Salty Dog

Come on Bender! Time for some new pics!

It wouldn't surprise me one bit if Mantua screwed up here. I have found several other things that are wrong with the "new" version. One of the bridges that hold up one of the decks was way too tall. When I will look to see where my bell house is located.

Thanks Bender! It really helps to see other builds, especially when the instructions are so bad. My build is like putting a puzzle together. By the way, I hate anything that has to do with cannons! Such a repetitive job! I'd rather plank, and rig than work on the cannons, especially when you commit yourself to rigging them! I look forward to more of your build.

Bender, You mention that you finished the kit a while back. Do you have any pics of it? Any additional pics of the build? How did you fare with the awful instructions?

Frederica, How are you doing with the RC? Taking a break? Looking forward to more.

I'll survive Mark, I had actually purchased the plans long ago, and it was of the old kit. They looked great. I figured something UPgraded would be better. No such luck.

Ponto, Funny you are responding to my post! The last PE set I purchased was from PONTOS! It cost me over $200 and it's chock full of errors. There are constant updates being released that one can download from their website. I remember when anything you purchased...worked! Obviously there were lemons, but the majority of the time the item functioned as advertised. Nowadays just about anything you buy is sold half baked. Its become a part of life that the first thing you have to do before you can enjoy your new purchase, you must first upgrade the firmware, apply a patch, etc. I am criticized sometimes for being so picky, but I feel that the complacency of consumers is what has created this trend. I for one want to take something home WORKING, and COMPLETE.

EXACTLY Nigel, For that kind of money and level of kit, much more attention should be paid to by the manufacturer. I recently got into plastic ships because there are several manufacturers making photo-etched brass parts for many of those kits. The PE kits are unbelievable. The details are beautiful. But the kits are very expensive. Some go for at least a couple of hundred dollars. For that kind of money, you should be provided with a quality item, and though the brass itself for the mosr part is fantastic, the documentation is often abysmal. And the documentation is critical in this case. Yet they put out sets with awful documentation. Wrong part numbers, bad illustrations, and most of all you are left with tons of parts still attached to the sprue when you're done that you have NO idea what to do with them. Then you get the excuses such as "It's a small company. They don't have the money to make better documentation. " or "You're not supposed to use ALL of the parts, many are optional...." What the hell?! You mean I'm paying for stuff that I really don't need? And why go into the business if you can't afford a quality product yet charge through the nose? I'd gladly pay more for something well made. I must be a very picky person.

I agree with what you guys said, and I pretty much indicated that in my review. What is unacceptable is that if the manufacturer makes changes to something, the they make no note of it. They don't update the drawings, nor add an addendum to their instructions. In some cases they replaced a part with a newer version and didn't upgrade the drawings. In other cases a part on the drawing either no longer exists or they changed the part number and didn't indicate that. I don't care how much of a pro you are, that's just no the way things work. The pictures being completely out of order is also very misleading. For instance, you have 3 parts. In one picture they show parts 1 and 2 assembled, glued together. Several pictures later, you're instructed to install part 3, except that part 3 goes "under" part 2 and now you have to unglue part 2 to get part 3 in. And in the picture, part 2 isn't even installed yet! In photographs parts just appear and disappear magically all out of order. No excuse for that. For the most part the materials are good, but again, some of the new laser etched parts are of the wrong dimensions. Since these are made in a way to be installed "as is" with little to no modification, they won't fit that way. You must alter then and in the process you destroy some of the nice etching. The strip wood is pretty good, although some of the walnut strips are cut a little rough and seem dry. I'm not a newbie by far. I have constructed several of the BIG mantua ships, and several of the smaller kits. My avatar is of the last ship I made which is The Cutty Sark by Mantua, and I encountered very few problems. I have other BIG Mantua and Corel ships waiting in the wings. I've pored over the drawings and instructions and so far they seem fine. We'll see!

Where to start? I've had this kit patiently waiting for me and I decided to get started. I have always wanted to build this kit and have had to restrain myself because I had other projects that I needed to finish. This is the newer edition. It includes laser etched decking and several other changes that are supposed to make it much easier to construct. The hull came together very nicely. It feels nice and sturdy. Before you even start planking, it's already heavy. And then the fun starts... due to the laser etched decks, the planking of the upper section of the ship has to be done in stages. If you were to manually plank the decks things would be much easier. But because of the size of each laser etched part, it becomes a tricky job. I have found myself having to rework several sections because the instructions are so bad....and that is why I'm writing this review now. I have yet to start planking the entire hull with the first layer, but I am so angry and discouraged by these lousy instructions that I thought I'd take a break to warn others that might be interested in building this kit. Mantua/Panart in their haste to rewrite the directions to match the changes they made to the kit did a VERY bad job! I've seen the older kit and the drawings were beautiful. The directions were pretty bad, all text, but this is a very advanced kit and the builder should be able to interpret the drawings with little explanation. For this newer version they decided to create an manual full of photos, with very little text. That would be fine if the manual would have been made with care, but instead they made a mess out of everything. Pictures are often out of order and omit MANY steps and fail to mention many parts. So I thought I would revert to going by the drawings. No problem...except for the fact that the drawings were not updated to match the changes made in the kit! This makes it seem like one is building two different kits! Things get VERY confusing and if I didn't have experience in model ship building, I would probabbly give up. But even with experience, it is not a lot of fun. And I'm just getting started! So beware if you are planning on buying this kit.

Hey everyone, After finishing my Cutty Sark (available for viewing in the gallery) I decided to try a plastic kit with a PE set. I had never seen these PE sets before and one of the reasons I really enjoy building models is due to their detail. The harder and more detailed the kit is, the more I want to build it. So I saw this Yamato Kit and saw the PE set and my eyes just about fell out of my head. I had some pics up before the crash, and I'm not sure what I had, but these are some that may have been here before. Anyway, I have made much more progress than the pics indicate and will have to take more to update this build. Hope you enjoy.