WingNut
If you don't mind, I would like to like to withdraw my Emher tank and replace it with the ICM Konig kit. I'll give general impressions and if there's any interest I'll add some WIP. No problem either way but it was ship time for me. I try to cycle plane, tank and ship. In practice because ships take a little longer they might slighted in the sequence. The result, no doubt, will mean I won't get any good at any of them, but each allows some neat history tripping and that's important to my modeling.
The Kit:
ICM is a Ukranian company that has gotten some fine notices on recent efforts. This kit doesn't quite qualify, coming out in 2000. There are about 500 parts and it is pretty complex. It has gotten decent notices at Model Warship because the people there are remarkably good and like model warships. And it is a styrene 350 scale WWI German Battleship. (Why not British? Who knows, but winners don't get modeled often - see the absence of CV-6 Enterprise in 350: we're talking the most successful warship in world history. Zvezda: the Russian great hope, is coming out with Dreadnaught, a ship with a very famous name and no operational achievements. It is, however, a WWI battleship. Odd that the warships of the late 19th and very early 20th century are better represented than those of the First World War.) If one searches closely you can find horror stories about the kit's bad fits on mission critical components. I've never done a 350 and have a Hasegawa Mikasa & Yukikase, a Dragon Laffey, an Academy Graf Spee, a Tamiya Fletcher and a Trumpeter San Francisco in that scale. I thought I'd start with an old ICM. For reasons known only to the Creator half of my kits have been made in Eastern Europe and each has had its own special adventure: I am expecting more. The kit appears to be nicely molded and preliminary dry fits are okay. There's also a lot of excess plastic sticking around in all sorts of places.
Extras: I have White Ensign's PE set and some metal barrels for the main guns (inbound). The PE is actually fairly easy (if you think rails and ladders are easy) unless you walk the extra mile and then they become insane. For this kit I will be using Tamiya paints. I cycle paint types too, and have grown very fond of artist acrylics and mediums and other water based paints like Vallejo. But I've got Tamiya bottles galore and its time to use them. So far they are a delight.
I know there are gents out there that don't like ships. I do. Anyone that doesn't like a battleship is probably a tree hugger. I won't say that ships are harder than other models - a master modeler can making anything both complex and easy. However, for mortals, ships do pose some special problems. First, more than armor, ships are modular. Ship fans know this and thus ignore the "play by play" found in the instructions. ICM's instructions are ok (I much prefer crude to incorrect) but like most ships they will help you construct the kit in an orderly manner and leave you in a very bad way if you decide to paint the kit. But as we all know, painting modules will leave problems here and there to fix later. The better you plan the attack the less fixing will be required. The ship model heroes take this granted while the mortals find out the hard way.
You're hit with four problems that don't lend themselves to easy solution. First is the deck. Konig has a wooden deck. Unless you really love masking, you will paint the deck early. But how to modulate the color of a 28" long deck? ICM has raised planking (all my more modern kits are recessed). To get a helter-skelter shading you could make do with pastels etc or irregular colored areas. Or you could try to mask each plank individually with graphic tape (1/32" wide) and paint the deck three or four different colors. Or you can try to color the raised planks with a kind of wash and hope the lines keep the colors in-line. Haven't made up my mind, but that will be one of the first decisions. A good deck could make or break the kit. (I did come up with a cracker-jack base coat made of Tamiya deck tan, buff, white and flesh.)
Ships will probably need some kind of surgery. A guy from the Fatherland last week discovered that the ICM kit has funnels slightly too thick and they cramp the mid-turret. He has a good solution: cut everything above the deck in half and reassemble. Hmmm....or move the mid-turret to an angle and nobody will notice. (I chose option B.) The bridge will need a gash sawed out and some stock inserted to emulate an open bridge: that can be managed. (And if one manages it, you could put in some PE bridge instruments that will invisible no matter what.) Masts are a question. Even a large ship in 350 has very fragile top masts. Some folk live with a fragile universe. Some replace them with brass. I think I'll do that.
A ship must be rigged. But with what? Stretched sprue would work great if you kept plastic masts: it's a little less ideal with metal masts because something like Tamiya cement is out. CA or PVA. (Same problem comes up with railing.) Konig will need a fair amount of rigging. I'm thinking of mono, but sprue does work. And maybe some very thin wire for some stuff. We'll see. One build option is a no-brainer. If I wanted Konig to be in her Jutland configuration it would need a different mast (bought one from WEM) and a torpedo net. After examining the PE (over 100 davits the size of an ant's eyeball to support two shelves for the nets which you have to build yourself) it was obvious that I'll go for the post-Jutland version that did away with the nets completely. I seriously think that it would double the build time to assemble and rig the torpedo nets. Hardly worth it for devices that proved worthless in the war.
Weathering. Ship modeling presents the modeler with a problem without an obvious solution. Most people on this board model military subjects. A cursory look at photos or the real deal shows that military subjects show wear in a way that my Honda Accord does not. If you're looking at a weapon used in war, the more the harsh conditions will show up. (Throw grenades my way if you like, but I think most models even done by gents far more talented than yours truly are under weathered. Obviously one can postulate conditions that this would not be true. But if you want to model something that's been in the "thick of it", it's going to show.) But models are also display objects. It is tempting and possibly historically appropriate, to model something out the factory door. (If I ever do a Pea Shooter it will be gloss and almost no weathering.) Recently my roommate and I drove back from St. Paul to Berkeley. We drove into a small town that had a M-48 tank in the park. Although the beast was about 100 feet away, I had to point it out: maybe she's more used to tanks than I think. (Always surprising how many secrets exist inside a long marriage.) Anyway, you don't have a tank at most gas stations and I pointed it out. Her comment - "It's cleaner than yours." She was referring to my last effort - a very heavily weathered KV-2. She was right natch (natch) but the tank in Idaho hadn't come from the battle of Moscow. So the problem is making a nice display object or something that represents weapons in battle. When you spend weeks (or several months by the hard core) this problem is tripled. A WWI battleship is a very pretty ship, and at 350 scale it's big enough for people to see it. It is so tempting to follow the path of many ship modelers and do a "commission day" model. At fifteen feet away, where most people will see it, it would look great. But it wouldn't look like Konig in 1917. Under-weather the kit and it will look better. Be true to history and it's going to look pretty shabby. We'll see.
Eric
Below are the basics of the kit and how real decks look and are modeled: more to follow:
