I have got to laugh at all the knotted panties this thread has generated.
Well, at last a spirited defense for a kit has been made by someone associated with its manufacture!
Not even close to a defense, that would imply offense. What you got was the reasoning behind some decisions, do learn to differentiate the two.
That said, and as I have stated in several other threads, I think the Dragon USS Buchanan is one of the finest 1/350 scale ships around, and agree fully that any 'improvements' that could be made would be either 'gilding the lilly,' or add enormously to the costs.
Thanks from the team that worked on it. That last word is the critical word....costs.
(though I still would love to see an 'oilcanning' version one day, since one of the primary things most modellers do is apply great efforts to 'weather' a subject, be it ship, plane, or armor!)
You aren't likely to ever see it in 1/350, over 90% are built full hull in the clean dockyard style, regardless of how long the vessel had been in service prior to wearing a given paint scheme. Of the remaining 10% of the market, maybe 25% of them want oilcanning molded on the hull, that makes it 2.5% of the total 1/350 market. That's the reality of the market. The waterline guys should just be thankful Dragon molded the hull for ease of waterlining and unlike most they placed the split at minimum draft instead of the typical maximum draft for waterlined kits. Keep in mind, over 90% of the 1/350 market DOES NOT WANT oilcanning or heavy weathering like the plane and tank guys love. That market force right there and percentage that want a given feature preclude it ever happening in kit form.....deal with it.
I appreciate Mr. Smith's having taken the trouble to respond. Though he seems to have gotten a little emotional about the comments that have been made in this thread, he hasn't actually said much that contradicts my original post. That said, since, Mr. Smith seems to have characterized my comments as "semi-accurate," I'll respond.
You're welcome, now stop confusing emphatic with emotional. You got as straight a set of facts as possible from anyone other than the decision makers at Dragon or Tim Dike. Some things they just decided to do or not do as pleased them. And a number of your statements were only semi-accurate.
It seems to me, though, that it would make more sense to treat such openings the way the manufacturers treat such things as the mounting holes for parts that vary from ship to ship: mold them as countersunk depressions on the inside of the part, so the modeler can drill them out if and when appropriate.
Then you know little or nothing about the molding process, you just added a number of slides at very tight tolerances in a very complicated moving unit for the geometry of that specific part, which is a common part to all kits that may be made from the basic design.
In any case, as I noted the first time around, this point belongs under the heading of "no big deal." We're not talking about an error of the magnitude that's got purchasers of the Hasegawa battleships incensed; we're talking about a small error in accuracy that's easily fixed.
I agree exept it being an accuracy issue, it is a common part planned for further use where that feature will be needed. It makes more sense economically to have the feature. Dragon should have indicated on the instructions to fill the portholes so the error would be on the instructions, not the part, that's fairly common on some Hasegawa aircraft for panel lines and some Dragon tanks for small things molded on parts common to most but not all variants of the base vehicle.
I agree that the sonar dome should not have been cast integrally with the hull. But why couldn't it have been cast as a separate part? I also agree that a number of other external features of the hull would have been worth showing.
You'd have to ask Dragon why they didn't for the dome. The gross features would be worth showing but not at the cost of making it less buildable or driving up the cost of the mold.
We all know there are limitations to the molding process, and that everything that's added to a kit costs the manufacturer money. But if we accept the legitimacy of the argument that it's ok to leave something off because putting it on would "not be cost-effective," where do we stop?
The stopping point is where it would turn a 1/350 destroyer that retails for under $50 to one that would require a retail of $100 to recoup costs. Put a slide in the mold, approx. quadruple the cost for the part, require tolerances to 5 decimal places quintuple the cost of that cut and the risk of rejecting the mold for missing the tolerance.
Was the inclusion of those two little preformed pieces of brass for the shields around the sky lookout positions cost-effective? I doubt it.
Actually it was, they already have most of the tooling needed from their armor line and the part could not accurately be done in injected plastic with a reasonable rejection rate.
