Like many other folks, I ordered one of Dragon's new 1/350 U.S.S. Buchanan kits, sight unseen, because of the enthusiastic reviews on this site and elsewhere. I have to say that I agree with the reviewers: this is simply the best twentieth-century warship kit I've ever seen. The quantity and quality of detail in it are beyond anything else that, to my knowledge at least, has ever appeared on the market; it makes the excellent Tamiya Fletcher look almost crude by comparison.
So many rave reviews of the kit have appeared elsewhere that there's no point in my trying to sing all its praises here. Some of the things that impress me particularly: the integrally-molded bilge keels (you can almost cut your finger on them), the precise fit between the upper and lower hull sections, the fact that the decks have camber built in, the attention to little-appreciated details (the sky lookout positions with their binoculars and pre-bent brass windbreaks) the decals representing the tread strips on the decks, the display base with its mounting pedestals (with adjustable spacing; apparently they'll be used for future kits of different dimensions), those six unbelievable crew figures, etc., etc., etc.
There are, though, a few features of this kit that I find, if not disappointing, a little...well, puzzling.
1. The above-waterline hull is a beautiful molding. The recessed portholes under the forecastle deck are particularly well-cast. Unfortunately, though, photos confirm that, as one would expect, by the period represented by the kit (1942) the Buchanan's hull scuttles had been plated over. (I suspect Dragon is going to reuse this piece in another, pre-war version.) Filling in the scuttles won't be difficult or time-consuming, but I do find it a little surprising that they're there.
2. Except for those scuttles, the hawsehole lips, the aforementioned bilge keels, and the screws and rudders, there's no detail on the exterior of the hull. The sonar dome, for instance, is conspicuous by its absence. And in my personal opinion (with which others are, of course, perfectly entitled to disagree), on this scale it would be appropriate for a model to include some representation of the hull plating. Not, for heaven's sake, the grossly out-of-scale (and wrongly located) countersunk grooves that are on the new Hasegawa battleships. But even small photos of U.S. WWII destroyers clearly show the lines where the plates are welded together - and, in some cases, overlap each other.
I've been thinking about ways to represent that characteristic. Maybe spraying some thick liquid (Mr. Surfacer?) on carefully masked areas of the hull would work. It also occurs to me that it might be possible to "plate" the hull (at least the part above the waterline, where compound curves are minimal) with pieces of something like Bare Metal Foil, or even dull-surfaced transparent tape, like Scotch Magic Tape. (3-M claims the adhesive on it is "permanent," and we all know that paint sticks to it. That may turn out to be a dumb idea, but I think it's worth a little experimentation.)
At any rate, it seems to me that the edges of the hull plates should be at least as noticeable as some of the features that the kit does represent - e.g., the openings in the netting on the guardrails, and the pockets on the sailors' shirts.
3. Dragon says the decks feature the "finest tread pattern ever reproduced." I guess that's true, but having looked at the surfaces in question under magnification I've concluded that there's no genuine "tread pattern" there; just an extremely fine stippled texture. That's ok with me; I question whether it would be physically possible to represent the actual pattern accurately on that scale. [Later edit: having had my eyes directed to the right spots, I can confirm that the upper platform decks do have an extremely fine, cross-hatch pattern engraved on them. See below.]
4. I really don't care for the way the foremast is molded - in two pieces, of less than 1/64" in diameter, connected by a tiny stepped joint. That joint will get subjected to a lot of stress - especially if the model is rigged (and a beautiful kit like this surely deserves rigging). Maybe there was some reason for making the mast that way, but I sure can't see what that reason was. And the ship's bell (which is prominent on the boxtop painting) is missing.
I'm going to think hard about making a brass wire replacement for the whole mast.
