by GuestfromEU » February 7, 2021, 11:44 am
Guest wrote:Has anyone had any experience building this 1/700 kit or any of the other Great Lakes offerings by Iron Shipwrights such as the John Ericsson or Edmund Fitzgerald? Just wondering before I decide on a spring project!
I built the 1/700 and 1/350 Edmund Fitzgerald models from Iron Shipwrights. They were worth the money to me when considering there are limited options for merchant ship models in general, Great Lakes subjects even more so. It depends on your level of experience with resin kits and photo etch. How detailed do you want to build the models? The models were cast well (the 1/700 scale version required more clean up and filling of holes, but nothing extreme). The exterior stairways between deck were cast in place (Aztec style) which I removed and replaced with photo etch. The rub rails on the hull side were way oversize, but simply sanding off and attaching new styrene strips to scale were easy enough. A few small bulwark areas did not cast fully, again easily filled with Milliput. The pour plug on the hull bottom was quite thick (5mm) on the 1/700 version, but little to nothing for clean up on the 1/350 model.
I would love to share photos of these builds, but both were lost during a house move some years ago. Some photos were on an old phone which never transferred to a new phone somewhere in time.
[quote="Guest"]Has anyone had any experience building this 1/700 kit or any of the other Great Lakes offerings by Iron Shipwrights such as the John Ericsson or Edmund Fitzgerald? Just wondering before I decide on a spring project![/quote]
I built the 1/700 and 1/350 Edmund Fitzgerald models from Iron Shipwrights. They were worth the money to me when considering there are limited options for merchant ship models in general, Great Lakes subjects even more so. It depends on your level of experience with resin kits and photo etch. How detailed do you want to build the models? The models were cast well (the 1/700 scale version required more clean up and filling of holes, but nothing extreme). The exterior stairways between deck were cast in place (Aztec style) which I removed and replaced with photo etch. The rub rails on the hull side were way oversize, but simply sanding off and attaching new styrene strips to scale were easy enough. A few small bulwark areas did not cast fully, again easily filled with Milliput. The pour plug on the hull bottom was quite thick (5mm) on the 1/700 version, but little to nothing for clean up on the 1/350 model.
I would love to share photos of these builds, but both were lost during a house move some years ago. Some photos were on an old phone which never transferred to a new phone somewhere in time.