Best Plastic Ship Model - Your opinion

MJH - We had an interesting discussion of the furled sail problem some time back.  I've moved that thread to p. 1 of the Forum; it should appear on the list just below this one.  It's titled "Real Cloth Sails?"

I think the trick I described in that thread would work great on the Imai/Aoshima Cutty Sark.  The thread contains links to some pictures of my model of the frigate Hancock, which is on almost exactly the same scale. 

Good luck.

Plastic..... I haven't done much in plastic recently, but the Aurora Whale Ship Wanderer kit appears to have been done in 1:87 scale, at least the hull measures exactly with a 1:87 scale ruler. I have photos of Wanderer underway, and with the whale handling tackle in use, and don't have a problem making new masts, and spars for the kit. The preassembled dead eyes and lanyards will be trashed also, and properly built up. There's enough about the kit that's good, that I'll give it my vote.

Pete

I bought that old Aurora Wanderer many years ago - when it was originally released, I think.  So my memories of it are subject to the usual limitations of Halfzeimer's-afflicted memory.  What I recollect most clearly were the hideous injection-molded "sails" that were molded integrally with the yards.  The "sails" were, even within the limitations of injection molding, weird.  (The "seams" and "ropes" molded into them, if I remember correctly, took the form of raised lines on the fronts of the sails and grooves on the backs.  On an injection-molded part that makes no sense whatever - but it's the way a vacuum-formed "sail" normally looks.  I have a suspicion that those "sails" were pirated from the vac-formed ones in a Revell kit - probably the Thermopylae.) And as I remember the hulls of the whaleboats - vital components of any whaler model - were so distorted as to be caricatures of the real things.  (Maybe just barely believable as Azores whaleboats, but not as New England ones.)  The basic details and shapes weren't bad (the hull and deck parts featured countersunk detail, as I recall), and I'm sure it could be made into an eminently respectable scale model.  I have to say, though, that I have trouble giving a high rating to a kit about 50 percent of which has to go in the trash.

One of my favorite plastic sailing ship kits is the old Revell whaler Charles W. Morgan.  It's on a considerably smaller scale than the Aurora offering, and it suffers from many of the weak points that are common to all such kits.  (If I were doing it today I'd probably replace the upper spars with wood or brass.)  The shapes of the whaleboats were beautiful - though Revell insisted, for some reason, on putting interior details in only a couple of them.  (The others were provided with vac-formed "covers," unlike anything that normally would be found on a real whaleboat.)  The "combo units" used to represent the deadeyes and lanyards weren't great, but they were in my opinion about the most successful attempt at representing such parts that any plastic kit manufacturer has made yet.  And such things as the "wood grain" of the hull and deck planking, and the "bricks" of the tryworks, were among the most subtly done details I've ever seen on a plastic kit.  I'd put that one on my short list of candidates for "favorite ship kit."

Unfortunately the Revell Charles W. Morgan, like so many other excellent plastic sailing ship kits of yore, is just about extinct.  If you find one on e-bay or at a swap meet, my heartfelt advice is - grab it.  It's a classic.

jtilley;

Thanks for pointing out the stuff on furled sail-making.  I've copied it out and will study it at leisure.  It might also be useful for finishing the Airfix Great Western which I also recently acquired.

Michael

Revell's Charles W. Morgan was a fun build and I remember building several others around that time that came in similar sized boxes, including something that I painted with a white bottom that, as a youngster, I thought looked very cool. For the life of me, I cannot remember that "series" of kits.

I do remember building Aurora's whaler of the same name; it was a disaster, even for a young kid. Just for fun I was going to propose adding a worst kit to this string. The sails were heavy plastic, molded to the yards. It was difficult enough to glue the yards to the masts with all that extra weight. Making the rigging and sails look like they were under the influence of the same wind was nigh impossible. I gooned that one pretty badly. I liked building whalers, though. Lots of topside clutter, boats and tall masts.

Revell's America, which I built as "Civil War Blockader" was one I'd really like to have another shot at. It was the first kit I managed to keep a light enough touch on to really show off the model's beautiful lines. I even made those vacuum-formed sails look halfway decent (but not accurate) with a gray wash and a hot sewing needle.

Tamiya's 1/350 battleships  are highly competitive for the prize. I'd sure like to see them do a current LSD, LPD and LHD.

 

jtilley;

Given your past comments about the nature of IMAI's model ship kits I thought you might be interested in some comments from the manufacturer themselves.  The following is scanned and OCR'd directly from a leaflet I found in my two oldest kits, Santa Maria and the Galeass, and so is in the rather quaint "Japlish" that was such a feature of Japanese kits of the era.

The reference to "styrofoam" may simply mean polystyrene or it may even refer to the unusual type of plastic IMAI used, which we've commented on before.

