1/700 plastic ships

Hi All,

 

In reply to Durrs' question, there are alot of subjects out there in 1/700 that are quite good, some are not quite so good and some are downright poor.  Sky Wave, Aoshima, Tamiya, Trumpeter, Fujimi injection styrene kits have all crossed my bench at one time or another as well as Samek, WEM, HP, and other resin makers' kits.  I have seen expensive resin kits that need lots of help to look good and others that a little PE is all that is required other than time, patience, and references.  Most of the styrene kits need some sort of help, but there you will need to look for references and photos to reveal what needs to be done.  Fujimi has scads of kits, most are from older mold designs from various sources.  They are releasing some new things that are very promising such as the IJN Nachi, heavy cruiser.  Other than some PE for a little more details it was most excellent.

 

By the same token I had a yen for a IJN Isuzu light AA Cruiser.  After I started my project I discovered that Tamiya makes a far more accurate one than my choice of an inexpensive Fujimi kit which was an older molding of the class with some newer parts to make it look sort of like an Isuzu.  That doesn't mean that it can't come out looking okay if you spend a little time and effort.

You pays your money and makes your choices.  After that it is up to the individual modeler to do what he can do to come up with what is an acceptable level of detail for him or her.  I tend to like to tinker a lot.;)

 

Jay Massey

treadhead1952

AKA modelnut4

Las Vegas, NV 

 

    

DURR wrote:

ok dreadnought   i was thinking of wwii ships  all kinds  and say newer toolings  from say the 90's up i hope that is more specific

Speaking from the battleship and cruiser point of view, having little or no interest in carriers, destroyers and submarines in 1/700 the top companies in resin would be Waveline of Japan, White Ensign Models from the UK, Samek of the Czech Republic, Regia Maria from Italy and Combrig of Russia. All offer tremendous value for your money in that the designs are well thought out, they include well made parts requiring very little extra work for the more common mistakes and fit problems found in resin kits and they are all reasonably priced for what they contain. Injection molded is a far more difficult call as you must be more product aware in terms of when a kit was issued or re-tooled. Tamiya has made a number of really nice kits in 1/700 but new tooling from Skywave, Hasegawa and Aoshima have really made things much more competitive in the plastic field. Trumpeter has brought out some very, very nice offering in 1/700 plastic with their very low priced Bismarck/Tirpitz kits offering tremendous value. All that being said, the plastic kits while very, very nice now still cannot compare in detail to resin kits from the manufacturers above. An excellent source of reviews for these kits should you begin to decide on specific subjects can be found at SteelNavy.com, Modelwarships.com and the Rajens list http://www.quuxuum.org/rajens_list/shiprevs.html

ok dreadnought   i was thinking of wwii ships  all kinds  and say newer toolings  from say the 90's up

i hope that is more specific  

 

DURR wrote:

sort of a survey here in top to bottom order give me your choice of the top five companies and why ( ie value,  molded in details, etc  )   you will notice i have a bunch of questions (posts) going at once here  because i am on a ship building thing  i go thru this when i build  i could do 3 or 23 ships before i get sick of them and change to another subject   thanks guys

There are hundreds of ship models in this scale from dozens of manufacturers. In battleships alone there are over 560 different subjects that you could pick from. The quality level varies depending upon when the model was initially designed and manufactured. So, in order to answer it would be a lot easier if you were to describe your area of interest, i.e. : predreadnoughts, missile cruisers, submarines, WW2 carriers, etc.

 I have two ship kits. One in 350 and one in 400 scale. I like these scales, but I might try a 700. Wish I could help you.

                                       60
 

Would like to help but I haven't tired of my 48th scale ww2 aircraft yet.

But I have begun collecting 700 scale ships now and have about 30 that I can't wait to start building.

Peace