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Buying an Expensive Kit and throwing most of it away


pirozzi

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Okay,I admit and apologize for what comes across as a 'knee jerk' response earlier.

 

Here is my take on things in greater depth.I do not deny having the ability to scarchbuild,in fact my frustration with drafting errors on Royal Williams sheer plan means that my first and probably only fully framed model will be that of la Renomee to the Ancre monograph.

 

My stance is this,I have spent over twenty five years making simple parts to complex assemblies in my day job,I want a release in my hobby.Scratchbuilding a ship,whilst requiring manual skills,is essentially being able to read drawing,manufacture these parts and then work on a sequence of assembly.Exactly the same as my day job.

 

Kitbashing presents a different set of problems to solve.This problem solving and also the use of artistic flair is the difference that attracts me.I say artistic flair as I now take historical accuracy with a pinch of salt in some respects.No kit is 100% accurate historically,this relieves the pressure to be committed to accuracy in my eyes.Following a monograph,you are bound to do everything by the book.No disrespect to the purists out there,but that is not for me.I would rather create a plausible artistic representation.

 

Now on to timber choice.There are a few builders who inspire me and I am in awe of their work.When I reached a certain level I realised the biggest thing that detracted away from my skills was the choice of timber.No matter what talent I possessed,my models would always look inferior due to the use of the kit supplied timber.I bit the bullet,dug deep into my pocket and chose to give boxwood and pear a go.Whilst these do cost serious amounts of money,not only do they add to the 'quality' appearance they make the work more pleasurable.Too many years of frustration trying to shape small details in walnut only to have a piece 'flake' off.

 

This is not a 'cheap' route to take.The current spend on timber for Mordaunt is equal to the cost of the kit,however,the build may take 3000 hours of mainly enjoyment,so the cost per hour equates to a negligible amount.

 

Kind Regards

 

Nigel

Currently working on Royal Caroline

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I just had a chance to look at my very first Scale Model Ship Kit. It was a Nelson's Navy, The Snake. Caldercraft I believe.  Having no experience in such ships or kits, makes me no expert. Just a interested observer. The Instruction Booklet looks a little vague.  Not too detailed. They didn't spend money there.The Plans looked great. I learned a lot by looking at them. They were the best part of the Kit. The planks were Basswood or Lime Wood? They were dry, and cracked. I thought they were of poor quality. I would replace them.

 

The parts laser cut from the hardwood, Mahogany I would guess, showed Laser burnt marks. Is that normal?   The Dowels looked like standard hardware store dowels you can buy for $1.95 each. I did not open or look much at the "Bag of Goodies".  I didn't see any plastic. I'm not sure enough string was included to complete the model. Looked pretty skimpy. Come on, they can't include a little more string!`

 

For the price the guy payed for it, around $350, I don't see where the value was?   I liked the extensive and large size of the plans, but most of the wood I would replace if I could. I don't understand why, for that price, the wood strips were not of better quality. The Basswood planks, and strips I cut from variety store sheets look much better than those. There must be a huge mark up on those Kits.

 

I have been thinking about buying one, but I was discouraged after seeing one for the first time.

 

Which manufactures will sell you only the Plans?

Edited by The Old Man
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The value is partly intellectual property. What do you value a professional's time at? OK, consider all the hours you would put into figuring out how to scratchbuild a given model, add on more hours to figure out how to represent that process to customers, add on more hours to figure out how to design kit pieces to be easily/cost-effectively manufactured and useful to the customer, add on more hours for drafting accurate plans, and so on. That all has to be in the price of a kit. Most hobby builders (most hobbyists in general) ignore the intellectual cost of what they do, but any good businessperson can't afford to do that.

 

An example from my own experience. I'm a vegetable farmer, among other things. It drives me berserk when someone comes up to a farmers market stand and challenges me as to why X produce is so expensive at Y $/lb, when they easily grow it in their garden or neighbor Bob gives it to them from his garden. Well, those people are hobbyists. They aren't charging themselves a living wage for every hour they spend in the garden, they aren't counting the intellectual time it takes to plan out a full-scale farm, they aren't trying to support a family and health insurance and retirement savings from their fun little garden. It's not a fair comparison. 

 

As for contents, those dowels may well be standard hardware store dowels. But the point of a kit, at least most kits, is that it's self-contained. People who buy kits don't necessarily want to open it, and see the instructions start with "now go buy these other things or you can't build the kit". Would you buy a lawnmower that didn't come with sparkplugs, even though they're easy to get at a different store?

