tamiya waterline series

I haven't build any yet, but I have just bought the JMSDF LST-4002 "Shimokita" last Saturday. Of course I opened the box as soon as I got home
The model was beautiful!!! It looks pretty easy to build, it has a wonderful detailed construction manual, and comes with a whole range of tanks, trucks, jeeps, artillery and helicopters. As well as two LCAC to transfer everything to shore. I'll have to check to be sure, but as far as I know the bay ramp can be opened up, so no choice in open or closed. There's an actual mechanism to open the huge door!! Because ths ship has so much detail inside, Tamiya supplied clear deck plating, complete with helo-markings. This way you can "have the cake and eat it too", meaning that you can build a fully enclosed model, but will still be able to see what's going on inside.
What was very important for me, was the price. It's not a very cheap model, but not extremely expensive either. I got mine for about €45,- euro's. Granted, much more than the €15 euro's I paid for the USS Boxer from Revell, but they don't even compare to each other in detail. Besides, what other model comes with dock, vehicles, helo's and LCAC's and two patrol hydrofoils!!!!
Below is a link to a built version of this ship:
http://www.tamiya.com/english/products/31006shimokita/shimokita.htm

I'll have to see how this model turns out, but I think I'll be getting more of this line in the future. I just hope Tamiya will also produce American and European ships in this scale.

Remko

The 1/700 "Waterline Series" is now about thirty years old. It got started, if I remember right, in the mid-seventies, when four Japanese companies, Tamiya, Hasegawa, Fujimi, and Aoshima, agreed to collaborate on a project to produce kits for all the ships of the WWII Japanese Navy (or at least the more important ones). Olde Phogeys like me can remember that, prior to that time, scarcely any Japanese ship kits were available in this country. There were a few Yamatos knocking around (most notably the horribly inaccurate 1/600 one from Aurora), but that was about it. The only thing approaching a "standard scale" in plastic warship kits (as opposed to diecast metal ones) was 1/600, which Airfix had adopted for its British and German vessels.

Since then 1/700 has become one of the two most popular warship kit scales (the other being 1/350).

Initially the chief virtue of 1/700 was seen to be its convenient size: a modeler could build a fleet and put it in a curio cabinet. It was taken for granted that parts like cranes, catapults, and radar screens couldn't be molded to scale - and few people even thought about guardrails. I don't remember when the first photo-etched parts made their appearance; seems like it was sometime in the very late seventies. With that development modelers started thinking of 1/700 ships as exercises in fine detail. The photo-etched parts from companies like Gold Medal Models, White Ensign, and Tom's Model works would have been literally unbelievable thirty years ago.

The quality of the kits has always varied quite a bit. The conventional wisdom used to be that, of the four original Japanese companies, Tamiya was the best, followed by Hasegawa, Fujimi, and Aoshima - in that order. Since then several other companies have joined the trend. In my personal opinion the three best at the moment are (in no particular order) Skywave, Tamiya, and Italeri. (The latter's range is quite small, but its H.M.S. Hood and Graf Spee are among the very best.) And the latest entrant, Dragon, has produced some excellent new kits in the past year or so.

Tamiya, of course, is one of the best kit manufacturers around. I'm especially impressed by the fact that it's recently retooled some of the ships it did back in the seventies. The old Tamiya Yamato, for instance, was a good kit - but the new, revised version is a masterpiece.

To my knowledge Tamiya has only committed one blunder in the 1/700 line: the islands of the carriers Enterprise and Hornet are ridiculously skinny.

If you're looking for good American vessels in this scale, I can recommend the Tamiya Missouri, New Jersey, and Fletcher. Skywave makes several excellent 1/700 American vessels - the Independence-class light carrier is especially nice. (It's also available in a Dragon box - as are several other Skywave kits.) The new Dragon Arizona is excellent, and Dragon has just announced an Essex-class carrier. (The airplanes are to be molded in clear plastic - paint everything but the canopy.)

For the German navy, there are several new Bismarcks. I have the Dragon one, and can recommend it highly; the Trumpeter one, as I understand it, is also excellent. The Tamiya Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prinz Eugen are beautiful kits as well, as are the Italeri pocket battleships.

It's a great part of the hobby - provided you're nearsighted. I don't recommend it for folks who have trouble focusing at short distances.

Hope this helps a little.

