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Imai 1/80 Cutty Sark wood and plastic on ebay

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  • Member since
    December 2002
Imai 1/80 Cutty Sark wood and plastic on ebay
Posted by lenroberto on Friday, December 12, 2008 12:59 PM
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&item=270314405899

This must be pretty rare...anyone know anything?

But no bids please cuz I want it!

-Len
  • Member since
    February 2006
  • From: The green shires of England
Posted by GeorgeW on Friday, December 12, 2008 2:21 PM

Thanks for the lead on this one  lenroberto, I have the 1:120 plastic version, this looks like a fine addition to the collection, but I know nothing about it.

Two days to go eh? hmmn.

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Friday, December 12, 2008 11:55 PM

I have an extremely vague recollection of this kit - but I don't recall ever having actually seen it.  Frankly I'd be a little nervous about buying it.

Imai's plastic sailing ship kits were, as has been noted many times in this Forum, among the best ever produced.  The Imai 1/120 (or is it 1/125?) Cutty Sark is surely one of the best versions of that ship - if not the best - ever to appear in kit form.  The company had an extraordinary sense of adventure - both in terms of the subjects it picked and the approaches it took to them.  That meant some superb products.  It also meant an occasional dud.  I did get a look many years ago at the Imai H.M.S. Victory, which had a "white metal" hull and wood decks.  It was about the size of the Airfix kit (1/200 scale or thereabouts), cost over a hundred dollars, and was one of the most ridiculous kits I've ever seen.  The detail on the cast metal hull halves was crude compared to the Airfix or Revell versions (the big Heller one hadn't appeared yet), and the assembly methods were downright irrational.  I've often wondered whether that sort of ambitious, expensive charge down the wrong path had something to do with the fact that Imai went out of business.

I have no idea what that plastic and wood Cutty Sark is like.  If it's an enlarged version of the plastic kit, it may be superb.  If it bears any resemblance to that Victory, it should be avoided like the plague. 

Later edit:  I took a look at the photos on e-bay.  They don't really show enough to justify forming a firm opinion about the kit, but on the basis of the pictures it looks to me like a serious scale model.  The few detail shots of the finished model certainly are impressive, the basic shapes look right, and the rigging diagrams that are visible in a couple of the pictures look reasonable, if somewhat simplified (as is to be expected). 

The real test of a Cutty Sark kit, to my notion, is how it represents the bulwarks.  In reality they're made of sheet iron, with iron rod diagonal stanchions holding them up.  To my knowledge, no kit manufacturer's representation of them comes close to reality.  (The various plastic kit manufacturers turned those iron rod stanchions into diagonal gussets; the HECEPOB wood companies make the bulwarks out of wood.)  I can't tell from the e-bay photos how this kit handles the problem.  (It's a perfectly legitimate problem that really does force the manufacturer into some sort of compromise.  If rendered to scale - even the 1/80 of this kit - those bulwarks would be as thin as a sheet of paper.)

I wonder about the crew figures.  One photo shows them in a plastic bag on a sprue.  In that shot they look remarkably like enlarged versions of the ones in the old Revell kit.  But the figures visible in one of the manufacturer's photos of the finished model look different from the Revell ones.  Neither shot, I hasten to add, is clear enough for me to really judge.

I do think it's remarkable that Imai included 60 crew figures.  In her tea- and wool-clipper days (when she was configured like the kit seems to be), she had a crew of 28.  She might have shipped 60 when she was serving as a training ship, but she would have looked a good bit different by then.  This may be the only ship model kit that's ever been packaged with too many crew figures. 

Given the current pricing structure of the ship model kit business, I guess I'd have to say that the current bid of about $41.00 looks like a bargain price for this kit.  I'm basing that opinion entirely on those pictures; it is of course entirely possible that the thing has some basic flaw that I can't see.  But these days, when $41.00 will just about buy you two 1/72-scale WWII fighters, it looks to me like a reasonable risk.  If I were in the market for a Cutty Sark kit (which I'm not) and had $41.00 + to spare (which I don't), I'd probably bid on it.

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    January 2005
  • From: Tampa, Florida, USA
Posted by steves on Sunday, December 14, 2008 2:25 AM

In the early 1980s Imai had a fairly large catalog of wood ship kits, which included no less than five Cutty Sark kits in 1/120, 1/100/ 1/80 and 1/60 scales.   The 1/120 kit had a solid wood hull, the 1/60 kit was a hull cross-section at the mainmast, while the1/100 and 1/80 kits were plank-on-bulkhead.   The kit currently on ebay called "Cutty Sark, The King" was an enhanced version of the basic 1/80 Cutty Sark kit which included cloth sails, more brass fittings, teak decking strips and other extra parts.  The rendering of the bulwarks is somewhat correct on the 1/60 cross section  but incorrect on the other kits. I believe the last Imai 1/80 Cutty Sark kit on ebay was the regular kit and went for around $300.  

In addition to the Cutty Sark, other 1/80 kits included Susquehanna, Constitution and Thermopylae.   I have the Susquehanna and, while the kit is of very high material quality, it contains many inaccuracies.  Thermopylae was probably the Cutty Sark kit, ala Revell, with a green hull and other minor changes.  It also appears to have the bogus cargo hatch bewteen the main and mizzen masts, apparently copied from the Revell kit.  On the Revell kit, this hatch was used to cover up the gap in the deck planking, where the aft deckhouse was deleted, to avoid an expensive mold change.  On a wood ship kit this would not be necessary as wood deck strips can easily be laid where the deckhouse would have been.  Someone at Imai apparently looked at the Revell Thermopylae and assumed that the hatch was really supposed to be on the ship.

Other wood ship kits by Imai were Karin Maru (a brigantine built in Holland and the first  Japanese ship to cross the Pacific) and Golden Hind at 1/50, Half Moon at 1/40, Sir Winston Chuchill at 1/75, Catalan Ship at 1/30, Santa Maria at 1/45, Victory Cross Section at 1/80 and Wasa Coss section  at 1/60.   At that time, Imai also had a line of small ship-in-bottle lits ranging in scale from1/450 to 1/900 , in addition to almost 40 plastic ship kits in various scales

Steve Sobieralski, Tampa Bay Ship Model Society

  • Member since
    March 2007
  • From: Portsmouth, RI
Posted by searat12 on Sunday, December 14, 2008 12:16 PM
I had a look at the Imai 1/80 Cutty Sark on Ebay, and frankly, if you are going to go to all the trouble of building a plank on frame hull, it seems to me you might as well have the rest of the kit be in wood as well!  I'd rather see a really good plastic hull with the rest be in wood!  While I am very fond of the Cutty Sark, this ship has been reproduced by so many manufacturers in so many scales, with so many levels of accuracy, I can't help asking why not something else???  What about 'Flying Cloud,' which set at least as many records as Cutty Sark, and on a lot tougher sailing route too (round the Horn!).  Donald McKay's finest!
  • Member since
    December 2002
Posted by lenroberto on Monday, December 15, 2008 8:26 AM
Well it ended at $282.00...way out of my range....

-Len
  • Member since
    March 2007
  • From: Portsmouth, RI
Posted by searat12 on Monday, December 15, 2008 9:17 AM
Well, don't feel too bad... If you want a good Cutty Sark in a large scale, the 1/96 Revell Cutty Sark is still one of the best tall ship kits out there (and they can be bought cheap too!)
  • Member since
    December 2002
Posted by lenroberto on Monday, December 15, 2008 11:03 AM
I know- look at my avatar!

Len
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