 

Of course there's a markup. There's a markup on everything you buy. Pretty much any retail product has a markup of 30-50% from wholesale, because the retailer is an independent business that has to pay for everything involved in modern life from the profits of the business. Then there's a markup over cost to reach the wholesale price, because the manufacturer has to pay for everything involved in modern life, plus the cost of developing the product in the first place. So, yeah, of course the "value" of the kit's contents don't add up to $350 in terms of what's physically there. But only someone who doesn't value others' professional time would think it would.

 

None of which is to say there aren't better and worse kits out there. I know nothing about the kit mentioned above. But, boy, a great way to get under a businessperson's skin is to complain that you could do it cheaper and better yourself. Fine, go do so, and be proud of yourself. I'm in awe of good scratchbuilders. But most of them realize they're paying themselves pennies per hour, whereas everyone involved in designing, producing, and selling a kit is trying to make a living doing it.

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The value is partly intellectual property. What do you value a professional's time at? OK, consider all the hours you would put into figuring out how to scratchbuild a given model, add on more hours to figure out how to represent that process to customers, add on more hours to figure out how to design kit pieces to be easily/cost-effectively manufactured and useful to the customer, add on more hours for drafting accurate plans, and so on. That all has to be in the price of a kit. Most hobby builders (most hobbyists in general) ignore the intellectual cost of what they do, but any good businessperson can't afford to do that.

 

An example from my own experience. I'm a vegetable farmer, among other things. It drives me berserk when someone comes up to a farmers market stand and challenges me as to why X produce is so expensive at Y $/lb, when they easily grow it in their garden or neighbor Bob gives it to them from his garden. Well, those people are hobbyists. They aren't charging themselves a living wage for every hour they spend in the garden, they aren't counting the intellectual time it takes to plan out a full-scale farm, they aren't trying to support a family and health insurance and retirement savings from their fun little garden. It's not a fair comparison. 

 

As for contents, those dowels may well be standard hardware store dowels. But the point of a kit, at least most kits, is that it's self-contained. People who buy kits don't necessarily want to open it, and see the instructions start with "now go buy these other things or you can't build the kit". Would you buy a lawnmower that didn't come with sparkplugs, even though they're easy to get at a different store?

 

Of course there's a markup. There's a markup on everything you buy. Pretty much any retail product has a markup of 30-50% from wholesale, because the retailer is an independent business that has to pay for everything involved in modern life from the profits of the business. Then there's a markup over cost to reach the wholesale price, because the manufacturer has to pay for everything involved in modern life, plus the cost of developing the product in the first place. So, yeah, of course the "value" of the kit's contents don't add up to $350 in terms of what's physically there. But only someone who doesn't value others' professional time would think it would.

 

None of which is to say there aren't better and worse kits out there. I know nothing about the kit mentioned above. But, boy, a great way to get under a businessperson's skin is to complain that you could do it cheaper and better yourself. Fine, go do so, and be proud of yourself. I'm in awe of good scratchbuilders. But most of them realize they're paying themselves pennies per hour, whereas everyone involved in designing, producing, and selling a kit is trying to make a living doing it.

 

I don't believe it would hurt their bottom line any to include a slightly better quality of wood, and an extra ball of string.  Actually, they may end up selling more model kits. Maybe there quality control needs to be improved.  Those wood strips for planking and other items were in very poor shape. Could be they had been in that box for a long time. I don't know. Having burnt marks all over the laser cuts didn't look very nice. The burned dust would come of on your fingers. The above were just a novices observations.

Edited by The Old Man
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Old Man, burnt parts are standard for anything that is laser cut. And yes, you need to spend time sanding them off. It's part of the deal.

Regards, Keith

 

gallery_1526_572_501.jpg 2007 (completed): HMS Bounty - Artesania Latina  gallery_1526_579_484.jpg 2013 (completed): Viking Ship Drakkar - Amati  post-1526-0-02110200-1403452426.jpg 2014 (completed): HMS Bounty Launch - Model Shipways

post-1526-0-63099100-1404175751.jpg Current: HMS Royal William - Euromodel

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Keith is right...laser cutting is the wood equivalent of a cutting torch.  

Mark
"The shipwright is slow, but the wood is patient." - me

Current Build:                                                                                             
Past Builds:
 La Belle Poule 1765 - French Frigate from ANCRE plans - ON HOLD           Triton Cross-Section   

 NRG Hallf Hull Planking Kit                                                                            HMS Sphinx 1775 - Vanguard Models - 1:64               

 

Non-Ship Model:                                                                                         On hold, maybe forever:           

CH-53 Sikorsky - 1:48 - Revell - Completed                                                   Licorne - 1755 from Hahn Plans (Scratch) Version 2.0 (Abandoned)         

         

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

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Old Man, burnt parts are standard for anything that is laser cut. And yes, you need to spend time sanding them off. It's part of the deal.