The item goes on to descibe ways and means of giving the models a metallic (i.e. gold, silver or patina'd bronze) appearance.

I hope you find it interesting.

Michael



EXPLANATION ABOUT IMAI'S CLASSIC SAILING SHIP SERIES
Each kit of IMAI's Classic Sail Ship series is modelled in quite different way from the existing sail ship kits produced by other manufacturers. Upto nowadays, meaning of assembling plastic kit was to give pleasure to modellers in assembling processes.   On the contrary, IMAI's sail ship kits were designed and merchandised so that not only modeller hut surrounding people can share in enjoying pleasure in seeing workmanship of the model after completed.


FEATURES:
1.    Each kit was designed to be extremely easy to assemble so that as many as people can make it, and at the same time, they can know enchantment of sail ships and pleasure in assembling, and further can enjoy pleasure in completing it and can be proud of displaying his completed model.
2.    To evaluate appreciation value after completion, each kit was designed to emphasize uniqueness of the original  model,  namely,  factors  such  as simplicity, elegance, gorgeousness and stoutness. Thus, designation was made to represent uniqueness and comprehensive beauty of each model.
3.    Since the existing sail ship kits produced by other manufacturers are very complicated and difficult to assemble, many of them are rather
fragile and are not suitable as ornament models in the matter of endurance.  In view of this, IMAI's sail ship kits are designed to make very stout models.
4.     We also took it into our consideration that workmanship of model make good enough even without painting as relative injection moulds have wood grain encarving and styrofoam is used as main material.
5.    We designed these models to, make artistic objects by painting in bronze tone or gold.  (You can paint your built-up IMAI's sail ship model in your own favourite way as you like it just like oil-painting.)

Very interesting indeed!  I confess I don't have much inclination to make my models into "artistic objects by painting in bronze tone or gold," but I get the point.

One of the many things that always impressed me about the old Imai kits was that the designers seemed to have a rare combination of ingenuity and common sense.  (Their Heller counterparts had the former in abundance, and scarcely any of the latter.)  Imai kits were indeed simplified somewhat - but they were simplified in an intelligent manner.  If the modeler wanted to undo the simplification, he or she generally could do it by adding things to the kit - rather than removing components that were unrealistic.  And Imai rigging instructions made sense.  They simplified the real ship's rigging without turning it into an irrational collection of threads.  (That's another distinction between Imai and Heller.

I do wonder whether the new Aoshima reissues use that same, slightly-metallic-looking plastic for the major hull and deck components.  As we've noted before in this Forum, the big Imai sailing ships were remarkable for the thickness of their major components - which went a long way toward explaining why they fit together so well.  If Aoshima is trying to mold those same parts in normal styrene, the results may be problematic.

Common sense, yes, that's the term I was groping for to describe their philosophy.

On inspection the IMAI Cutty Sark doesn't display the metallic look of the earlier kits' plastic and its parts don't have the chunkiness displayed by the Santa Maria for example, however I think this is in keeping with the subject and the hull halves are still far more solid (and straight) than those of their rivals.  When the Cutty arrived I was so impressed with the condition of the kit I was tempted to keep it as-is.  Most of the IMAI's I've acquired have been in very poor boxes or even missing minor parts and my purpose is to build them, but this is different.

I'd like to purchase an Aoshima Cutty for building purposes but, given all we've discussed, I certainly won't be buying it on-line.  I want to inspect it before handing over my hard-earned!  From what I've seen it seems to be available more cheaply than you sugggested when you first brought it to our attention.  One site suggests $78 in your currency.  Of course we pay an average of 30% more over here which will cancel out some of the advantages.

I notice Aoshima are also selling a BIG Kaiwo Maru @ 1:100 (and 1:120) with crew.  Do you think this is the same as the IMAI Nippon Maru which came in the same scales - sister ship perhaps using the same moulds?  It certainly looks similar.

Michael

I guess I don't have any firm evidence, but I'm virtually certain those two Aoshima Japanese schoolship kits are reissues of the Imai ones.  Several other Imai ships have been turning up under the Aoshima label lately; the Susquehanna and Napoleon come to mind.

Maybe we're about to see a small renaissance of plastic sailing ship kits.  I certainly hope so - but I'm not holding my breath.  I'm glad to hear that somebody's selling those ex-Imai kits at fairly reasonable prices - though the thought of spending $78 on any plastic kit makes me gag.  (I remember quite vividly the days when the most expensive ones on the market were the Revell Thermopylae and Alabama, at $12.)

Before you take on the Imai/Aoshima Cutty Sark, be aware of a couple of amusing errors in it.  I've described these before in this Forum; anybody who's already read about them - stop reading now.

