fuselages...gasp. The Schmidtmodelbau (spelling?) armor kits were the same way. I threw away at least 2 kits by each company that I bit on as being totally unbuildable!!

 Hope this was not too off topic for you ship guys.

 Ray Mehlberger
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13)
From: Bob Evans <bob0159@pacbell.net>
Subject: Re: LCI(L)

 Ken,

 The floatingDrydock is your key for plans (:^>

 Thank You.

 Bob Evans
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14)
From: "Doug Marrel" <a0002604@airmail.net>
Subject: Worst kit candidates

 I know they aren't plastic or ships, but the Domus card/stone building model series must be mentioned in the bad kit race.

 Bad instructions, both text and pictures, bad translations, that make bad originals worse, bad engineering and printing, parts simply that are impossible to fit, locators and parts printed mirror image.

 And I have several, call me a glutton for punishment! And they gear these to children as educational items! To give one of these to a child would be cruel.

 The subjects and media are wonderful, but they are basically an exercise in scratch building, without the availability of good plans.
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15)
From: Minadmiral@aol.com
Subject: Re: Olympia kit? / Maine Kit?

 Hi All;

 Is my decrepit old memory finally going bad or do I remember correctly a sad effort to make the Olympia kit into the Maine? Kit had some sponsons to glue to the side of the hull to make the turrets off center. Took one horrified look in the box and ran out of the store to laugh hysterically for a while. This was MANY years ago.

 Chuck Duggie
 WoodenWalls Listmeister eGroups : WoodenWalls
 Naval wargamer, amateur naval historian, and ship modeler
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16)
From: Pieter Cornelissen <wanderer98@gmx.net>
Subject: Re: Best/worst kits

>> The 1:720 Essex...man. The thing that sticks out in my mind is how flat that hull looks, and how little hangar deck clearance it'd have it scaled to real size. Reminds me of some of those 1920s design studies you see in Friedman's carrier design history book. <<

 I think I would agree with Jodie on the Revell 1/720 Essex for the worst kit I built She forgot to mention the side galleries of the flight deck which are about as deep as the trenches on the the flightdeck (still wonder what Revell was thinking when designing the kit). OTOH, it was the first kit I painted with a reasonably effective splinter camouflage scheme on which I could try the things I had just read about breaking up of slihouettes. I put her on the grass 10 meters away on a cold and misty Zeeland morning and lay on my stomach to get an 'horizon'. It kind of worked as advertised. The kit should still be somewhere in the attic at my parents' house next to a Tamiya Nelson I build about a year later (mid 1980's).

 The best kit I've build is off course the last one...But in kit quality (ie apart form builders' input) in injection plastic it is the new Skywave Chokai that I just finished as a 1930's Takao.

 In resin the best one I've seen and built so far is WSW's Ferdinand Max.

 Pieter Cornelissen
 Delft
 The Netherlands
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TRADERS, ANNOUNCEMENTS & NOTICEBOARD

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1)
From: "Shaya Novak" <shaya@erols.com>
Subject: Landing Craft are on active duty at Naval Base Hobbbies

 http://www.modelshipbuilding.com/amphibious_and_support.html

 This page has a wide selection of ships of these categories.

 Shaya Novak
 Naval Base Hobbies
 The Store for The Model Ship Builder
 www.modelshipbuilding.com
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 Check out the SMML site for the List Rules, Backissues, Member's models & reference pictures at:

 http://smmlonline.com

 Check out the APMA site for an index of ship articles in the Reference section at:

 http://apma.org.au/
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End of Volume