And I still think it would be practicable to represent hull plating on this scale - albeit probably not on a two-piece hull split at the waterline.
For sure not on any hull that isn't one piece. Now go back to adding slides to the mold, tolerances and potential for rejecting the mold for a bad cut. Quintuple the cost of each cut then add in the risk of not holding a 5 decimal place tolerance on a compound curved structure. Not cost effective for an affordable injected kit. The resin guys can do it cost effectively with their manufacturing process but the injection companies can't. Unless you want it 3 or 4 times scale with much looser tolaerances and end up with a cartoonish looking hull.
Several of Mr. Smith's comments seem to be based on the assumption that the hull had to be produced that way. I don't understand why. Other companies have shown hull plating reasonably effectively in kits (though I admit I can't offhand think of one in 1/350) with their hulls cast in port and starboard halves - which would make the casting of the hull plating lines simpler.
You still have a seam with plates that cross it. Not rocket science by any stretch, it just can't be done cost effectively, deal with that fact. One of the reasons the hull is done like it is, is to make the 10% of the 1/350 market that likes waterlined hulls happy. Another is the internal bracing that prevents flex after assembling the parts. Almost the entire steelnavy era crowd loathes port and starboard split hulls, they just do not build well and are not as rigid after assembly.
Just before it got out of the warship business, Airfix figured out a good, simple solution to the "full-vs.-waterline hull" problem: mold the full hull in port and starboard halves, with an incised groove at the waterline on the inside. The modeler who wants a full-hull model does nothing; the one who wants a waterline model "waterlines" the kit in a few minutes by running an X-acto knife along the groove. I wonder why other companies haven't gone that route.
See above re:loathing that type of hull split. Personally I think all 1/350 and larger ships should be molded full hull and the waterline crowd can just learn how to use a height gauge and saw, for that matter just learn to make a jig for the ripfence of a tablesaw and have at it (yes I do jig resin hulls with heavy overpour blocks just like that and zip most of it off on my 10" tablesaw, no big deal).
I did take another look at the various deck components. (If I'm reading Mr. Smith's post correctly, this is the only point on which he says I'm actually mistaken.) If there's a "diamond" tread pattern I sure can't see it, even under magnification. (I didn't use the word "random" to describe it, by the way. There's nothing random about it.) I'm inclined to agree with Mr. Smith that it would have been better to leave the pattern off. On the other hand, the texture is so fine that anything other than the thinnest layer of paint will obscure it. It can hardly be said to have messed up the appearance of the model. I think this one falls in the category of "it doesn't make any difference one way or the other." (But was the application of that texture cost-effective?)
I bet you're looking at the wrong parts, only the upper decks aft of the focsl break have it, you can't miss it. It's accurate for the FSDD Kearny built batch of which Buchanan was part. If you're putting paint on heavy enough to obscure it, you're using way too much paint. I think you're looking at the typical slightly grainy texture of EDM on the main and focsl decks. Dragon saw the diamond tread on the hi-res photos and decided they just had to do it, despite all advice against it.
My intention, like I said, is to make a replacement foremast out of brass. But I still don't see why the plastic one had to be made in two parts - or why the bell (or the antenna trunks, for that matter) got left off.
Logical break point for a different style of mast most likely. Not that it matters for those that rig, plastic masts that thin are only useful as a master for turning brass. Got me on the bell and antenna trunks.
Apparently the absence of the photo-etched parts I mentioned was, as I assumed, due to economic considerations. I confess I have trouble understanding why Dragon thought the seats for the 1.1-inch guns and the binoculars in the sky lookout positions needed to be represented and the structure and rails for the searchlight platform didn't - to say nothing of the radar screen. I don't - and never did - blame Mr. Smith or any of the other designers for any of that.
