by Ryan Labieniec
1/200 IJN Yamato (Nichimo)
This build was more of a battle between the kit and I rather than a simple build of a model. Much has been said about this kit over the years, but I feel I need to offer my impressions as a warning to fellow modelers; in a word, this kit overall is HORRIBLE! The positives are few and far between, but here they are from my experience:
Pros: Size. the sheer size of this kit is the only reason I had any desire to build it. When completed it measures almost 5 feet long! this gives nearly limitless possibilities for the super detail fanatics. The only other real positive is the AA armament, compared to the rest of the kit, the AA guns are decent, not good or great, but decent at least. The ship's boats are similar, not great, but OK at least.
Cons: Oh, where to begin? Let's see... the fit of nearly all major parts varies from marginally bad to straight up terrible! Details, or lack there of, there is little to no detail on most of the surfaces of the pieces, and what detail is there is very soft, and best removed and built from scratch.Honestly it would have been a lot easier if the details were omitted by the company so we did not have to bother removing them. The float planes seem overscale to me, not horribly so, but this became real obvious when I tried to position crew figures on or near them. The single wing AC are workable, the Bi planes are pretty bad in their fit, so I left them off all together. The 18" guns are undersized and mis-shaped, aftermarket replacements are available, but I decided to stick with the kit guns since I was tired of dumping more money into this kit. The aircraft well is grossly undersized in both depth and dimensions. There are seams on EVERY part and they are in the worst places on most of them, so much sanding is needed throughout. The aft section of the hull where the hangar on the side for the ship's boats are is terrible. These bulkhead pieces simply do not fit even remotely close, a lot of sanding, cutting, scratchbuilding and creativity is needed in these areas. The list of bad areas goes on and on, but I really don't care to start recallig them all!
To summarize the major build steps, first is the decking. I planked the entire deck with individual strips of wood from Northeast Scale Lumber. The planks are slightly overscale, but I like the effect none the less. I cut and glued over 2,500 individual planks, coloring one long side and each butt end with a black sharpie to simulate the caulk. On a deck this large, I just don't see how a paint job could match the real planks.
The hull plating was simulated with 100's of strips of Tamiya masking tape, I think I went through 3 full rolls. There are a total of 4 different layers of plating to give real depth variations. I can not say for sure weather the tape will stand the tests of time as far as staying adhered, but I sealed trouble spots with super glue, and then sealed the entire plating job with 6 or 7 layers of future sprayed on, so hopefully they stay put.
There are 100's of scratchbuilt parts, or kit parts enhanced with scratch details, too many to list specifically. In the end, there are fewer than 40 parts used from the kit that did not recieve scratch and PE modifications.
Both of the GMM brass sets were used, they are a must have for this build, but a note of caution: GMM produced these sets years ago, so they are not nearly as detailed as the beauties we have come to expect from GMM's newer releases. Tom's brass portholes and watertight doors were used, the doors had more detail than the GMM ones, some extra verticle ladders from Tom's were also used, as the GMM set does not include enough (at least in my opinion for what I wanted to do).
Figures are from an eBay company in Hong Kong, they were cheap, but come in a mixed bag of men and women and of vastly varying sizes even though they all said 1/200. I ordered a set of 500, out of which about 300 were thrown out as unusable, but for under $5.00 for the whole lot, who cares.
I think this build truly represents what a valuable resource this website (model warships . com) really is: simply put, this build would in no way have ever even started if it weren't for this site and the great prople on it. The kit itself had always been on my must have list, but was always well out of my price range. 3 or 4 years ago, Tony Bunch listed it on the trading post section of the forum, looking for an offer. I inquired as to price he was looking for out of sheer curiosity more than anything else knowing it was out of my range, and he very generously gave it to me for the same price he paid for the kit years before, well under the prices this kit demands on auction sites. The info in the Yamato fans thread and builds by others like Bill Waldorf were essential in navigating many of the pitfalls. the comments and suggestion offered by forum members during the build process were more helpful than I czan adequately express.
All in all, I have to say that at some point this build stopped being fun for me, and turned into a test of my will. I would not recommend this build for anyone unless they are really up for more than a challenge, for me it was a must have just because of it's sheer size. My build is pretty accurate, but certainly not 100%, I wanted this to be a representation of many modeling skills I have tried to master, but I was not concerned with absolute accuracy, I just wanted it to be a piece in my collection that had a real "WOW" factor when I walk into my display room, and I feel I accomplished my mission in that aspect.
A complete step by step in progress thread can be seen here: http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=53682
