1/700 WWII ships question

While you're correct about "old eyes... small parts...", most of the

1/700 kits aren't difficult at all to build. And Hasegawa is as good a line as most. About the only "bad" line is the old Fujimi line.

The level of detail is entirely up to you. You can purchase all kinds of photo etch materials for them or you can build straight from the box. Either way, you'll have some very nice models to add to your collection - and the level of sophistication will be your decision.

I've got about seventy or seventy-five of them done. It makes for a nice collection - in a small display space.

Andy

Run through these two sites:

-- Chuck Ryan snipped-for-privacy@REMOVEearthlink.net Springfield OH

If you build them OOB (out of box) then they should work well for you. Not that hard a job. Of course, if you go with photo-etch kits and other detailing, they can be a handful.

Just some interesting historical information...

I recently read Shunsaku Tamiya's book "Master Modeler: Creating the Tamiya Style". This is a fascinating oral history of the company by Tamiya's president.

Tamiya produced wooden ship kits right after World War II. Tamiya, Hasegawa, Fujimi, and Aoshima were all located in Shizuoka for a good reason, it was a big lumber town where wood for producing models was readily available. The local model manufacturers formed an industry association which met regularly to discuss the business. Toward the late '60s, the companies were looking for ways to expand their product lines. On an overseas visit, Mr. Tamiya spotted a series of small scale metal ship models in a hobby shop window that he thought were really cool because you could see the relative size of each ship. Tamiya always had a passion for ships and wanted his company to start producing a line of constant scale ship models. He suggested to the industry association that Tamiya, Hasegawa, Fujimi, and Aoshima jointly produce a line of 1/700 scale ships and cooridnate their efforts so they wouldn't produce duplicate subjects. The companies all agreed to produce unique ship model classes in order to offer customers the maxiumum variety of ships. The ship classes for the first batch of kits were "drawn out of a hat" and thus began the 1/700 scale plastic ship line. I always wondered why all the 1/700 ship kits from these manufacturers had the same "look and feel".

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND reading this book! It is not a comprehensive history of Tamiya, but a very personal oral account of Mr. Tamiya's experiences with the company. There are really interesting tidbits of history about things like the 1/700 scale ship line, and about the time the company bought a Porsche so they could disassemble it to make a really accurate model (the mechanic they hired to reassemble it was NOT a happy person!). Another interesting story is about Tamiya's first visit to the Aberdeen Museum in freezing weather where he ruined a suit crawling under tanks to take photos. The really striking thread throughout the book is Mr. Tamiya's obsessive passion for modeling. This really started me thinking about modeling in different terms (and also got me buying more Tamiya kits).

READ THIS BOOK!

Martin

I would also stay far, far away from the old Aoshima kits. Bad fit and appallingly inaccurate. I would highly recommend White Ensign Models as a source of information and produts.

I tried my first 1/700 scale ship last year-- the Aoshima Bismarck. I didn't find out until after I had started it how inaccurate it was- it is not a kit I'd recommend or build again. I did buy a Tom's PE set for it--I used most of the parts, but found the firecontrol radars and such to be very difficult to assemble.

If and when I do another 1/700 scale ship, the only PE I'll use will be railings. They weren't that hard to install, and really made the whole model look better than it was, detail-wise.

1/350 is about the smallest i can handle. with very little display space, 1-2 is the most i can display. it's good my friends like my efforts, i have and excuse to build after i give them away.