You can't really represent the sights, seats and binoculars close to scale any other way. I find the lack of PE for the searchlight tower puzzling myself. Become familiar with their current armor kits to know why they like some PE fiddlies.
Mr. Smith makes some interesting and helpful comments about the color scheme - but never gets around to explaining why the instructions (except the overall camouflage diagram) don't tell the modeler what color goes where. I repeat: it looks like an editing error. It's hard to believe that Dragon, having included that long list of colors in the introductory section, deliberately omitted any indication of which color should go on which part.
WWII camouflage USN ships just aren't that detailed for colors and very rarely in 1/350 would you need to worry about it. It's not like a sailing ship or aircraft cockpit with lots of fiddly bits painted different colors, camouflaged vessels typically had everything exposed painted unless there was a valid mechanical reason not to. Other than the light boxes, anchor chains and 20mm's there is nothing to call out. I do agree they should have for those parts but they are also learning a whole new genre for them.
It looks more like they intended to put together the instruction diagrams the way virtually all the company's others are, and somebody simply made a human error somewhere in the process.
They were adamant about the format of instructions, we tried to change a lot of the build order. I think it has more to do with the multi-language pictogram thing than anything else.
I agree with Mr. Smith about "oil-canning." It would be extremely difficult for a manufacturer to reproduce at this scale, and in my opinion is the sort of thing that's better left to the individual modeler. (It might be said to fall in the same category as "weathering.")
Especially considering every ship is different, even from itself at various times. The Benson-Gleaves class as a general rule did not oilcan badly during the war. Of the 300 or so photos I have of the class, only Lansdowne and Lardner show any signifcant oilcanning and only at their extreme sterns and it's *maybe* as deep as their plating is thick (.00142" in scale at most). Oher B-G's do show some "skin puckering" in Boston Navy Yard or Puget Sound Navy Yard in cold weather but see them later in the Med. or South Pacific and the puckering is gone, this applies as late as early 1946. Too subtle and too variable for the class and scale, not worth irritating the 97% of the market that doesn't want it.
Mr. Smith ends his first paragraph with the assertion that the kit "isn't perfect...but...darned close." I'll go further than that. It comes closer than any other ship kit I've ever encountered. If the standards of plastic twentieth-century warship kits never get any higher than this, I won't complain.
Just wait.........ths team and Dragon know that better is possible. Keeping it in the reasonable price range is the challenge.
Well, now you have me curious! Mr. Smith argued against 'oilcanning' using the simple argument that 'most people' want a dockyard model, and made no mention of real difficulty in doing so. A reasonable commercial argument! As such things as plate lines, tiny seats, individual sailors with shirt pockets and all sorts of other tiny details at 1/350 scale can be apparently molded without difficulty, it seems to me that an 'oilcanning' effect might not be too difficult to mold if it was wanted (no more difficult than a cambered wood deck, I would imagine). Certainly, I have seen all sorts of surface details molded at very tiny scales (the diamond tread pattern, for one, 'eyebrows' over portlight scuttles for another), and an 'oilcanning' effect would certainly be very much larger than any of these. Can anyone tell me what the technical difficulties for producing such an effect might be?
Already addressed above. You obviously have no idea of the costs of researching each individual "pattern" or whether enough photos of said "pattern" exist for every vessel at every time, at useful resolutions, not web-based lo-res. You also obviously have no idea of how molds are cut, what it costs to hold the required tolerances neccessary to prevent turning out a "drag queen cartoon" of a ship. Back to commercial...........it's not worth irritating the 97% of the market that doesn't want it.
This is what I have been talking about. This 'oilcanning' is on the aricraft carrier 'Franklin D. Roosevelt,' and really shows up at certain angles. In this case, the oilcanning resulted from pounding into a heavy storm in the Gulf of Tonkin, but will stay there pretty much indefinitely until either the plates are replaced, or they get faired as a part of repainting (unlikely to happen in either case). In reality, you don't see it 'sometimes' on ships, but almost invariably on any ship that has seen some hard service (I note that Dragon is coming out with an 'end of the war' version of Buchanan as well, which certainly qualifies for 'hard service').
