Kit review SMS Scharfschütze - GPM - 1/250 - CARD

[ccoyle]

SMS Scharfschütze

1/250

available from GPM

 

Hi, Gang!

 

This will be  a sort of quick-and-dirty review, since the kit is not a new release. Whenever I order stuff from Poland, I like to order the most stuff I can get for a particular shipping cost -- if I'm going to get a few items, I might as well get the most for my shipping buck. My most recent order from the Polish firm of GPM arrived today, consisting mostly of after-market canopies and wheels, but I was able to squeeze in a new card model as well. This one is SMS Scharfschütze (Sharpshooter), one of twelve Huszar-class destroyers built for the pre-WW1 Austro-Hungarian navy. The kit has been out for roughly a decade (there is no release date on the cover sheet), so I'm a little lucky that one was still available all these years later. It is available in either 1/200 or 1/250 scale. I chose 1/250, since pretty much all of my other card ship kits are in that scale. At that scale, the finished model will be 26 cm long -- a little more than ten inches.

 

 

The kit has a number of interesting features. One is that it doesn't come in the usual booklet form, but instead is printed on individual sheets. A second unusual feature is that the designer's name is not given anywhere. However, the kit and its diagrams look remarkably similar in style to the V108 kit which served as the basis for the tutorial I posted in the card models section. That makes me suspect that Digital Navy's Roman Deytna may have designed the kit. Perhaps one of our august members can confirm that for me.

 

One bit of good news with this kit is that it doesn't just come with Polish instructions. The bad news is that the only other language is German. I read German, so that's great for me, but perhaps not so great for the rest of you.

 

 

Fear not, though, since the kit does include a sufficient number of diagrams to guide the builder to a finished model. Also, the model is not overly complex -- I think that anyone who has built V108 or any similarly simple kit, such as the ones available from Paper Shipwright, will be able to build this kit without too much difficulty.

 

 

 

There are only two pages of printed parts, so the total parts count is low. Optional parts allow for the model to be built in either a full-hull or waterline configuration. The print quality is good.

 

 

Here's where it gets a little more interesting. The kit is a "limited edition" offering --  a kind of deluxe kit that includes both laser-cut details and a laser-cut frames set. It costs only US$13.64, so it's a pretty darn good deal. One of the two pages of parts is laser-cut, which will save a lot of fiddly cutting, even if the laser-cut parts give a sense of being very delicate. Whether they will prove to be delicate during construction remains to be seen. A separate key for the laser-cut parts is provided.

 

 

 

There is a separate laser-cut fret containing railings.

 

 

The frames are cut from the standard "beer mat" used in Poland.

 

 

At one time, metal gun barrels were also available, but they have been out of stock for quite a while.

 

So, that's it in a nutshell. I think this is an intriguing kit, design-wise, and it depicts a very interesting and infrequently seen subject. The price is definitely a plus. Given my fondness for small warship projects, I may have to make room in the queue for this one sooner rather than later.