5. The kit includes two frets of beautiful photo-etched brass parts, and a supplementary set is available from Cyber Hobbies. The parts in the basic kit include Oerlikon gun shields, sights, and shoulder rests; liferaft rack supports; propeller guards; ladders; anchor chains; rudders and tillers for the whaleboats; seats for the 1.1-inch anti-aircraft gun; a stack platform; and a few other fittings. A second fret includes an assortment of watertight doors (which can be mounted open or closed), and the pre-shaped shields for the sky lookouts are in a separate little bag. The Cyber-Hobby upgrade set consists of a full set of guardrails and additional, improved parts for the big gun director. Frankly I think it would have been appropriate for a kit of this quality and price to include those parts. I ordered them as part of the "bundle" offer from Dragon USA, though, so they only cost me an extra $2.00 - quite a bargain. No big complaint there.
What I have trouble understanding is why some other parts aren't on the brass frets - either the basic ones or the upgrade set. The 36" searchlight is beautifully reproduced, with miniscule clear plastic lenses. But the tower on which it sits is represented by two solid hunkss of styrene - one for the latticework of the tower itself, one for the dish-shaped railing around the searchlight. Both of those components could have been beautifully represented with photo-etched metal - but they aren't. That clunky searchlight tower, with its structure represented by raised lines on an oblong block of plastic and surmounted by a plastic dish with raised lines representing the railing, just doesn't make sense in the context of the exquisite detail all around it.
There are no photo-etched depth charge racks. Those, of course, can be found on lots of aftermarket sheets; the plastic parts in the kit are, in fact, so nice that many modelers probably won't think adding metal racks is worth the trouble.
The biggest, strangest omission from the photo-etched frets, though, is the big SA radar screen for the top of the foremast. The one in the kit is solid block of plastic with some raised lines on it. I find this downright weird, in view of the fact that Dragon 1/700 kits routinely include metal radar screens. (Aftermarket SA radar screens aren't exactly easy to find - or cheap. I found one on an old Tom's Modelworks sheet, #3504 "1/350 Scale Destroyer & Escort." It isn't listed on the Tom's website, but Squadron had it. It also includes depth charge racks and some latticework parts that I think may work for the searchlight tower.)
I suspect Gold Medal, White Ensign, Tom's, Lion Roar, and/or Edouard is/are hard at work on a set of metal parts designed specifically for this kit. There's certainly room for it - and that's a little surprising.
6. The most amusing mistake in the kit - and I do think this one qualifies as a mistake - concerns the instruction sheet. It is, as one would expect, quite a document; the drawings on it are beautiful, but figuring out just where everything goes requires quite a bit of close study. (I've been using it for bedside reading.) The painting instructions are arranged in the usual Dragon manner, with one nice variation. The introductory section includes a list of the ten required colors, with numbers from not only "Aqueous Hobby Color" and "Mr. Color" but also Testor's "Modelmaster" enamels. That, especially for American purchasers, is a welcome addition.
But the instructions provide no indication of where the colors go. We're used to seeing little blue and white flags, with numbers and arrows, all over the drawings to tell us which parts are flat black, which are white, etc. In this kit those flags aren't there, except in the separate camouflage diagrams (which only cover the overall camouflage colors, the bottom of the hull, the boot topping, and the screws).
It looks like an editing error. The assembly diagrams are extremely complicated; maybe the copy editor took a glance at them and his/her brain simply rejected the possibility that anything could possibly be missing from them. (That's the sort of thing my brain does fairly frequently.)
Most experienced modelers probably won't care about that one (and beginners, frankly, would be well advised to stay away from this kit). I think I can figure out how to paint it on my own - though a couple of the colors on the list are a little cryptic. (I think I figured out, after some thought, that "Air Superiority Blue" is for the enlisted men's shirts. But where does the "Shine Red" go? On the port navigation light, maybe? But no green is listed for the starboard one.) Dragon really needs to correct this one on the next printing of the instructions - or add a separate sheet of painting instructions.
All the above - with the possible exception of the instruction sheet booboo - really falls in the category of nit-picking. (I do think a kit like this should have a sonar dome and a photo-etched radar screen, though.) The bottom line is that this is a beautiful, challenging kit that, in virtually every respect, represents the state of the art in the plastic ship kit industry. I'm not at all certain that my fifty-two years of practice are enough to do it justice. I'm reminded of a remark C.S. Forester made regarding Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Forester said that the huge number of characters "almost prevented the work from attaining perfection." That's about how I feel about the Dragon Buchanan.