by apfelzra » Tue Jan 04, 2011 6:07 pm
Hello GWF fans,
I recently purchased (online, from a private party) the ISW kit of the 1:350 USS Illinois (BB-7) and thought it would be, after painting, a fairly simple build (I've mostly been building WWII-era battleships and cruisers for the past few years). But the kit turns out to be very labor-intensive, mainly due to the excessive resin flash on nearly every part. The huge overpour on the keel is the least of my problems -- the belt sander in my garage will make short work of that, though the keel itself is so riddled with bubble holes that I'll spend a long time filling them with putty and sanding smooth. My major concerns right now are where to find suitable metal gun barrels to replace the, frankly, atrocious resin ones in the kit. I can get the 13-in./.35 cal. gun barrels from B&D Barrels (through freetimehobbies.com) but what would you folks recommend as the source for the 6-in./.40 cal. secondary gun barrels? The 57-mm and 37-mm light gun barrels I can probably make from stretched black styrene sprue. Also, I should point out that the assembly instructions included with the kit are ridiculous -- the diagrams are crude and misspellings are rampant -- they even misspelled the ship's name! It's ILLINOIS, not ILLIONIS! I might expect something like this from a Chinese company, but this kit was made in the USA!
Also, a separate question on the photos posted in previous years on this particular (GWF fans) site -- they are listed only as "image" and there is no link to open them. Have these all been deleted? That would be surprising, considering the number of accolades they received from other readers.
Hello GWF fans,
I recently purchased (online, from a private party) the ISW kit of the 1:350 USS Illinois (BB-7) and thought it would be, after painting, a fairly simple build (I've mostly been building WWII-era battleships and cruisers for the past few years). But the kit turns out to be very labor-intensive, mainly due to the excessive resin flash on nearly every part. The huge overpour on the keel is the least of my problems -- the belt sander in my garage will make short work of that, though the keel itself is so riddled with bubble holes that I'll spend a long time filling them with putty and sanding smooth. My major concerns right now are where to find suitable metal gun barrels to replace the, frankly, atrocious resin ones in the kit. I can get the 13-in./.35 cal. gun barrels from B&D Barrels (through freetimehobbies.com) but what would you folks recommend as the source for the 6-in./.40 cal. secondary gun barrels? The 57-mm and 37-mm light gun barrels I can probably make from stretched black styrene sprue. Also, I should point out that the assembly instructions included with the kit are ridiculous -- the diagrams are crude and misspellings are rampant -- they even misspelled the ship's name! It's ILLINOIS, not ILLIONIS! I might expect something like this from a Chinese company, but this kit was made in the USA!
Also, a separate question on the photos posted in previous years on this particular (GWF fans) site -- they are listed only as "image" and there is no link to open them. Have these all been deleted? That would be surprising, considering the number of accolades they received from other readers.