See above re:Benson-Gleaves class and lack of oilcanning during the war. See also thermal effects re:"skin pucker" vs. true oilcanning. You make assumptions here without any factual basis. You keep harping on a "feature" that an insignificant portion of the market wants that would probably triple the cost of cutting the mold in scale.
Yes, the compound shapes of ship hulls are tricky for molding. So are the shapes of aircraft wings, fuselages, etc. yet very subtle platelines, rivets, you name it have been available on these for quite a long time.
Hulls are significantly more complex forms, it wasn't until the last few years you could even get software in the multi-thousand dollar range that could accurately loft a hull, especially the older hull forms that were originally done by hand. Now name me a single 1/350 scale aircraft or tank with in scale details. Wait, you can't. Not even 1/48 aircraft are truly detailed in scale. Now name me a single injected kit with details that are continuous for 12" where the detail is a maximum of .00142" high along a compound curve with a tolerance of +/- .0001"........I'm waiting.
Perhaps the the upper mold of 'Buchanan' could be made in two pieces, so as to make such additional details more possible. Certainly there has been no evidence of problems in portlight placement, etc, etc.
Learn what a tolerance is.........
Ordinarily when fitting hull parts together, any filling and sanding to be done is on a very limited area, not the whole hull, as this would certainly eliminate most hull details, not just oilcanning.
You need to learn how hulls are constructed, there is almost no place to place a seam without it being so close to a detail of .00142" maximum that you won't destroy the detail with any amount of sanding, no matter how light. It is not physically possible in this scale. One piece hull is the only way. You're asking for details as fine or finer than the mold parting lines at the ends of the bilge keels.
Perhaps it is just not possible to mold-in oilcanning with current technology, or in a cost-effective manner, but that doesn't mean it cannot be done in the future (in other words, it was a suggestion to think about for future production). More importantly, model companies produce kits for customers to buy, not to suit themselves, so whether YOU want a particular feature or not is rather beside the point, don't you think?
See market percentage, etc. ad nauseum above.
Here's another one...
The full size you have posted is at least 4 times 1/350 scale, real reproducible there.
Lighter shades/light pre-shade in the middle "panel", preshade black at the edge,very thin (stretched sprue or similar) at the edges, cover with some Mr Surfacer and lightly sand. Basecoat paint, then finish with a sludge wash in one direction (brush stroke), so the thinned washed accumulates against your "edge", giving an appearance of a "dimple". Not sure if this would work at the larger scales (350).
Actually that is the best method except for very extreme cases. Otherwise you end up with a "drag queen having a bad makeup day cartoon".
Yup, these are all good suggestions, and I have heard and seen others. In the submarine example above, there are two things going on, one is 'oilcanning,' and the other is platelines, which according to Tracy above, is also 'impossible' to mold. But all the 'fixes' take a number of steps, require a number of different products, etc, etc, etc. All I suggested originally was 'wouldn't it be cool if they could simply mold in the 'oilcanning' and save us all a lot of extra work?' I had no idea this would cause such a fuss!
Again, your image is way larger than 1/350 scale. Again it is possible to mold it in scale, it is just not cost effective not would it be buildable by the average modeler. Again, YOU and YOUR want are an insignificant portion of the total 1/350 scale market. Get over it!
One thing to keep in mind about replicating oil canning is that the younger a hull, the less of an effect one will see. Oil canning develops over the life of the ship. The modeler should check photos of the appropriate time in the ship's life before busting out the Xacto or Dremel to avoid overdoing the affect.
Bingo! Also a lot of assumed oilcanning is just temporary thermal effects.
