Photo etch for musashi

I would check into that Lion Roar set. They are usually quite good.  Also, there is one issue surrounding Musashi dating from her 1943 refit; she was equipped with depth charge racks. I have never seen anyone model them. If you find that Lion Roar or Flyhawk does, please let me know.

Bill

Also consider this.

Your model plus PE will probably take you 1000 hours to build if you do it right. That's right- three hours every day for a year.

Now that's the beauty of it, but....

Whether or not any AM parts cost you $ 100 or $ 200 or $ 300, it's all peanuts compared to the investment of time. Just be sure you don't look back and say "wish I'd...".

thats kinda the thing morrison, anyone can build a kit as the instructions say, and without the AM parts, i dont want it to look like a regular ol' kit.

i remember seeing ships at my first model show and it was amazing the fine detail. ships are something that are amazing when they are done to the T. without it, they are just a normal build that can be done easily, and for this kit, im going to invest time, so i want to do it with the intricate detail.

and to warship guy, i havent seen any kits that include depth charge racks at all. what i do like about the flyhawk kit is that it includes multiple pieces of PE for the exhaust stack instead of just the grill and the lower deck. also, on the forward air defense center, it includes rigging which is something i have not seen on any of the other kits.

what do you think though...do you think the flyhawk kit should fit good enough without doing major reconstruction to the PE? my thought is that it should be fine other than the fact i wont use everything unless of course they made the guns, tower, or the ship overall, larger.

i would love to just deal with the lion roar kit, but they are running around 200+ unless i go with the hobby easy or the import hobby, which i dont really trust either and would love to make this as cheap as possible.

A contributor named Firedeck built an award-winning Yamato last year using the Lion Roar set.  His model was truly magnificent!  Look for the detailed thread of his build in this forum; you will be impressed.

BTW, my name is Morrison as well . . .

Bill

actually, through my scrounging of the internet to see what options the PE sets offered, i think i have seen that one by firedeck.

i contacted Tamiya to see if there were any changes in the kit from old to new. They stated, overall, it should be the same sizes. They also directed me to the instruction manual for it and i would believe that i could probably use the flyhawk kit or any kits made for the new tooling set. Reason being, after seeing the instruction manual for the newer kit, it is definately a modelers kit and not an assemblers kit as the older kits seem to be. By this, i mean that the older kits are really just a kit to put together and isnt challenging until you get into aftermarket parts whereas, the new tooling kit has probably, quadurple the amount of parts and is definately more challenging even without using the PE parts that come with it. The hull itself is made into like 4 parts, not including the rudders, just to give an exampe.

so, with a little more thought and contemplation, i may go with the flyhawk version and see what happens. Since most parts arent going to be affected by a need to actually fit something, it shouldnt cause any problems unless it is something that has to fit on another part that is different design from kit to kit. But, most parts wont have that difference since most of it is railings walkways. If i decide to go that route, unless i get more information that tells me not to try it, i will definately list it so that people for the future know.

Good luck with it!

Bill

also, forgot to mention about the musashi upgrade that was done. from my understanding, the upgrade wasnt just with depth charge rails.  it was really just about the same upgrade that the yamato went thru with getting extra AA weapons placed and was in april of  '44. However, i am not expert on naval ships, so i could be wrong.

the research i found did mention 2 depth charge rails being added to the fan tail. where on the fan tail is questionable

You are correct, except that the 5 inch AA guns fiven to Yamato were unavailable, so lighter weapons were fitted.  The Tamiya Musashi correctly has the AA suite for the 1943 refit. The depth charge rails have never been provided.