Miguel wrote:
Again many thanks Steve,but after thinking and planning ,I found for me the best solution is to go with the ISW West Virginia,but wish to ask You a big favor , your BWN Superstructure is simply gorgeous ,how about to make the upper levels only,then will be a perfect replacement for the ISW kit(and cheaper than BWN piece) and is no need to resort in big surgery to the model,the I can use your other pieces like the mast tops, turrets and directors.
It is very simple for me to provide that for you. But I am concerned that it may not fit the ISW kit well giving you a very expensive unusable part and making for a very unhappy customer.
Let's assume the reason the sample BWN kit provided to me wasn't precisely to scale was because of shrinkage during curing. The BWN
master was probably built very accurately, but resin shrinks as it cures, and it does not shrink uniformly. Resin can shrink differently in different directions, how much depends an many factors and conditions.* In other words, the smallness of the BWN kit isn't a simple percentage reduction in size. The sample BWN kit loaned to me was narrow as well as short, but not by the same % fore-aft and side-to-side and vertically, and the shrinkage was not uniform from tip of the bow to extreme stern. Frankly, it was a scale mess most likely due to shrinkage, a common problem for large-scale resin kits. Generally, the larger the resin model, the more it can be affected by shrinkage. Although shrinkage is probably not noticeable to the modeler, it presents considerable problems for vendors trying to design accurately scaled products to fit inaccurately shrunken resin kits.
So the 3D-printed design for every deck and feature had to be adjusted to a different size in all three dimensions, each dimension differently one at a time. The adjustments were extremely complex because of the number of features and the geometry of the sloped vent trunking.
If you lay the 3D-printed design over scale plans, you will see that the upper-most deck and pilot house are essentially 1/350 scale in all dimensions. But as you go down, each deck below gets reduced proportionally until the lowest level is short enough and narrow enough to fit the sample BWN hull loaned to me. The uppermost level had to be to-scale or the BWN photo-etch cage mast wouldn't fit, the cage mast would be too big in diameter because photo-etch doesn't shrink. Which brings up another consideration:
When creating the 3D design, the adjustments not only had to fit the hull, they had to be done in such a way that when the resin BWN model with 3D parts placed on it was complete, the fighting tops would be level on top of the BWN photo-etch cage masts. The 3D superstructure was deliberately designed so that its height would ensure the top of the photo-etch brass cage foremast would match the height of of the BWN photo-etch mainmast (which sits on the hull) so that the fighting tops would be level.
Not knowing anything about the ISW kit, I have no idea if the 3D design intended to fit the BWN kit will provide level fighting tops if used on an ISW kit.
I am happy to offer the 3D superstructure to you without the 01 level if you like. But IMHO, the product might not fit the ISW kit well, noticeably so, and be a waste of your money and time.
Thoughts?
* Even the same two resin model parts pulled from the same mold on different days (different conditions like temperature, etc.) can be differently sized due to the factors affecting shrinkage.