Worst Ship Model you have ever built

Well, i nthe spirit of this thread, the most dissappointing kit I ever built would have to be the (old) Revell SS United States..

You got only a semi-hull, the insides were completely hollow, it was box scale and not very consistently and had about seven parts.

So, it built faster than it painted, which was tough for needing only four colors of paint. and when you were done, what did you have?  At least the hull bottom was flat, it'd sit on any surface it was left upon.

JMart wrote:

The revell "pirate ship". I got it for my daughter, big fan of the POC movie. What a piece of junk. Actually, since I never bothered finishing it, does not qualfy as worst BUILT ;)

That ship is actually the Chicken of the Sea ship that was a restaurant at Disneyland

Only real diffirence is the art work on the stern should be a mermaid and tuna fish instead of the Jolly Roger.

There should also be a mermaid on the bow.

Twords the end before they demolished it for something else they renamed it Captain Hooks Jolly Roger and removed the mermaid off the bow and repainded the stern in one color.

Aft
 

I think the worst one I have ever built was the Lindberg Bismark.

Eric... 

At the merry age of 15, having built the big Revell Constitution with my mom during a summer, and then the Thermo and the Kearsarge on my own with newspaper money, mom bought the Aurora Bon Homme Richard for my birthday. It was a huge pile of unbuildable brown plastic, I think it had molded shroud/ratlines, and sails.

On a positive note, at about the same time I won the Revell Oriana at a contest. What a beaut! I recall a piece of metallic green paper foil that was to be glued into the bottom of the swimming pool! I'd build her again.

Edit: on a google search which found numerous examples for $ 4 or so, I came to the conclusion that my memories are probably nicer than reality. However it did yield this nice little website with online instruction sheets:

http://www.nowonline.at/service.php?page=1&language=en&pID=704

The Lindberg Bismarck and Tirpitz were bad enough . . . how about their HMS Hood?

 Bill Morrison

Here's a fond memory of the good, bad and the ugly. The Aurora "Chinese Junk" which was about 1/68.

The one with the black plastic hull, and orange cast sail/ battens, big pieces they were too like about 6" square.

I had read, and this was about '63-64, Ernest Gann's book "Soldier of Fortune", where a sailor named Hank Lee has a black market operation in the Hong Kong underworld running illicit... well you get the picture. So he gets hired by Miss fresh-off-the-farm to go into China circa 1950 and rescue her husband who's in jail. He has a boat, a junk, the Chicago, and pulls off the caper. But during the escape, they are pursued by a Chinese gunboat, at which point he drops the transom revealing an Oerlikon cannon, with which they bang away at their pursuers until...

BTW the book and the movie have different endings, at least the Gable one.

Lots of sweaty girl in her skimpies loading shells into , oh never mind. So I had to do it. My first kit bash, wish o wish I had her still. I used a 1/8" diameter piece of silver plastic rod from a GI Joe .30 tripod that broke in a dirt clod war in the back yard as the barrel, and I was a happy 3rd grader. Long live the Chicago!

As I think back on it, there were a lot, really a lot of fun sailing ship models back in the '60's. We've all touched on quite a few, and they were all a good thing when you were a kid and had 79 cents burning a hole in your chinos. After all, Testors paint was only 15 cents.

The worst for me was the Lindberg Sea Witch. Nothing on that kit fit without using and orbital sander. Everytime I see one on E bay I cringe.

Rod

Eric- thanks for the info! Maybe my kid will want  to re-start the ship as a Disney kit ;) cheers

JMart wrote:

Eric- thanks for the info! Maybe my kid will want  to re-start the ship as a Disney kit ;) cheers

I have the model and have been collecting pictures to eventually try my hand at making the correct stern and figurehead so I can do a diorama of the Disneyland site. 

Eric... 

tankerbuilder wrote:

..... Do you remember the REVELL model of the SPORT FISHERMAN ?? The original model was just as bad . It was a 1955 era CHRIS-CRAFT tri cabin motor yacht . That model was baaad . The re-release (above )was even worse ......

Oh man!. I recieved one of those as a gift (the re-release). Its sitting on my shelf right now waiting to be started. Is it really that much of a stinker??

  I built the Pyro USS Maine as a kid, and didn't know, or care, how inaccurate it was until, some years later, I found some photos of the real thing. It just looked classy, with all that gold paint!

I also built the Revell Sport Fisherman as a kid, and now realise that the fact that nothing fit wasn't my fault. I even bought another one when Revell Germany re-released it a couple of years ago as part of their 50th anniversary programme. I think I can do a decent job on it now - I even have some wood-effect decal for it when the time comes!

But the worst ship (actually boat) kit that I've actually built sice I returned to the hobby was undoubtably the Airfix 1/72 Severn-class RNLI Lifeboat. Nothing fit, soft,soapy  and inaccurate detail, worst decals, in terms of silvering, that I've seen for many a year. Lots of interior detail, none of it especially accurate, and none of it visible through the coke-bottle glazing once you've put the roof on. Even the parts layout on the sprues was so cramped and illogical that it became a major barrier to completing the kit, especially as anything thinner than about 60 thou split when you tried to cut it from the sprue. The plastic was reluctant to take either CA or liquid poly.

That said, I was building it for my LHS, so resisted the (very strong) temptation to bin it. They were very pleased with it, and have sold several of the kits on the strength of people coming into the shop and seeing the built-up model....

and it passed the capsize test:

Cheers,

Chris.

Tankerbuilder,

There is an FSM review of the Aurora USS Halford in the July, 1997 issue called "Kit Classics #35: Aurora's USS Halford, Was it a scale model or a toy?"

Bill Morrison

Elsewhere in this subject, someone wrote about the Lindberg Sea Witch. I built that model and had the original Marx Swordfish (basically the same ship with different prow and a stamped metal deck). Didn't find the model that bad, actually. I guess building wooden models, and frequently having to do serious modifications means that I look at plastic as a similarly malleable material. I do recall the Lindberg had a few fit problems, due to the age of the dies.
There was a Revell 1/570 Bismarck (maybe someone mentioned that already). Not bad, but fit problems.
Aside from several wooden models (they have a whole different set of problems), the absolute worse plastic ship models I ever built were some of the Pyro/Life-Like small sailing ships. Not all of them, mind you, but a good chunk of them are just plain wrong.

Ironically, never had fit problems with the Lindberg ships, though, of course, they have other issues. Fun in the pond, though.