The kit quite obviously was based on the superb drawings of the ship done by George Campbell, which are on 3/32" = 1' scale.  (That's 1/128 - almost identical to the kit's claimed 1/120.)  Those plans may have more information on them than any other three sheets of paper I've ever seen.  (If you don't have them, you owe it to yourself to get them.  They're available at a remarkably reasonable price through the ship's website.)  For purposes of this particular application, however, they present a couple of pitfalls.  First, Mr. Campbell assumed that a few features were so simple that they didn't have to be drawn in much detail, or from more than two angles.  Secondly, the drawings are covered with written notes - in English, which the Imai designers apparently didn't read.

Two amusing examples jump out of the kit box.  Just ahead of the fore and main masts are a pair of cargo winches.  Mr. Campbell provides an enlarged drawing of them.  The two are identical with one major exception:  the forward winch has an x-shaped gadget called cable lifters on each end of its main barrel.  The winch forward of the main mast doesn't.  Mr. Campbell's drawing shows a cable lifter on one end but not the other, with notes reading, respectively, "Both ends thus on Forward Winch" and "Both ends thus on After Winch."  Each Imai winch has a cable lifter on one end - just like the drawing. 

The other problem concerns the "booby hatch" between the after deckhouse and the poop.  The Campbell plans don't provide a separate drawing of it; Mr. Campbell apparently assumed that its shape was so simple and generic that the outlines of it on the inboard profile and deck plan would be enough.  Imai proved him wrong by making a rendition of it that, though it looks just like the plans from the top or the side, looks utterly ridiculous from any other angle.

Both these goofs can be fixed in a few minutes, by swapping the ends of the winch barrels and replacing the top and sides of the booby hatch with plastic card.  The kit still gets my vote as the best rendition of the Cutty Sark in kit form - plastic, wood, or otherwise.

While only familiar with the plastic variety I'm happy to agree with you on that one.

I was unaware the Susquehanna was available from Aoshima, it might be easier to purchase it rather than chase an IMAI on eBay, they tend to go high every time.

Thanks for your advise on the Cutty, it's much appreciated.

I had thoughts about building the Nippon Maru without rigging or masts as she would have appeared during the war, apparently being used as a freighter.  While she's not the most aesthetically appealing 'tall ship' especially denuded of masts and sails etc, it would make an imteresting contrast I think.

Michael

jtilley;

I took your advice and ordered the three plans from the Cutty Sark website, they arrived today.  I'll have to spend some time examining them to try and take in all the detail!  As a side benefit I can now name many of the parts, particularly yards and sails, which I could only refer to as "second from top" or "third from bottom" before.  Thank you for the advice, they'll be most useful.

On a related issue I have a photo of the Nippon Maru which shows (as you described) the sails furled into tight rolls no wider than the yards to which they're attached.

Which brings me to another point.  I bought the Lee version of IMAI's 1:350 Nippon Maru because I was interested in trying to build it as it was used during the war years in the role of a coastal freighter, however one reference says she had all sails, yards and "fixed ballast" removed (why the latter?), while the other suggests all the masts were removed too, but doesn't mention ballast.  It seems no photos exist so I was wondering if you could offer any wisdom on the subject.

I have to say that even under full sail the NM is not the most beautiful of the tall ships but with no top hamper at all is almost downright ugly.  Or am I being a little harsh.

Michael

MJH -

I know what you mean regarding the Campbell Cutty Sark plans.  Reading them is like reading a book.  I've read myself to sleep more than once with them.

You might want to think about also acquiring Mr. Campbell's book, China Tea Clippers.  It contains lots of his drawings, and does a fine job of putting the ships in their historical context.

As for Japanese sail training ships - I have to plead utter ignorance.  I did some serious studying of the American equivalent, the Coast Guard training barque Eagle, a few years ago, but other than that I know practically nothing about modern schoolships.  I think I saw one of the Japanese ones at OpSail 76 (heavens, that was almost 30 years ago!), and I've seen some photos of them, but that's the extent of my familiarity with them.

The first place I'd look for information is Harold Underhill's book Sail Training and Cadet Ships.  It contains drawings, and some photos, of the training ships that were in service when he wrote it (the early 1960s, I believe).  I'm not sure, though, whether he covered the Japanese ships.  Several other books on this type of vessel have been published since then, but I don't seem to have any of them.  Maybe another Forum member can help.

Jtilley, 

 Your "Halfzeimer's" medication is working very well!, Your memories of the Aurora kit are sharp, clear, and accurate! I have never been afraid of rebuilding the parts of a kit that didn't meet my personal requirements. As I said, the hull scales out to 1:87, which is perfect for me. Yards are easy to replace, furled sails go a long way towards dressing up a model. Whaleboats......you hit that one absolutely on the head. The boats that came with the kit are                        ! I intend on POF for the whaleboats, I ordered the book on whaleboats from Mystic Seaport, great source of information!

