Informal "Your Most Wanted Ship kit" Poll

constructor wrote:

My "wish for" list is practically out now as models in my favorite scale, 1/350. I used to wonder then when the manufacturers will come out with famous WW2 ships in 1/350 scale and Trumpeter answered my prayers. when I was a young modeller, (12 years old) there was a Revell model of an attack transport. That is my wish, a 350 scale attack transport just like what they used in the movie, 'Away all boats!"

I agree with most of the listings. How about HMS Elephant, HMS Vanguard, HMS Bellerophon, HMS Bellona, HMS Captain, HMS Shannon, HMS Foudroyant, HMS Queen Charlotte (all of the Napoleanic Wars)? Someone also mentioned in an earlier posting that they would like to see Bucentaure and Santissima Trinidad; I second the motion! Are you listening Airfix/Hornby Hobbies?

Bill Morrison

I'd like to see a manufacturer come out with the idea of 'twin kits,' i.e. two models in one package.  So many ships worked either together with another ship, or are famous for being antagonists that it makes sense to me to either release two kits ina single package, or two kits concurrently.  For instance, it seems ridiculous to me that there are so many kits of 'Bismack' out there, but it's companion ship, 'Prinz Eugen' is so rare (and usually in the 'wrong' scale too!).  If a company is going to release something like 'Kongo,' they should also release something like USS New Mexico.  This is particularly the case with ships of WW1.  ICM released three 'Koenig' class German battleships in 1/350 scale, but nobody has thought to produce a British ship in the same scale (HMS Lion, or HMS Iron Duke).  Very frustrating, and it seems so obvious as to beggar belief!  Just look how many 1/350 aircraft carriers have been released by Trumpeter in the last few years, but only now is there some indication that a Japanese carrier will hit the shelves ('Akagi' in Autumn 2008)!  And where are the Italian ships????

As for sailing models, well, we all just have to keep plugging away at the model companies in hopes they will produce something worthwhile one day.  Personally, I would think that a few large scale models of say, the schooner 'Bluenose' or maybe the schooner 'America' could be excellent subjects in 1/50 scale, if for no other reason than they could be converted to RC, as well as make impressive display models that many people would actually want in their living room (no matter how hard I try, my wife will never allow a 1/200 scale 'Yamato' in the living room!)........

I would also love to see most of those in kit form too. My preference would be in 1/700 scale though; especially for the Cold War era Soviet warships. I have an extrensive collection of Soviet/Russian ships already in that scale and they would fit in nicely. I even have all four Kirov class ships built! Add to those (if they are not already mentioned) Kashin, Kara, and Kynda-class ships as well. The Argentine cruiser would also be a great subject to see.

I would love to see a 1/100 royal Sovriegn. Or a proper 1/100 1/96 cutty sark and thermopylea 

Well , although it seems complete , there's no mention of Civilian ships ;

   So here's mine .S.S.Andrea Doria .

                           "" Christoforo Columbo

                            Matson's Lurline and Monterey

                           Moore-Mcormack's Brasil

Any of the Maersk Vessels and one or two Great Lakes tourist boats like the Canadiana

       I do have to add a military vessel because she was my home Before and After F.R.A.M. - The U.S.S.Ozbourn D.D.846 a  Gearing class ship  There are many others , But I definitely would like all of them in 1/350 and they can throw in the Normandy the Kaiser Wilhelm ( the Liner ) . any of the unsung Cunarders , States Lines ships  T.B.

tankerbuilder

Well , although it seems complete , there's no mention of Civilian ships ;

   So here's mine

                            Matson's Lurline and Monterey

                          But I definitely would like all of them in 1/350

 

YES and Yes. My dad was on the first boatload of men from the 32nd Red Arrow Division sent to Australia then New Guina on theLurline. I'v got a few nice pics of her from his scrapbook.

