Revell Vasa

The two kits are of slightly different scale; the Airfix kit is 1/144 and the Revell kit is 1/150. The Airfix kit uses dummy cannon barrels on the lower gundecks while the Revell kit has partial gun deck parts and molded-on gun carriages to which the builder cements the full barrels.  Both kits are crisply molded, but Revell's is more accurate, being based upon more recent research.  They are very different kits.  Someone ran photos of the Revell kit on an earlier thread.

Bill

I can't speak to the comparisons between the Airfix version and the Revell, but I'm working on the Revell 1:150 Wasa right now, and I have to say, the detail of the molding is in-tri-cate! Seriously, this thing's got major definition...what with all the ornate carvings and decorations...I can even make out the carving of the little frightened man hiding under the beakhead railing, and it's tiny!  And all the gallery figures are very well-molded and visible.

Also, being a newly-designed kit, there's almost no flash or seams, and all the parts look great!...uh, except for the vac formed sail sheet, two of them were a bit crinkled (dang it, Revell, make the boxes like you once did, and we can avoid these troubles!)...but no matter, I'm not using sails anyway...

My only other complaint would be the rigging thread...one spool of tan.  It looks like it's decent stuff, but I will definitely be picking up some thicker black line for the standing rig, and probably some extra tan, too...gotta ditch those plastic shrouds/ratlines and tie them up myself (first time for that!).

I just wanted to chime in on my observations of the kit's quality, in case you were considering to build it.

Dave

Thanks for your feedback guys. I already have the old Airfix kit, and it is pretty good considering it was first manufactured about 30 years ago. The Vasa was only partially restored back in the 70's and was still being sprayed with water and preservative whilst in its temporary museum. So credit to Airfix where it is due as they must have worked with the Vasa museum at the time to produce their kit. Over 30 years of research and restoration have gone on since then, so Revell have the hindsight of all this extra knowledge to produce their kit last year. A member of IPMS Sweden kindly got the Eva Marie Stolt drawings for me from the Vasa Museum, and the Airfix one will require a lot of work to correct it to these drawings. Just recently I have been looking at a website named Scale Plastic and Rail. There is an out of the box review on the Revell Vasa by a guy named James Hatch, with quite a number of component photos and it does look to be very accurate. However, the detailing of the carvings does not seem as sharp as on the Airfix one in the pictures. This does seem to contradict the earlier thread comment, so maybe the pictures may have been a bit out of focus in the review. I intend to get the Revell one anyway, as a direct comparison between the kits will be be the only way to really decide which is the better. If the Aifix sculptures do happen to be sharper then I will have a look at a bit of cross kitting. The scales are a bit different, 1/144th to 1/150th so we will have to see??????Regardless of which kit will be built, it will be a major challenge in the paintwork department before even getting on to the rigging.

I read/saw the James Hatch review of the Vasa before I got my kit....great pics and insightful observations by that guy!

Like I said, I've never seen the Airfix version (or any Airfix kit, for that matter!), so I can't give comparison opinions, AND I'm totally new to plastic Ship Modeling, so my opinion can't be too highly-regarded...BUT, I do know that the new tooling of the Revell Wasa makes for some clean parts!  One of my least favorite things about assembling a kit is trying to mate up parts that are warped, or poorly-designed so they don't fit snugly....and with the Wasa, I was a little dubious of the lines on the Rear Galleries/Transom Castles, etc....what with all the carvings supposedly matching up at the corner.....but I got the deck and hull assembled last night, and I have to say, everything clicked into place without a hitch!  And the castles fit snug as a bug in a rug! 

And I would like to mention that the pics of Hatch's review of the kit are quite close to the actual detail of the UNFINISHED parts while on the sprues, and they do seem to look a little *rounded*....I can assure you that once they were painted, the shiny tan plastic color was gone, and the parts gained a much crisper level of detail once light wasn't reflected from every angle because of the glossy surface....just my opinion.

BTW, I'm already looking to the future for my next ship kit.....I've only done two, and they were both Revell (the BHR, and now the Vasa).....how does Airfix hold up for quality, detail, etc?  Or what about Heller?  OR even Lindberg?  Is there a manufacturer who generally stands above the rest??

Cheers!

David

I'd recommend the Revell Golden Hind while you're still in the 17th century.

Out of production, but among the very best are kits from Imai.

At long last I have managed to obtain a Revell Vasa kit to do a direct comparison with my Airfix one. The 1/150th scale Revell kit overall is much more accurate than the 1/144th scale Airfix one. When comparing the ships hull sides there is only a little difference in actual size when put together despite the scale difference. The Revell one is slightly smaller as expected. Now that I have the two kits side by side, I can say that the carvings on the old Airfix kit surprisingly have much better crispness and definition than the ones on the new Revell kit. Maybe something gets lost using CAD on this sort of ornate detailing as opposed to the old method of pantographing down from a big master model. Comparing both I may be tempted to transfer some of the Aitfix carved figures over to the Revell kit where it is feasable, or try to improve the Revell kit figures by careful use of some old engraving tools and a pyrograph tool. Or maybe I will simply try to do a good paint job on the kit carvings supplied. We will see!  Revell, like Airfix have not put any scarph joint details on the hull cladding timbers, so the modeller will have to do a bit of research and mark in their own. They did however, mark in the ends of the individual deck planks that Airfix omitted to do on their kit. I did not like the moulded in gammoning  for the bowsprit on the Revell kit as this will be very difficult to remove. Unfortunately, I have set myself a bit of a challenge, as I wish to build the model using John Tilley's method of making furled sails and flags along with all the runniing rigging involved. There is a professional ship modeller named Lloyd McCafferey whos book on Shipbuilding in Miniature describes his methods for making miniature blocks and how to make all the rigging and ratlines from various gauges of copper and nickel wire that he winds to the correct scale thicknesses. So I will be having a go at his described methods to see how I get on.

Here's a couple of pictrues of my newly-completed Wasa....if anyone's interested:

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