These have actually been on the website for about a week or so (and some of you have already found them and placed orders, being the inquisitive and impatient crew that I LOVE!) but I just picked up the first production run of the HD decks for the Tamiya 1/350 Missouri.
A couple of notes...
First, there are so many different variants of "High Detail Brass" for the Missouri. There are fine offerings by LionRoar, FlyHawk, Eduard and White Ensign, plus other smaller detail sets. In short, you can replace a whole lot of stuff on the Missouri with PE if you want to. It is a target rich environment, so to speak.
So that left me with a bit of a problem. I knew that if I cut HD decks to match each of those offerings, SOMEBODY would say to me, "but I am using a COMBINATION of MULTIPLE brass sets." Am I right? Do I know you crazy people, or what?
So, what to do? You are going to want some cuts, but not all of them. But which ones?
Well, a wise man once said, "It is a lot easier to add a hole to a piece of wood than to remove one." Truer words were never spoken. So I went with the "minimum holes superset cross section." In other words, if ANY of the PE sets called for removing a plastic fitting, then I left the cut off of the HD deck.
But that left two problems. First, what if you wanted some of those holes anyway? And second, how could you tell where to place all of those dogonned little brass dowackies?
The answer was... to provide a full "box fit" template on cardstock! Now, with the Missouri HD decks you get not only the deck in the material of your choice, but also a full template cut from cardstock that will allow you to mark you deck with the features of your choice. Cut out those holes you want with an X-acto knife. Or put a teeny tiny little pencil dot on the deck to figure out where to mount your itty-bitty little 20mm gun. Or, be a total lunatic and use the template as a measuring guide, and transfer the measurements from the template to your beautiful uncut wood deck. However you want to do it, knock yourself out!
I, personally, think this is a pretty clever and creative way to provide you guys with not only the highest quality laser cut deck for making your Missouri truly stand out, but also to provide you with the template to help you position all of your beautiful brass - if I do say so myself.
With that said, here are the pictures!
- In this photo we see the High Detail deck on top, with the Box Fit deck on the bottom for comparison. These are both printed on Matte Photographic Paper, but all of our traditional materials (Maple, Teak, and Tinted Wood) are also available - AND, for the first time, we're experimenting with Camouflage decks, too. See the other thread about that!
- Here is a photo of the HD deck (again, printed on Matte Photographic Paper) along with the "Box Fit" cardstock template that comes with every HD deck.
So give or take...4 months I'm guessing, based on the timing of their previous releases.