  I've reworked the try works, using sheet styrene for the plate, HO scale brick material, and a couple of cast pots. It turned out very nicely. I still have a good supply of boxwood, to make any special size blocks I can't find commercially. When Wanderer is done, I have the Kate Cory to do. The whaleboats in that kit are built up from precut sheets...... I'll POF those too.

Pete

I was planning on Plank On Frame building the whaleboats using wood.

Question:   Has anyone ever used styrene strips to plank on frame a boat? Is it the disaster I'm thinking it would be?

   Ive built a 17' whitehall skiff in 1/64th scale using .013" X 1/32" planks (strips from Northeast Scale), it's not impossible, but I'm wondering if styrene strips would be easier to get fastened to each other.

Pete

I'm sure it could be done, but I'm not so sure I'd want to try it.  Modern adhesives for styrene are excellent, but modern wood glues (e.g., Titebond) are even better.  And gluing up wood planks doesn't run the risk (which is certainly present when you're working with such thin pieces of styrene) of dissolving the planking material altogether.

Those whaleboats, in all probability, were carvel-built.  (Whalemen thought clinker-built boats were easier for the whale to hear.)  So the exterior needs to be smooth.  And there are several of them.   (Five on the davits, I imagine, with two more stowed on the afte deckhouse roof.)  If I were doing it I'd look into the possibility of vacuum-forming, or just "press-molding," the hulls out of sheet styrene over a single wood master.  That way I'd only have to carve the basic shape once.

I've never tried that sort of thing, but I think it might work.  If not, I'd probably use the same trick I used on the boats of my little Hancock model.  I can't take credit for this idea; it comes from an excellent book, Modeling Open Boats, by Ewart Freeston (unfortunately out of print, and apparently pretty scarce). 

The basic idea is to carve the hull in halves out of wood, and hollow it out.  The first step is to cut the basic "backbone" assembly - the stem, keel, and sternpost - out of wood sheet.  (I used holly for the whole thing.)  Then cut two oblong blocks to form the hull halves.  (Important:  the growth rings in those pieces need to run parallel to the curves in the hull's cross section.  That makes the resulting hollow hull half surprisingly strong.)  Carve the two blocks to the external shape of the hull.  Then hollow it out, using gouges, knife blades, and/or power rotary tool bits, according to taste.  An important tool is an electric light bulb.  As you hollow out the hull halves, hold them up to the light every few cuts.  When the light shines evenly all around, you've gotten the thickness even throughout.  With nice, hard wood (like holly) you can get it down to less than 1/32".

Then glue and clamp the two halves to the "backbone," and start adding the frames, thwarts, gunwales, etc.  The prospect of repeating all that five or seven times isn't terribly appetizing, but it could be done.   As a matter of fact, one of the models illustrated in Mr. Freeston's book is a New Bedford whaleboat.

And gluing up wood planks doesn't run the risk (which is certainly present when you're working with such thin pieces of styrene) of dissolving the planking material altogether.

   That was the disaster I was thinking of! That it came to your mind much the same as to mine, leads me to believe that the possibility of disolved planks is more that probable. I might just give it a try, after I've built the wood ones.Yes, there are seven whaleboats total, two to starboard, three to port, and two stowed above the  cabin. When I built the Whitehall, it took to the fourth try to get it right!

   I have the lines photoreduced to scale, so building the forms shouldn't be that hard (basicly the same as cutting patterns to carve to). I built the Whitehall carvel planked garboard to gunnel, the whale boats look as if they are carvel to just above the turn of the bilge, and clinker above that, which is why I want to do them Plank On Frame.( that, and erring to the small side.....I don't think I can carve as thin as I can plank).

  I took a good look at the precast lower deadeye/chainplate castings, and there are defects enough that I will have to scratch that detail too. The photos of Wanderer in Whale Ships and Whaling, will be a definite asset in the construction of this model.

Pete

Re: "Wanderer", I got on the  New Bedford Whaling Museum site, and found some photos taken aboard Wanderer. Found several other errors in the Aurora kit, the worst is the location of the deck hatch between the fore and main mast, it's too far forward, leaving no room for the cooper's bench to go behind the tryworks. Before I get too far into construction, I'll have to move the hatch aft a bit.

Pete

Best quality plastic ship: without doubt the IMAI Susquehanna. Everything fitted together perfectly, no sanding of trimming needed, great wood detail on the hull and deck but dreadful deadeye/ratline arrangements. Most interesting plastic ship: the Pyro Harriet Lane. My very first model was a copy of this kit by Heller called "Le Sphinx." Unforgettable. 