After years of Entex, Aurora, Revell, Monogram, Lidberg, and Airfix, when I first opened a Tamiya HMS Hood in the Christmas of 1978, is was like comparing a fine cut diamond to a lump of coal.
IMO, these are great kits. At the time, no one had as fine as molds as they did, and the individual plastic wraped parts trees were fine. The instructions were in Japanese but it did take me long to figure them out because of the plan layouts. I was impressed with the added weighted bar and the little place moulded on the bottom of the hull to put your name and date. The Hood came with a three fold color template.
I built the Shinano, Tone, Mushashi, Alabama, New Jersey, Hood, Hornet, Saratoga, and the Hasagawa Essex many times and loved every build.

Scott

I think Jtilley has covered just about everything but I have been building these kits since the very early 80's myself and currently have a couple of dozen on the display shelf. I love the scale and most recently I have started working on an Essex carrier from Hasegawa. Size and display space are why I work in this scale and I think that the selection of kits in this scale is second to none.

I am using a photo etch set for the first time with my current build and while it looks great it is also taking ten times as long to build. Definitely for intermediate to advanced modelers only and for the very patient. With 3 kids and two cats in the house I also doubt the PE parts will stay in place for long. Might have to invest in some of those acrylic boxes.

You should also check out the modelwarships.com website. Anyway, enjoy your builds and post some pics for us to look at.

Here are some pics of my current build with the saratoga in the background.



Here is a sample of the PE. Each of the Quad gun mounts consists of 6 pieces. Very hard on the eyes. Magnifying lamp or optivisor mandatory!!!

what I think sucks is that with all those 1/700 scale aircraft out there for the carriers nobody ever made a Devastator in 1/700 scale oh and by the way the Hornet and Enterprise from Tamiya the island layout would make them about Midway Era so really that would excuse the hornet from any quirks if there were any but for the Enterprise the aircraft that came with the kit would make it post refit "44-45" but as I said before the Island is pre refit and the armament is completely wrong for a carrier that was refitted with 40mm AA guns instead of the Quad and Dual 12.7mm(50 caliber)AA guns that are currently on the kit. And I have 2 of the Enterprise 1/700 scale kits one would be done in the pre refit scheme and the other the way it looked until the end of the war.

It's all I've ever built, really. I've just completed my first airplane kit less than a year ago, and I'm 36! The selection is huge, especially when you consider all the resin subjects to come out lately in 1:700 waterline. The addition of brass photo-etch to these babies just puts them over-the-top!! These are the good days for the 1:700 people.....
When you can visit www.steelnavy.com and check out the list of vendors on their mainpage. You can literally get lost in the selections available to you, my friend!!- Craig

Ah, Grasshopper, you just have not looked beyone plastic manufacturers. We have had 1/700 resin TBDs available for years in our Airstrike 700 range. They're STILL available.

Cheers,
John Snyder
White Ensign Models
http://WhiteEnsignModels.com

The Skywave/Dragon 1/700 Independence-class light carrier (at least the Dragon one I have) contains two - count 'em, two - aircraft: one F9F Panther and one TBD Devastator. Rather odd, considering that nearly all the TBDs ever built had been either shot down or scrapped before the first Independence-class ship was commissioned. Perhaps Skywave just wanted to tease us.

My big complaint with the Tamiya 1/700 Enterprise and Hornet is that the islands are too skinny. The discrepancy, if I remember correctly, amounts to something in the neighborhood of 3/32" - a lot in such a tiny scale.

Quite some time back I started a conversion project to build a Yorktown, using parts from those two kits. I ordered a set of plans (reproduced from the Navy's "Booklet of General Plans") for the Yorktown from The Floating Drydock. In addition to making the mistake in the width of the island obvious, those plans showed an interesting goof that's common to all kits of that class (including the big Trumpeter one). The gently sloping forward face of the stack - a prominent feature in those ships - has a huge, open space in it. On the plan of the island platforms it's marked simply "Void," with no explanation. The space takes the form of a gap, at least ten feet wide, running down from the stack cap to the platform at the stack's base. My best guess is that it was intended to provide air circulation around the funnel uptakes.

That gap is hard to see in most photos of the ships, because the mast structure and other objects in front of the stack get in the way. But it's there, all right. In some photos of the Yorktown it shows up as what appears to be a wide black stripe on the front of the stack. It's also quite clearly visible in several pictures of the recently-discovered wreck in Robert Ballard's Return to Midway. The Enterprise had the gap, even after her mid-war refit, which considerably revised the look of her island structure. I don't have any pictures of the Hornet in front of me at the moment, but I'm pretty sure her stack had a gap in its front too.