I didn't know that. First time I have seen it that way.  I can still see why people would want to replace the wood in many of the kits though. I'm not going to get into any hurry to buy one. Not for that price. I'll stay with my wood twiddling.

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You will encounter the char from laser cutting on the edges of frame pieces which you're going to have to fair up in any event so no big deal.  Thinner stock that has had parts laser cut isn't a big deal as you will want to square the edge to get a good edge to be going on with.  Also 'in any event', you should get the char off because glue won't work as well on the powdery char.  I wouldn't not buy a kit because of that, it's just part of that technology.

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Where and how do you get a chance to look into any other model Kit and compare?

 

 

You make use of forums like this, and elsewhere, to research kits and manufacturers. There is a wealth of personal experience and testimony about the subject, here alone much less on the internet at large. You look for build logs for that kit, and read what experience builders had. You then contact those builders and ask their further opinion. You post a general question, if it hasn't already been asked, about a given manufacturer and kit. It's why MSW has this section:

 

 
General Ship Model Kit Discussions - Questions and reviews

This is the place to discuss model kits in general and ask members questions relating to any such kit or kit manufacturer.

 

 

 

Particularly if you aren't experienced with kits, actually handling the kit may or may not teach you much (for example, misunderstanding the laser burn marks as a defect), whereas crowd-sourcing opinions and reviews from many builders will given you a better understanding of the kit or company overall. 

 

I've purchased three kits, each of which I researched in this way, and each of them as been as I expected when I opened the box because I did my homework online. 

 

In an ideal world, we could all also go to a nice local hobby store with floor-to-ceiling kit boxes to peruse, but almost none of this live in that world. The next best stage is learning from our peers, and I've found that I can trust the folks here to provide useful and accurate information. 

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Should have mentioned, the laser cut edge isn't square because the laser takes a few micro seconds to cut all the way through and is 'on' the top surface a bit longer and that side the cut is a bit wider.  I use a small machinists' square to scrape the edge back to square, the metal having very true edges.

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After reading this post from front to back, I find myself a little annoyed at the naivety some assume we have. So here is my rant.

I get what the original post was asking. Why spend a lot of money on a kit only to throw most of it away. It only keeps the costs up of the kit, as it is now plays into the supply and demand aspects of economics not the design and manufacturing. This makes it difficult for others to justify getting into or staying in the hobby as the costs of the kits are getting out of hand. Especially if on a fixed income, as it seems most that are into this hobby are retirees or close to that age. I get that business are in it to make a living, but why try and recover your start up costs (design and manufacturing) in 1st few kits? Why not keep the costs down (spreed costs out over more kits) and get new blood into the hobby and sell more than a few kits a year. The amount of lumber in a kit is not that much. Unless your hand cutting every piece, time spent on cutting it is not as much as being portrayed. Handling it to clamp it in a CNC cutting machine take little time and can cut several kits a day.

As for kits that have been around for years and have already recouped their start up cost this applies to them especially. I seen a comment that sellers usually have a 20%-50% mark up....I have to say it is a lot more than that. I recently was looking at several large Occre kits that vendors were selling at 100%-300% percent mark up. I found that I could buy them directly from Occre for a lot less. Take the Occre Santísima Trinidad, directly from Occre after exchange rate is about $320.00 + S/H while at a large online hobby store it's $709.00 + S/H and another $899.00.....that"s 100%-300% mark up. I was able to buy 2 different large kits for the price of 1. Kit prices have become way over priced for what you get, and lost a lot of potential customers and some old ones. I've seen here too that a certain Chinese company is forbidden on here because they are selling knock offs of existing kits at a cheap price. Well I bought the "Black Pearl" kit and have to say it's right there with the same quality as some major kit manufacturers and would not be surprised if they were contracted by them to manufacture their kits for them and the Chinese also repackaged some those kits as their own.

WoodyJoe's a Japanese company is selling old large scale ships that were originally made by IMAI. So where is the justification for the design aspect of the kit cost on theirs? Unfortunately what they sell they are the only suppliers of so they demand a premium price for what you get in similar models.

To the old heads here that are on a fixed income, with the use of "Google Translator" and a bit of patients on the internet, you can find those ships you are looking for for a more affordable price.

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