The Arrival

February 21st, 2009

I waited for 4 and a half weeks for the model to arrive, and finally, on February 21st, it did.  Since this is going to be a pretty big project, I decided that I’d document everything step by step, so when the box got here, naturally I pulled out my camera and snapped some pictures of the unboxing.

I’ll admit, it was a lot bigger than I’d expected.  It’s one thing to look at 2 feet on a yard stick and another to actually be holding a 2 foot long model.  My Dad and I had had a conversation before it arrived about its weight and I’ll admit to being a little nervous about how heavy it could be given the size of the mode.  I was happy to see that they had hollowed out the center of the hull though, because otherwise, this thing would’ve weighed about 10 or 12 pounds.

The hull came very tightly wrapped in bubblewrap and the smaller pieces were in bags.  So, piece by piece, I pulled it out and put it on the table to examine my new project.  First the hull, then the nose, then all the small parts.  I took a few minutes to really look over the whole thing and get an idea of what I was up against for the coming few weeks.  After looking it over, I’ll admit that I was more than a little disappointed by the quality.  For what I paid, I expected the model to be a little more refined.  Instead, there are some problems with it.

First, the Seawolf submarine has 8 torpedo tubes.  This model has 10 etched in the hull.  Second, the center line on the hull is, in fact, not the center line.  Third, all the holes for where the parts go aren’t drilled all the way through, and from a quick eyeing of the hull, aren’t even lined up properly.  The worst example of this are the stabilizers where one hole has been drilled almost a half inch farther toward the bow than the other.  There are other small things, but I think the thing I took away from this was that the quality wasn’t up to snuff and there’s definitely a lot of work to be done.

I was pleasantly surprised to find painting and decal instructions which their website didn’t mention anything about.  One thing that did surprise me was that they recommend sanding the resin pins off the small parts and re-drilling them.  Once they’ve been re-drilled, they suggest pinning all the pieces with a 1/16 inch brass rod.  The challenge will be finding someone that actually sells brass rod that small.

After my inspection was over, it was time to clean the hull.  The last model I did, I used hot water and Comet.  Only problem with that was that the Comet settled out of the water and found its way into all the small markings.  So I learned from my lesson and decided soap and warm water would be enough.  The small parts and metal pieces went into a small container with hot water and soap, but I didn’t have anything large enough to put the hull in, so I scrubbed the kitchen sink out good and used that.  I’d bought a cheap toothbrush at the grocery store and went to work scrubbing the hull good with the soap and water, then rinsing it and letting it air dry for about 30 minutes.  I did that three times so I was sure that the release material was off the model.  With it washed, I laid it out to dry on the dining room table and called it a night.

Tomorrow’s task is to get it down to the shop and start cleaning things up.  The nose has a platform of resin that needs to be sanded down before it can be dry-fitted to the rest of the hull and the small pieces have a lot of resin crap on them that’ll need to be taken off with a hobby knife and sandpaper.