Fixing the problems with the islands of the Tamiya 1/700 kits is a little more complicated than it looks at first glance. It's easy enough to spread the island halves apart with styrene spacers. (If you don't put such a spacer at the front of the stack, you'll have the gap just about right.) But then all the island platforms have to be replaced, as does the stack cap. (Tamiya made another, smaller goof there. One of the circular funnel caps - I think it's the forward one, but I could be mistaken - is supposed to be slightly smaller in diameter than the others. Trumpeter missed that one too.) And the detail on the flight deck - arrester cables, etc. - would need to be modified to accommodate the fatter island. But what a difference those changes would make!

In my little project I got as far as rebuilding the island. Before I got around to modifying the flight deck I got diverted by something else - as so often happens with lazy, undisciplined modelers like me.

I hope Tamiya, in its current wave of re-toolings of 1/700 scale kits, will get around to the Enterprise and Hornet - and maybe even give us a Yorktown.

You've got to be a bloody watch maker to work with1/700 . 1/600 is a better scale that can readly see detail. Unfortunatly airfix drop the ball as usual and theres just a few kits Besides theres no such thing as a bad model just more of a challange RIGHT
Some of us are more challenged than others am I right or am I not

Been building 1:700 scale since the mid 70's, modern US Navy. Current fleet numbers 60+ including 15 carriers. I do have a couple of 1:350 carriers (Enterprise, Stennis and Connie), but as a condo dweller, 700 scale is the only way to go.

I'm a fan of 1/700 kits, but I actually agree pretty much with sailordave. I don't think there was anything wrong with 1/600. A collection of ships in that scale would take up scarcely any more space than one in 1/700, and the difference in workability, for want of a better term, is noticeable. I would have been happier if 1/600 had become the most popular.

I get a little tired of modelers who look down their noses at people who have trouble working in smaller scales. As often as not the problem is less one of skill or patience than of something none of us can control: eyesight.

I happen to be nearsighted. I'd have trouble recognizing my wife from across the room without my glasses, but until my eyes started showing the effects of late middle age I didn't need magnification to build models. Recently I've had to resort occasionally to flip-up magnifiers - and believe me, no form of mechanical magnification is as comfortable or effective as a pair of eyes that focus clearly at short distances. Whenever I talk to people about ship modeling I make the suggestion: if you aren't near-sighted, you'll probably be happy either working in a large scale or picking another hobby.

Unfortunately all this is, in practical terms, moot, because 1/700 scale pretty clearly is here to stay. The good news is that the range of 1/350 kits seems to be expanding rapidly; the bad news is that they're so much more expensive.

Know the feeling JTilley, as I get tired of modelers who look down their noses at those of us who prefer 1:700. At 53, I now have to model with glasses....in ALL scales. If for no other reason than to read the darned instruction sheets!
I luv 1:350, but the 1 question I dont have to ask myself with a 700 kit is *where the hell am I gonna put this thing*? Fortunately for those of us that are both visually challenged because of age and spacially challenged because of living space, 1:700 scale IS here to stay. No way in hell would I be able to amass the collection I have now in 350. Not nocking it, just a statement of fact. YMMV.

I have 3 carriers from the waterline series..the enterprise, hornet an yorktown..They are very nice kits, a little small for my taste, but have alot of detail..they are very expensive either..you can get a kit from ebay for about 8-10 USD.

nsclcctl how are your mdels coming i just got 15 of them both has and tam destroyers and cruisers i am hooked on them

I lean toward Tamiya & Hasegawa. I've built the Dragon "USS Atlanta". I've got the Dragon Independence class. I'm not impressed with Fujimi quaility.

i just built a has opened up a mini craft and a tam. all the same class destroyer
man the minicraft is a total waste of plastic
the tam is a half a waste the has is sooooo much nicer
i swear the minicraft and the tam are the same molds

Speaking about the 1/700 scale in general, I started in it for two reasons - space AND price. I had to move into a fairly small apartment with NO extra space, so that knocked anything over about 12-inches-long out of the running. As far as cost goes, when I started looking around for a Victory ship kit, I was stunned by the prices, in the $200 and up range ... which is way outside my league.

As far as being snooty about building really tiny ships, nooooooooooo ... and I too have lousy eyesight, but cannot bring myself to spend another $50 on a headband magnifier. May have to, though, as I live in fear of putting an eye out with an Xacto blade. I rather like the fact that they take a long time ... it fills my evenings, and if all I get done is the four lifeboats around the superstructure, hey, it's done and it has been done as well as I can do it. Satisfaction is what I am looking for, as opposed to filling up an entire wall with completed kits.