As you noted, 'oil canning' takes place over time and service. Dragon has released a 'dockyard' model of USS Buchanan circa 1942. That's fine and dandy. They are about to release another edition of USS Buchanan, this time 1945. Do you agree that after all the trials and tribulations, storms and what have you of three years of almost constant warfare in the Pacific, in all conditions and all weathers a fair bit of 'oil canning' is going to be likely??
Not according to photos she doesn't. You have made a baseless assumption, again. She has a few minor dents and dings and that's it in the available photos.
Please read carefully ALL that I have written, stop being so defensive of your work, and take both my, and Professor Tilley's comments as suggestions for improvement/upgrade/future endeavours, not criticism of what has been done so far. One final point, no modeller is EVER satisfied with ANY level of detail, and there are always improvements that can be made, and will be asked for. That is what keeps the business moving forward. Take it for what it is, not as some sort of personal attack (cuz it ain't!).
You should take the same advice re:reading what has been written. I am in fact mostly satisfied with Buchanan for an injected kit, I much prefer resin. Most improvements I see are instructions, eliminate or correct the tread plate and issues related to where gates are located on parts along with sufficient clearance for sprue cutters. There are things I haven't touched on like molded on ladders.....lose them....and the rafts should be open ovals with PE mesh bottoms; the former is to my taste but not all like it, the latter is an accuracy issue.
As far as whether we or the manufacturers model the "oilcanning" or "waffleing" of hull plates that occurs with hard use of every ship; doesn't that depend upon whether one is modeling the ship as built or as the result of heavy use. If the latter, to what extent should the modeler look at the individual photographic record to determine precisely which plates were involved and to what extent? How picky do we want to get?
Market percentage should drive it. 90% in 1/350 are built clean dockyard style, of those waterlined maybe 25% want oilcanning. approx. 2.5% of a market desiring a feature the rest of the market does not want is a bad idea.
And for panel lines on ships . . . they are a very visible feature on all ships. They should be included to some extent on larger scale ship models (CAD lines are NOT panel lines).
In scale, in tolerance, in budget and buidlable with 100% perfect fitting seams that require no putty or sanding go for it! Read again, it was discussed at length and it really can't be done on a multi-part hull meeting the scale, tolerance, budget and buildability requirements. You can't just do the upper hull at 3 times scale like Tamiya did on their Fletcher, it looks cartoonish and really stupid when the lower hull is baby's butt smooth. Tamiya got a lot of flak over that too and most people sand it all off. Grosser features like anchor scuff plates, docking keels, seachests, buttstraps, external degaussing cables and zincs could be easily done in scale, tolerance and budget without affecting buildability, shell plating just can't on multi-part hulls.
Well, it appears we have got to the root of the misconception. I (and others, I think) were under the impression that you were somehow associated with the production of this kit by Dragon, but apparently this is not the case.
He never stated that, you assumed that.
That means you are just a modeller like the rest of us, and your opinion is of no greater interest or impact than any of the rest of us. In other words, what you want to do with your kit, and/or what kind of kits and/or what kind of features you are looking for is no better or worse, or less, or more important than anyone else's.
Bad assumption again, he has more basis in the facts of this kit than you or anyone else in this thread except myself does.
In that case, I return to my original thought/suggestion, which was, wouldn't it be cool if the manufacturers could somehow reproduce the 'oilcanning' effect in the mold, especially if they are going to issue a 'before,' as well as an 'after' kit!
No it would not be "cool", it would seriously tick off 97% of the market for 1/350 scale. Your want is based on invalid assumptions re:oilcanning as well, see above.
If you want to build a dockyard model for yourself, that's fine, and there is nothing wrong with that, enjoy and make it as shiny as you like. But a lot of people like to produce a lot of different weathering effects in order to produce a model that represents the ship 'in service,' and that is equally an excellent objective, and the two are not mutually exclusive. I think we can end this discussion now.
Look at the reality of the market before expounding upon how many want what, yet another bad assumption. For what you keep harping on as "wanting" they might as well diecast the thing and preweather it for you.