by William Bowden
1/350 SS Hawaiian Pilot (Revell Germany)
My father bought this kit thinking that he would slowly get himself back into modeling, since he has been away from the hobby for many years. He always had an interest in freighters and this kit looked promising for him. However, work and other things got in the way and the kit was put aside until I offered to build it for him, and later decided to give it to him as a birthday present upon completion.
Soon after starting work on the boat I thought that it was just as well that my father had never attempted it. There are injection holes and marks all over, and on the wrong sides of the pieces as well. There was some flash too, but that was easily taken care of. What was most annoying was how the bridge section was constructed: each deck was molded as one piece more or less, so masking to get the appropriate deck and wall colors was a HUGE pain. I did what I could but the results are hardly satisfactory. There were some fit issues as well; though all things considered the parts went together ok except for the gaps in the bridge section. The decals could have been better but worked out fine; I neglected to spray a gloss coat before applying them, as you can easily see in the pictures. The plastic is also different from the typical styrene, which doesn't cause problems but it definitely behaves differently when cleaning up parts.
I used Tamiya paints for the ship since that is what I currently had available. The rigging was done with some black string supplied with the kit, which actually wasn't too bad--normally I use E-Z line for rigging, though. The base was a piece of spare wood from the garage and I sanded it down and stained it before applying water in the form of Liquitex acrylic gel. I hand painted the wave crests and then covered the gel in a varnish.
So after all that work, I would have to say "no" on recommending this kit unless you don't mind the abundant TLC required to make this ship into a decent model. The construction process and parts clean-up is just too annoying for me. While I don't know for sure, my guess is that this is an older kit that has just been repackaged. I'd say there are probably better cargo ships available out there if you are interested in building one. Happy modeling.
