Iron Shipwrights' 1:350 resin U.S.S. Maine . . .

Your way out of any pit you may fall into ...

Remember that ISW has a total customer satisfaction policy.  They want your build experience with one of their kits to be a good one. 

To that end they will replace any of the kit parts that you are not satisfied with that includes warps, mismolds and/or bubbles.   They will also replace, at no charge, parts which you mess up during the construction process, they break, you sand too far, or you loose a part in the carpet monster.  This includes the parts from the PE to the hull.

Ted and Jon at ISW have even replaced parts on a model which was knocked off a shelf by a cat two years after it was finished.

You do not need to have bought the kit from ISW, or from one of their vendors.  They replace parts on any of their kits wherever you may gave gotten them

The simple items are:

Cut off the pour stub with the back of an Xacto knife.  Draw the back of the point of the knife along the stub/hull intersection with moderate pressure.  Repeat until the parts separate.

Flat sand parts using wet-n-dry paper, wet sanded.  Attach the paper to some glass or plexiglass for a good flat surface.  Mark around the top edges with a Magic Marker and sand until the color shows through from the bottom.

Use your favorite putty.  I use Bondo Red and Bondo 2-part epoxy putty.  You will have to fill bubbles on the bottom.  Fill, sand, refill, resand, hit with some CA and sand once more.  Go lightly on the sanding lest you open more bubbles just below the surface.

Prime - you can use auto body primer or stuff from the hardware store.  My favorite is American Traditions Rust Red Primer from Lowes.  Krylon or Plasticote are also good.

Use your favorite paint.  Resin takes either enamel or acrylic equally well.   Paint first then apply the PE details.  Spray the fret of PE while you are painting the hull.

Measure the railing runs with a pair of draftsmans dividers.  Find logical breakpoints, bulkheads, gun tubs, ladderways, etc.  Try not to make your runs more than 3 or 4 inches.  Resist the urge to apply the rails to all ons side of a ship just because you have  apiece of railing that long.  Cut the rail on a piece of tile or glass with a #10 blade.  Cut in a rocking motion like a paper trimmer.

Pre-bend the parts.  A Hold-n-Fold tool is not a necessity.  Bend with some square-jaw pliers or between some opposed razor blades.  Make round bends around a drill shank - make them a bit smaller as brass has the tendency to spring back some.

Apply some pin-head size dots of white glue at each end of the rail and every half inch.  Apply the rail with the white glue.  White Glue grabs and hold in place, yet allows some time to reposition the part.   My favorite is Aleenes Tacky Glue from the craft store.   When the white glue is dry - go back and run a bead of CA along the bottom rail to firmly attach the part.

Work inside to out, top to bottom attaching rails.  This minimizes the chances of disturbing previously attached parts.

A final shot of clear flat kills the shine from the CA and blends everything together.

See Phil Kirchmeier's article on building a resin subchaser here at FSM

http://www.finescale.com/fsm/default.aspx?c=a&id=1477

Hope some of these thoughts help.

Thanks, Ed, for the useful advice, particularly about ISW's parts replacement policy!

The box shows signs of rough handling in the past; thus, there are some broken parts. In particular, the hull sponsons have chips out of them: not surprising, considering how thin they are and brittle the resin. That's an easy fix, though. I'll just use what's there as templates and whittle new ones out of sheet styrene. By the way, were I to drop that one-piece, solid hull on my foot I'd probably break bones! A couple of the gun barrels are broken, but I was planning on replacing them with brass tubing anyway. And some boats have their sharply molded prows or sterns snapped off.

Late last night I took an 8x magnifying glass to the parts. There's an awful lot to like about the kit. It's nice to have deep holes for all those portholes -- saves drilling them out. Most parts are really crisply molded with sharp detail, even under 8x magnification. The photoetched fret looks splendid. Those parts all look a little skinny, but that means I can both prime and paint them, which will bring them up to scale thickness.

I'll dig Phil's article out of my stash of FSM's.

But does anyone know of any glaring inaccuracies?