The Susquehanna is definitely a very nice piece of work, like all the Imai range seems to be.
However whilst the moulding quality, fit and accuracy are excellent, it seems slightly "minimalist" in terms of fine detail parts and fittings, compared to the Revell Kearsarge and Alabama for example. (Though this is probably partly due to the latter two being 1/96 scale whilst the Imai kit is 1/120).
It's also odd that the kit represents the ship in pre-Civil War configuration, considering that its journey to Japan in Perry's fleet (which is probably the reason for the kit being produced in the first place, as Imai are a Japanese manufacturer) was after the Civil War - so far I have not managed to find many references on the ship's appearance and armament configuration during and after the war.
Shouldn't really complain, though, it's lucky enough that a kit of this ship exists at all!

Similarly I was a bit disappointed that the Imai 1/100 Spanish Galleon has all the gun ports moulded shut (the kit only includes guns for the spar deck). This wouldn't really matter in a smaller scale like 1/200 scale, but in 1/100, where the gun ports, hatches, grates etc. are large enough to see through, it would be nice to have had some detail on the lower decks.

Whoa!  Commodore Perry's first expedition to Japan, with the Susquehanna as part of his fleet, took place in 1852-1853.  The American Civil War started in 1861.  I'm not familiar with the Imai kit, but if it depicts the ship in her 1850s configuration it's correct for the Japan expedition.

Whenever I cover Perry's expedition in my U.S. history survey courses, I tell the students that it's important for at least one reason that frequently doesn't get mentioned.  It was just about the only significant thing that happened during the administration of the most forgettable of American presidents, Millard Fillmore.

My apologies - for some reason I thought Perry's expedition to Japan took place in the late 1860s, not the early 1850s.
As I live in the UK I'm probably not as familiar with US history as most people here.

Believe me, EPinniger, the fact that you know Commodore Perry existed puts your historical knowledge a long way ahead of the average American's.  At the beginning of each semester I give the students in my American history courses a quick survey.  Fewer than 25% of them can tell me the year when the American Civil War started, fewer than 30% can list two countries the U.S. was fighting in World War I - and at least 20% think the phrase "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" is part of the United States Constitution.  I feel like I've achieved something if they know ANYTHING about history at the end of the semester.

I read an interesting anecdote along these lines a few years ago.  A couple of American teenagers were looking through their grandmother's scrapbook.  One of the pictures showed her wearing her U.S. Navy uniform during WWII.  One of the teenagers said, "Why Grandma!  I never knew you were in the military!"  The old lady replied, "Yes, I was in the WAVES."  The teenager said, "That's really neat.  It's just too bad you lost."  The grandmother said, "what do you mean, I lost?"  The teenager asked, "Well...aren't you from the South?"

Some people don't believe that story.  I do.

millard wrote:

To answer jtilleys question.Yes there are two Revell Mayflower kits.One considered 1/96 scale( approx.16" long).the other about 1/75 scale or so (approx.24" long)At the time they were orginally issued it was box scale model.They are identical right down to the figures that come with them.I have both kits under my bench.Thats where they will probably stay till I want to do a lot and I mean a lot of sanding and filling.

Here is where a mystery comes in. I've seen one 1970 box listed as H-366 with a length of 24 inches. However the 1975 "simplified assembly" H-366 Mayflower I'm building is listed on the box as 20 inches. I measured it and thats accurate. For the life of me I can't see where the additional four inches came from - or went. Did Revell issue three sizes of this kit?

Jim

I'm at least 90 percent certain that the Revell Mayflower only came in two sizes.  (Actually there was a third one - a tiny kit, made in ivory-colored plastic, issued in 1954.  It was distributed by Revell, but the box carried the "Gowland" label.  Revell bought Gowland's stockpile of kits when the latter company went out of business.  My source on that, as usual, is Dr. Graham's book.)

It is indeed a confusing story.  (Dr. Graham's book doesn't list the larger of the two genuine Revell kits - the one woodburner is working on.  Dr. Graham was kind enough to do a post in this Forum acknowledging the error - a small, and perfectly understandable, one in the context of the mass of information in the book.)  Just to make things still murkier, the 16" kit got reissued at least once with a "simplified" label on the box.  I think the contents were identical to the original except for the absence of the rigging blocks and the replacement of the plastic-coated-thread "ratlines" with injection-molded ones (which may have looked even worse than the originals). 

My guess is that the 24" figure is just a mistake.  Such things appear with alarming frequency in the labels and catalog listings of plastic sailing ship kits.  Some time back our good Forum friend Michel VRTG did a thorough study of plastic H.M.S. Victory.  He discovered, by actually examining all the kits and comparing them with good plans of the original ship, that the stated dimensions and scales for almost all those kits were incorrect.