EJ

I would still like to see the Napoleonic Wars ships I listed a few posts ago. I would also like to see a 1/350 USS Charles Adams class ship (preferably USS Benjamin Stoddert).  I also agree that we need more Soviet era ships, perhaps Kynda, Kresta, Kashin, Kara, or Moskva in 1/350 and in 1/700.  USS Bainbridge would make an excellent addition to the fine 1/700 USN Cold War ships by Dragon, as would other destroyer and frigate (DLG) classes of the period.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Bill Morrison

I'd like a reasonably priced Ironclad. Can't bite the bullet for one right now. Merry Christmas everyone.

yeah E.J.;

  There is never enough of any civilian ships from any era . The idea of these being ignored really torques me . There is always the gap between many .For instance where's all the 1/350 Victory ships ? Liberties we have .Where's the rest ?  T.B.

uspsjuan

why hasen't anyone mentioned the USS Indianapolis ? you think with its history it would have already have made it in 1/350. i would get one.

Hi,

I guess I'd probably be most interested in some reasonably priced plastic "Pre-Dreadnoought" and WWI era ships, in a reasonable sized scale.  (I know that there are resin ships out there but they all seem kind of expensive).

Other than that maybe some various merchant ships of just about any era.

I believe that Merit has released a 1/350 USS Enterprise (CV-6) earlier this year. You should look into it.

Bill Morrison

I won't bother to list sailing ships; that genre of plastic kit is just about extinct, and there's little point in pretending that it isn't. In terms of modern warships, I'd like to see some U.S. Navy auxiliaries of the WWII period. (We now have quite a few Japanese ones; why not some American ones?) I'd particularly welcome a Haskell-class attack transport, because my father served in one, but an attack cargo ship, a hospital ship, and a fleet oiler would also be most welcome.

And I'll second TB's plea for more merchant ships. My mouth waters at the thought of a shelf full of great ocean liners in 1/700. A manufacturer could get double duty out of the molds for quite a few merchantment that had wartime careers as Navy vessels - e.g., the Victory ship. And how about a Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth with optional parts for wartime armament, and a choice of wartime or peacetime color schemes?

And how about an old-fashioned tramp steamer? It would make a great companion to any WWII convoy escort. If I built one I'd name her the SS Inchcliffe Castle. (If you don't know why - well, whurra, whoosh, and even foosh to ye.)

One interesting thing about this old thread: the number of kits that were gleams in people's eyes eight or nine years ago, and are now on the market. There's certainly no shortage of Prinz Eugen kits, for instance.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that we're living in a golden age of modeling. I hope I don't live to see the end of it.

Why? There are literally hundreds of sailing ships in wood so there is a market for them (and in general wooden kits are 2 or three times the price of plastic kits) I would happily pay 200 quid for a 1/100 royal Sovriegn by Heller. There is definitely a market for them, or why produce them in wood.

very well put kpnuts , we all live in hope of a soveriegn of the seas . I would definitely be at the head of the queue .from what I have read , they had the tooling just about done , so why not bring it out.

I don't wish to start a debate here, so I'll just make a few observations and try to keep it neutral.

I have no access to the number of wooden ship kits sold every year. All I know is that personally I buy about 0.25 or so, yearly. And I do build them.

I probably buy about three or four plastic ship kits every year, and maybe one is a sailing ship.

As far as the subject matter, my plastic ship kits are top-down. In other words the more complex the better. The most recent plastic sailing ship I've bought is the Pourquois Pas? which is a fairly complex subject. A Fletcher, a couple of carriers and a Lindberg Q ship (two actually) round out the lot.

My wooden ship purchase this year was a Model Shipways Dapper Tom, and I was given a MS Virginia Privateer (Santa paid money). Both a little complicated, but both also very buildable.

So at least for consumer Morrison; there's no real overlap between wood and plastic kits. I could never imagine taking on a wood Constitution kit, as I would never get it built and the sheer tedium of making so many assemblies would wear me out. Likewise a plastic sloop or schooner, while it has some attraction, just begs to be built from wood, cordage, etc.

And I am going to guess with a pretty great deal of certainty that almost no big wood sailing ship kit, esp. from Europe, ever gets finished. I do read a fair number of wood model websites, something like a twenty gun frigate is about the upper limit .

I guess that my observation is the cost of kitting any plastic ship is pretty great, and needs a lot of units to sell. The first X number of thousand kits pay for the molds, the next for the box etc. So big complicated kits are a realistic choice. But how many of us ever will build more than one Royal Sovereign?

