WW I dreadnaught or German kits???

If you don't mind working on 1/700 scale, or working in resin, the range of kits from the Russian firm Combrig is very much worth a look. It's a huge range, concentrating mainly on Russian and Soviet subjects, but recently the company has been branching into British subjects. A few months ago they did an H.M.S. Tiger (the WWI battlecruiser) that got rave reviews, and their latest is the most overdue subject in the world of ship modeling: H.M.S. Dreadnought. There's a review of it on the Steel Navy website (<www.steelnavy.com>). It looks beautiful.

One great thing about Combrig kits: by the standards of resin manufacturers they're very reasonably priced. (I suspect the exchange rate for Russian currency has something to do with that.) Their instruction sheets leave something to be desired (though I understand the recent ones are much improved), but their castings are first-rate. Their most recent kits (including the Dreadnought) have photo-etched brass parts as well.

I should say that I've only got one Combrig kit (the Russo-Japanese War battleship Imperator Alexander III), and I haven't built it yet. But it's at the top of my "Gotta Build" pile. I don't have lots of experience with resin kits, but it looks to me like an excellent material for many purposes. I'm impressed, for instance, with the boat davits in that kit. The resin is just a little bit flexible; you can bend the davits quite a bit without breaking them, yet they take paint ok.

Worth checking out.

Like Jeff said, Alanger still has the 1/350 Konig and Grosser Kurfurst out on ebay on a fairly consistant basis for not bad prices. However, I've recently seen someone in Europe offering a 1/350 ICM Markgraf. The description states the model is actually the Konig, but there is an extra tree included in the kit to convert it to the Markgraf. This same person/company also offers the Konig and Grosser Kurfurst, however they are in different boxes than the standard ones ICM released them in. So far, Alanger has not countered with any offerings on ebay of these "new" boxes. They still offer their ICM kits in the original release boxes. My first thought was they were new releases, but I was under the impression that Alanger was now the distributer for ICM. Has anyone heard anything different ?

Thanks guys,

I just ordered the Koning, it is still available through some warehouses, my LHS tracked it down.

It's going to take until February to get it though!

Your only real choice are the ICM Konig and Grosser Kurfurst. They've been re-released by a company called Alanger, and they can still be had on Ebay. Nice kits too...

Jeff

There are several ways that you can go to solve your problem.
!) Check out some of the english model boat magazines. They have adds from several manufacturers. The cost could be a problem but at 1/96th there is a lot of kit and they can be radio controled.
2) Purchase a set of plans and scratch build. David Macgregor plans Service have several dreadnaughts fo both the Royal Navy and the Imperial German Navy.
I have a set of plans for SMS Thuringan which I have enlarged from 1/100 to 1/72 which will give me an eight foot long model.
Hope this is of use,
Dai

The only one i can think of is the 1:600 Airfix Iron Duke but that maybe a bit small for what you are after. I did it some years back it all right but needs some scratchbuilding to get it right.