I know its ridiculous, but I am considering buying the 1/200 Trumpeter USS Arizona. I've never worked with PE before. Its supposed to be a one shot kit so I may just take the dive.
question. See the pic of the bow railing. How is this usually made and attached to the kit? Will the railing most likely be in sections? How to keep the sections from being bent, etc.
Probably way over my head with this kit, but with a stash of 300+ kits I never was known to think straight.
Craig
Musicman59 wrote the following:
The less cutting of the railing, the better it is to attach it. I addressed some PE railing info on my 1/350 USS Salem site. See if it will help you.
thx. this helps a lot. how is railing, etc attached to the deck? are there placement holes?
I don't know what your PE railing looks like or how it is attached. This was my first, and only, time at attaching PE parts to a ship model. My ship model didn't have placement holes for the PE railing, but it had an extra 'rail' at the bottom of the rail sections just for gluing to the deck. Your Arizona is larger in scale (1/200) than my Salem model (1/350), so that might make a difference in how the railing is attached.
Don't know specifically how long the railing sections are for that kit, but usually they are reasonably long pieces. There are usually NOT any holes or locating features on the plastic kit.
Many of us attach PE rail> I know its ridiculous, but I am considering buying the 1/200 Trumpeter
Gold Medal had a book on working with brass. The railings I've used had a solid gutter along the bottom that gets crazy glued to the deck. One caution I've heard but never experience has to do with resin kits. One guy in our area used long rail sections on a resin kit - the CTE (Coefficent of Thermal Expansion) for resin is much different than brass - his ship got cold in the car and the railings all warped. So he now usues smaller sections. I also saw one submarine kit with a large brass after market glued to resin - it partially separated in his car on the way to our show. Not sure if this is a problem with plastic and brass. But that's a big ship and could have some long rails - what really counts is end to end change which is a function of length. After having seen these two problems - I'm surprised I've never seen any posts on it.
Val Kraut
Val Kraut wrote the following:
His 1/200 Arizona is a plastic model kit, so I don't know if that CTE would apply to his model. I, however, have a 1/350 resin model, so I'll be careful to wrap it in plenty of thermal blankets if I ever move. (Honey, take the blanket off our Grandson. I need it for my ship model) :-) Actually, in the larger scales, like 1/350 -1/200, I would prefer a resin model since the detail is much cleaner. The only downside is the cost that can run 5 to 10 times the cost of injected plastic. My 1/350 resin model of the Heavy Cruiser USS Salem cost me $250 back in 1999. It was the first, and only model of the Salem ever produced ( a 1/700 model came later). The only reason I paid that much for it, or any model, was that I served on the USS Salem and had been looking for a model of it since 1958.
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