As for simple subjects, looking in the Privateer box, there's mostly the proverbial pile of strips of wood, some laser cut stuff and some Brittania castings. Nylon cordage (Ugghh!).

Not a very expensive product to produce, sold at a considerable sum retail (mine came from an estate sale), and probably profitable in small quantities. Yes Round 2 is selling those funny little plastic ships again, but they cost about 20-30 times what they did originally.

Nobody will be happier than I if the plastic sailing ship kit makes a comeback. But the economic forces on the plastic kit industry are such that I just don't think it's going to happen.

A plastic kit requires the manufacturer to make a far, far bigger investment than a wood kit does. It's interesting to follow the ModelExpo/Model Shipways website, which tells which Model Shipways kits are currently in stock. Apparently the company produces them in batches of six or eight - and those six or eight take weeks or months to sell out. The company can afford that, because the investment in basswood sheets and britannia metal castings (which don't require injection molding) is so much smaller than the expense of the injection molds required to make a plastic kit.

Another problem: a sailing ship model takes much longer to build than an aircraft, car, or tank. Some excellent work-in-progress threads about sailing ship models are running in this Forum - and they've been running literally for years. A plastic kit company can't make money off a modeler who buys a kit once every three years.

The plastic kit manufacturers don't let us see the actual data, but I have the impression that a plastic kit has to sell in the tens of thousands - if not hundreds of thousands - before the company gets its investment back. If Calder/Jotika, Bluejacket, or Model Shipways turns over a few hundred, that's ok. Bluejacket produced its CSS Alabama and USS Kearsarge in limited editions of 150 each. By selling the kits for over $700 apiece, the company will make money (though, I suspect, not a lot). No plastic kit company would even consider producing something that would only sell 150 copies.

I also have to say that I don't think styrene is even close to an ideal material for sailing ship kits. It's fine for hulls and certain fittings, but lousy for masts and yards - and certain other fittings. The injection-molding process can't produce a block or deadeye with a groove around it and a hole through it - without slide molding, which is very expensive. And plastic belaying pins are a sorry joke.

I've said for years that the ideal sailing ship kit would be a multi-media project. Plastic (or resin) for the hull, wood for the deck planking, metal or resin for the blocks and deadeyes, wood for the spars, etc.  I know of one manufacturer who's taken that approach. It's a Dutch firm called Artitec: http://www.artitec.nl/index.php/en/kits/category/h0-ships . Take a look at those seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch yachts. (Unfortunately I haven't found an American dealer who actually has them in stock - though several dealers list them.)

For a while Model Shipways sold a version of its nice little pilot boat Phantom with a resin hull. I bought one and thoroughly enjoyed building it. But by the time I was finished MS had taken it off the market; the version currently available has a machine-carved basswood hull.

And Cottage Industries Models makes a nice 1/96-scale American revenue cutter with a resin hull: http://cottageindustrymodels.com/?page_id=95 . I wouldn't mind having that one, but the price is a bit steep for me.

My cordial recommendation to anybody who wants to get into serious sailing ship modeling is to check out the wood kit scene. (But for heaven's sake avoid the HECEPOBs!) I just don't see the injection-molded plastic sailing ship kit making a comeback. But I hope I'm wrong.

P.S. Please forgive my old curmudgeonly professor's whining, but the word is spelled S O V E R E I G N . There! Now I've got that off my chest.

Blimey- this thread is so old that I'm actually several posts above, on this page, some years back, in a previous incarnation!

Egad!

Yup, a zombie thread. But with the interesting point mentioned earlier that many of the ship kits desired when this thread was new now exist in injection plastic. I would love to see a USS Nevada kit in her Pearl Harbor or Normandie fittings. Or perhaps one of the other slow battleship Pearl Harbor survivors in their Leyte Gulf Surigao Strait fittings. All in 1:350 injection plastic of course. 

Its good to know there are some others out there that would kit the subjects I like.  The Kashin class would be a great choice.  I agree.  I was completely amazed that a 1/350 scale Soviet Project 613 Whiskey class submarine was made just last year.  That is exactly the kind of suject matter and era that seems to be completely skipped  in the modelling world.  I commend the Russian Model company MikroMir for that one.  Its about my favorite model I own nearly.