Interesting thread!  Having built most of these kits at one time or another, I think I agree with most of what has been put out here already, with a couple additional notes:  Heller produced a couple 1/150 scale French 74-gun ships, the 'Superbe' and the 'Glorieux.'  Both of these (though I particularly favor the Superbe!) are quite excellent in scale, accuracy and detail.  In fact, having built the 1/100 scale 'Victory,' I actually think the Superbe is the better all around kit (with the one exception that Heller decided not to mold the copper plating for the entire bottom, just what is visible in profile)!  Most of the sailing kits produced by Heller were previously Aurora molds as you are well aware, incuding the Soleil Royale and others.  The 1/50 scale Chebec is also an excellent kit, and if you didn't know, there was a smaller (1/80?) Chebec made by Imai, that not only a gem in its own right, but even incudes a few wooden parts!  This kit pops up on Ebay now and again, so keep your eyes open! 

In reference to all the old Revell kits, one recent floating around that you might want to have a look at is the Revell Germany 'Batavia,' which was a Dutch East Indiaman that sank back in the early 17th Century.  This kit came out in the early '90's, to coincide with the launch of the full-sized reproduction of the 'Batavia' which is now lying in the Netherlands (it was shipped to Sydney Australia for the Olympics some years back, and actually got to sail at that time).  Very good kit!  Also, not all of the Lindberg kits are bad, as once upon a time they produced a model of the French frigate 'La Flore' in 1/180 scale that was quite detailed and accurately molded for it's size, and with a bit of detailing, makes into a very fine model.  Lindberg has subsequently reissued this kit with some modifications as an 'East Indiaman', and a pirate ship they call 'Jolly Roger.'  Sadly, the pirate ship version is pretty screwed up, as you may imagine!

All that said, for ease of build, and beauty of final appearance, I think I have the fondest memories of the old Revell 'America,' not only because of the quite good detail and the use of some sort of material for sails that is not vacuformed or molded plastic (still not sure what it is!), but the fact that you can actually ballast it and sail it on your local pond (it even includes a detachable sailing keel) quite effectively.  If I had my druthers, it would be that Revell would re-issue this kit in a larger size, perhaps about the size of the 1/50 Chebec, as then it would be of a size suitable for a simple RC package!  I have one of these built now, have another couple stowed away, along with the extended bowsprit 'Blockade Runner' version for future gifts for grand nephews, etc....

As for more 'modern' ships it appears we are now living in the 'golden age' for models of this type, with just about everything available in some scale or another, so choosing between say, a 1/350 scale Hasegawa 'Mikasa' or a 1/350 scale Tamiya 'Bismarck' is pretty much a crapshoot as far as I can see.....

I agree with virtually all of searat12's comments.  My opinion of the two Heller ships of the line isn't quite as high, for a couple of reasons:  the lack of camber in the decks and the silly "wood grain" detail on the hull halves (which makes it look like the entire hull was hacked from a single, impossibly-large log).  The latter goof would be fairly easy to fix; the former is more serious.

If memory serves, Aurora sold some (by no means all) of the Heller sailing ship kits in the U.S. for a brief period in the mid- to late 1970s - shortly before Aurora went out of business.  And Heller earlier sold some old Aurora kits under the Heller label - usually with completely spurious French names.  The Soleil Royal, though, originated with Heller - as did the chebec. 

I think it's safe to assert that Aurora never had the capability to produce sailing ships of that sophistication.  It made a handful of sailing ships back in the 1950s - Cutty Sark, Bluenose, Corsair, "Black Falcon Pirate Ship," "Viking Ship," Chinese Junk, and probably a few others that I've forgotten.  Then there were no more sailing ships from Aurora for quite a few years.  A few more small ones appeared in, if I remember right, the early seventies; I recall a Constitution and a Sovereign of the Seas.  And sometime in the mid-seventies came a small line of larger kits:  the Bonhomme Richard, Hartford, Wanderer, and Sea Witch (the latter being a modified reissue of an extremely old kit originally produced, I believe, by the Marx toy company).  Those four kits are collector's items nowadays.  I never cared much for them personally; their most notable feature was their hideous injection-molded sails, which were cast integrally with the yards.

