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This is a quick review (okay, not so quick...) of the new MikroMir 1/144 Sturgeon class kit. The kit consists of a large, fiberglass hull and two sprue of polystyrene parts. The model builds up to a large (25-26 inches long) representation of the "as built", short hull Sturgeon class. Essentially this is SSN 637, USS Sturgeon, as she slid down the ways at Electric Boat in 1966. The hull is GRP (glass reinforced fiberglass). It has a very noticeable raised "lip" seam where the two half hull pieces are joined together (see photo). I used wet sand paper (400 & 600 grades) to carefully remove the raised join line. I employed a tip that I had received a while back from Don Preul, Curator of the US Naval Academy Museum. Sand at a 45 degree angle to the seam, alternating the strokes front to back and back to front. This helps avoid flattening the hull at the seam. I may have to use some light putty to smooth things along the sanded join line. BTW, I should mention that the GRP gives off a rather strong smell as you sand it. Definitely use wet sandpaper to keep the GRP dust down!
The hull has delicate scribing. In some cases, it was so shallow that I carefully rescribed details with multiple light passes of my scribing tool. Some of the rescribing I did was at the top side bow fittings and hatches, etc., and the torpedo tube shutters. Any mistakes were filled in with light putty. The GRP hull also has a molded on "mushroom" anchor at the rear of the hull. Very nice, but would that the Sturgeons had mushroom anchors, which they did NOT! So, if you want to be accurate, sand that off as well. CAUTION! You will have to be careful not to ruin the steep, marked hull curvature in this area. Take your time and check the shape frequently as you go. The various ballast tank lower vents are simply lightly scribed oblongs in the GRP hull. I would have hoped at this scale and price that maybe some photoetch vents would have been included, along with some round strainers for the seawater intakes and outlets. Same for the upper air ballast tank escape vents. In fact, there is no photoetch sheet with the kit.
Since this is an "as built" Sturgeon class kit, it lacks the towed array "hump" and deploy equipment on the hull installed later, as well as the dome at the topside rear of the hull. You can always add these if you desire with scratch building
The polystyrene parts are on four separate sprues. The bow nose cap is two halves that have to be glued together (why?? Another seam to address). The sail is two halves, and there are small indentations up the sides where you can place thin wire "hand grabs". I have a tool that makes these, as it's a "roll your own" project, with none provided in the kit. But a word of caution. I believe these were removable grabs, as there are plenty of photos where they are absent. I have seen them on port or starboard sides in some Sturgeon class photos on Navsource, and the rungs lead up to the bridge cockpit. There are also two additional sets of indentations for handles, port and starboard, near the aft end of the sail. These are fictional. Fill them in with putty. The upper sail "cap" is a separate piece, with scribed in, housed masts. There are also a set of masts and placement instructions in the directions. BUT, there is no separate, alternative sail "cap" provided with insert holes for the masts. So if you want your masts raised, get our your drill bits and pinvise to go to work drilling on the sail cap. Annoying...
You have sail planes, rudders and stern planes (with the hinged area scribed in, again, probably need to be made more prominent by scribing) with the distinctive Sturgeon class "end plates" for the stern planes in separate polystyrene halves. These are all in two halves that have to be glued together, which is a plus at this scale in that they give some scale thickness to the pieces. Now, when you glue these together, you can use your Plastic Weld or other model glues, like Testors that soften and slightly melt the polystyrene. BUT, when you attach the polystyrene pieces to the GRP hull, you will have to use cyanoacrylate or 2 part epoxy.
Now we come to the propeller (aka, the screw). It has an unmarked hub piece and six blades. Not the correct seven blades!!! Now, the previous MikroMir 1/350 Sturgeon kits (short hull, long hull, Parche) had the correct photo etch 7 blade propeller. How this ended up with only six blades is puzzling, to say the least. The kit blades provided do a very decent job of replicating the correct 3 dimensional curved shapes, but there are only six of them. Sigh. I had sent them a copy of the Greg Sharpe 637 drawings, and they already had done smaller scale models of this class correctly. I suppose you could try to fabricate a 7th blade, but is is a 3 dimensional complex, curved shape. You will also have to then calculate where to place the blades on the hub (51.4 degrees apart), which is unmarked (even for the wrong six blades, there are no blade placement indicators). And, the blades are meant to be butt glued onto the hub, not the best way to do insure adhesion.
My advice is as follows:
1.) Remove the hub and the six blades from the sprue.
2.) Find the nearest trash can.
3.) Deposit the pieces in the can
4.) Get the Mulsanne Mike (Mike Fuller) beautiful,1/144 scale, correctly shaped, 7 blade "J" screw (see above post). These three-D printed screws save the kit! You will have to center and drill a hole in the blunt stern to accept the shaft; not a difficult task. Trust me, you will be much happier with the results and save yourself a lot of tedious work.
This seems to be the latest trend with MikroMir in submarine screws of giving the modeler a set of blades to butt glue to an unmarked propeller hub. They did it on their 1/350 Russian "Mike" class and their Russian "Papa" class subs as well. Which again can be corrected with Mulsanne Mike’s 3-D printed products for those two kits. I should say that I am a huge fan of his entire line of 1/350 scale, printed 3-D screws for submarines. Extremely accurate and much superior to the photoetch or styrene versions provided with kits!! I have bought quite a few sets for both my Mikromir and resin Yankee Modelworks kits. And, no, I don’t own stock in his company.
The Sturgeon kit comes with a nice set of decals with hull numbers, draft markings, and red marker buoy tops. It also has escape trunk DSRV docking markings, but I don't know if they are correct for this class in "as built". They look more like 688 class markings. There is a display stand, which is a clear plastic set of three pieces. To me, it looks ugly, but that's a personal prejudice on my part. The instruction sheet is illustrated but extremely basic, but other than doing a lot of sanding and filling, there aren't that many pieces to assemble. The parts are numbered on the instruction sheet, but not on the sprue themselves. Fortunately, it is not too difficult to figure out which is which.
Addendum to post I forgot to mention the zincs. There are four sacrificial zincs that are placed 45 degrees from the rudder and stern planes at the stern. These are long narrow strips of metal. What do they look like on the model? Not there at all! Fortunately, they are easy to replicate with strip styrene, and should be a dull white in color. Another bobble on this kit.
Overall, you will need to put in some effort to get a decent representation of the Sturgeon from this kit. A lot of what I would consider "unforced errors" that could have made it a much better kit. It's a large scale and a large model, so mistakes in the kit and the build will stand out. I wish that a lot of small items could have been corrected, especially since this can be built into a very nice kit with some effort.
I am a big fan of MikroMir, as they are the only source for many interesting submarine kits. But, I really wish they had done a better job with this foray into larger scales. I am sorry to have to enumerate the issues above, but I have to be honest for my fellow modelers, so they know what is involved. At the kit's price range, I am not sure how well it will sell.
MikroMir had tentative plans for a 688 in this scale (3 feet long!!), and I also sent those plans along with some photos to MikroMir. I know one of the other modelers here who was on that class also sent information to them. Fingers crossed for that product!
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File comment: GRP hull. Seam marked with red arrows
DSC_7433.jpg [ 14.83 KiB | Viewed 1629 times ]
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_________________ Tom Dougherty Researcher for: "Project Azorian”https://www.amazon.com/Azorian-Raising-K-129-Michael-White/dp/B008QTU7QY"Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129" Bookhttps://www.usni.org/press/books/project-azorian
Last edited by Tom Dougherty on Sat Jul 24, 2021 12:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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