Searat12 - welcome to the Forum!  You might want to check out a thread we started some time back called "Good plastic sailing ship kits," in which we discussed several of the very points you made in your post.  Here's the link:  /forums/708874/ShowPost.aspx

Glad to be here!  I'll have to pull out the 'Superbe' box again, as I seem to recall that there WAS camber built into the decks, but at that scale, it would be difficult to notice (most of the upper deck is either concealed under the quarter deck, or open at the waist, and of course the lower and upper gundecks are similarly concealed).  Also, as I put somewhere else in the forum, at the relatively small scale of these, it would be SO easy for molded planking to be overdone, that I would rather just scribe them, or leave them out altogether.  If you go to see the actual HMS Victory, yes you CAN see the individual planks, but you have to look fairly close, even at full size, because years of caulking, fairing and paint obscure a lot of it (and of course, this was the intent at the time). As the ship 'works,' these planks gradually become more visible, but that was why ships crews were also made to paint everything all the time (stories from the West India Station were particularly horrific in this regard).  It's funny, because on the West India Station, ships were always kept in the most spotless condition, all the time, even though much of the ship was composed of putty filler and shiny paint and blacking (the 18th century version of Bondo!).  The battle between 'Constitution' and 'Guerriere' showed this up in a big way, as the 'Guerriere' was literally blown into bits, not so much by the power of the 'Constitutions' broadsides, but by the very frail condition of the 'Guerriere' (despite her brilliant paintwork and perfectly blacked yards).....

Several interesting Forum threads seem to be overlapping at the moment.  We had a discussion of hull planking just last night in this one:  /forums/2/748243/ShowPost.aspx#748243

I don't have a Superbe or Glorieux kit in my possession.  In the comments I've made on them here I'm relying on a review of the Superbe that I wrote for the British magazine Scale Models (which used to be, shall we say, quite a different publication than it is today) back in the late seventies.  The kit I'd bought at that time most emphatically had perfectly flat decks.  That was almost thirty years ago, when the kit was new; I guess it's possible that Heller subsequently changed the molds, but I doubt it.

Deck camber in itself is indeed a subtle thing; it typically amounts to a rise of about 1/4" per foot of beam.  (That ratio doesn't change with scale reduction.  I imagine those models are in the neighborhood of four inches wide.  So the deck at the centerline would be, perhaps, 1/16" higher on the centerline than at the sides.)  On the surface of the deck itself that is indeed negligible.  The camber does, however, become quite noticeable in such things as athwartships rails and moldings, stern galleries, and the tops of hatch coamings. If those features are flat, the model just doesn't look right. 

Earlier in this thread another member was kind enough to post a photo that shows the stern galleries in one of the kits.  It's a little hard to judge such things from a photo, but it certainly looks like the galleries and other components of the transom do have the appropriate amount of "arch" in them.  (They'd look pretty awful if they didn't.)  In at least one of the other photos, though, it looks like the forward edge of the quarterdeck is a straight line (which, of course, it shouldn't be). 

Not having either of the kits in front of me, I probably shouldn't comment further.  The only thing I know for sure is that the Superbe I bought thirty years ago had flat decks.

I'll dig in the attic for mine and take a couple photos later today.... All that said, I notice a lot of rave reviews for Imai models, and as I have a couple (the Chebec, and the Napoleon) and have seen the list of their productions, I think I know why they went bust, and it isn't that they made their kits too well!  I think it is mostly the subjects they made models of that caused them their problems.  Most of their subjects are of ships that are either quite unfamiliar to most people, or are so obscure or 'niche' oriented that not too many people would be interested in building them.... Too bad they didn't choose their subjects better!  Wouldn't it be great if a few mosdel companys actually took the time to look at forum surveys such as is found here to make their next modelling subject decisions?  Trumpeter has been taking some great leaps by producing kits that no one else does (and making a bundle doing it!), and yet they mostly seem like obvious subjects (CV Saratoga and Lexington, etc) that are mostly ignored by other companys.  Have you ever sat down to think about how many versions of 'Bismarck' and 'Yamato' are out there?  Why would another company want to produce yet another version??  Only reason I can see is they consider them 'safe' subjects with a guaranteed revenue, but you would think that enormous competition would just be counter-productive!  Seems to me that it wouldn't take a marketing genius to figure out that producing 'opposing,' or closely associated ships would be a market winner.  For instance, would the HMS Victory be as famous if it was not closely engaged with 'Redoubtable' and 'Bucentaure?'  What of the 'Santissima Trinidad?'  'HMS Prince of Wales' was sunk with 'HMS Repulse,' yet other than the old Airfix 1/600 kit, who has made a version?  'Bismarck's' great battle with HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales relied to a great extent on the presence of 'Prinz Eugen' (some say it was her shells that actually caused the explosion on Hood), yet no-one makes a 1/350 version of her?  ICM comes out with three versions of SMS Koenig, yet no-one makes a 1/350 HMS Lion or other WW1 British ship?  What's wrong with these Bozos?!?  These aren't obscure vessels like 'Napoleon,' but very famous and important in their own right!

I can't claim to be as familiar with Imai as some other folks.  When the company was in its brief heyday I was working as a museum curator with an extremely limited income; I saw the boxes of most of the Imai kits (I think) in the hobby shop, but didn't have either the money to buy them or the time to build them.

Nor do I have a comprehensive list of them.  (I think either Millard or Epinniger does; maybe they'll see this post and offer a contribution.)  My recollection, though, is that the range in fact offered quite a mix of popular and more obscure subjects.  Imai made a Constitution, United States, Santa Maria, Mayflower, Golden Hind, and Cutty Sark, as well as a generic (but quite believable) Spanish galleon and two galleys - Greek and Roman.  (The latter two had some big problems regarding accuracy, but were nice pieces of mold-making.)  The Imai 1/200 U.S.C.G.C. Eagle was, to my knowledge, the only Eagle kit ever put on the market that got her hull proportions right.  (All the others were, I'm fairly certain, based on Harold Underhill's plans, which in fact represent the Gorch Fock - which was about 20 feet shorter.)  The two enormous Japanese sail training ships presumably were intended to be popular subjects in Japan; I imagine they picked the U.S.S. Susquehanna for the same reason.  Why they picked the Napoleon I don't know; maybe they were trying to tap into the French market, which previously had been thoroughly dominated by Heller.  The chebec and the galleass probably looked like the sort of subject that a ship modeler who'd already cut his teeth on the more popular subjects would find attractive.  And the range of nice little 1/350 sail training ships was timed to coincide with the much ballyhooed "Tall Ships Race" of 1976, which got millions of people (in the U.S., at least) interested (briefly) in such vessels.  (It also seems to have inserted the dumb phrase "tall ship" into the popular vocabulary.  Would that it could somehow be removed.)

Heaven forbid that I should pose as an expert on how to market sailing ship kits.  But that actually seems to me like quite a good, comprehensive mix of the hackneyed and the less familiar.

Dr. Graham's recent book on the history of Monogram Models contains a faint hint of what might, I suspect, have been one reason for Imai's short life span.  Imai leased some of its sailing ship molds (the Constitution, the United States, and maybe the Cutty Sark) to Monogram for a brief period, and Monogram marketed those kits in the U.S.  According to Dr. Graham, the steel used to make the molds was so soft that they got damaged, and Monogram had to pay to have them "repaired" (whatever that might mean in this context) before sending them back to Japan.  I wonder if some of Imai's molds simply wore out, and perhaps the company couldn't afford to repair or replace them.  Dr. Graham's book doesn't say any more about that point.  Quite a few of the old Imai kits are currently being sold under other labels (Academy and Aoshima certainly, and maybe others).  It would be interesting to compare those reissued kits with the originals - and look for evidence of mold damage.

Imai also tended to go off on odd tangents.  I remember looking at the Imai H.M.S. Victory, which was designed about like a plastic kit but had hull halves cast in white metal and spars made from wood.  It was utterly awful - and expensive.  I can't imagine that many people bought it, and it probably required quite an investment.  I think I've also read about Imai wood kits, which I haven't seen.

The bottom line seems to be that this was an extremely adventurous company, with designers who were true artisans and a desire to make genuinely high-quality products.  I miss Imai.

Maybe the biggest factor in the company's demise was the obvious one:  it put a great deal of its money and effort into plastic sailing ship kits, at a time when that genre of the hobby was just about dead.  At the present time it seems to be on life support.  Revell (the U.S. company, as distinct from Revell Europe) hasn't issued a genuinely new sailing ship kit since 1977.  (That was thirty years ago.  The company issued its first sailing ship in 1956.  Revell has, in other words, been out of the sailing ship business 50 percent longer than it was in it.)  Heller and Airfix are out of business.  (There are reports that Hornby is going to market at least some of the Airfix kits; I wonder if that will include any of the sailing ships - and whether Hornby will sell any of the Heller ones.)  Imai is dead - except for some reissues under other labels, generally at sky-high prices.  Pyro is long gone; a few of its old kits are being sold under the Lindberg label, which does seem to have gotten a new lease on life under new ownership.  For a while I had some hope for the Russian company Zvezda, whose Hanseatic cog struck me as a fine idea for a plastic kit.  But Zvezda hasn't shown much initiative since.

Frankly I've been pleasantly surprised at the number of folks in this Forum who are interested in sailing ships.  The unfortunate fact remains, though, that we're in a tiny minority - and for the present it looks like we're doomed to survive on what can be found on E-bay at swap meets, and in the dark, dusty corners of the few remaining local hobby shops. 

Or take the route I did:  take a deep breath, swallow your inhibitions, and build from scratch.  It really isn't as difficult as some people think - and scratch building opens up an unlimited range of subjects.