Kit review 1:20 Grand Banks Heritage 46 - Amati

James H · March 9

1:20 Grand Banks Model – Heritage 46
Amati

Catalogue # 1607
Available from Amati for around €513

Grand Banks History

The boatyard has its origins in Hong Kong, where it began building custom wooden sailing and motorboats in 1956, as American Marine. The Spray, a 36- foot -long displacement vessel, was designed and built in 1963 as a prototype trawler yacht. This new, robust, and visually pleasing type of boat was so successful that the company founders decided to put the vessel into production. Series production began in 1965, for the first time under the name Grand Banks, and the different models were each designated according to their length in feet. In 1968 the company moved to Singapore and since 1973, trawler yachts have been made of glass fibre reinforced plastic. The success of Grand Banks led to competing shipyards also beginning to mass-produce trawler yachts in the 1970s.

Photo from boats.com

The spacious living quarters aboard the Grand Banks 46 Classic provide ample room for comfortable long-range cruising. With top speed exceeding 20 knots, the 46CL is an ideal yacht to get you quickly to your favourite cruising destination. Safety and reliability are, of course, a built-in Grand Banks tradition. Wide walk-around decks, aft cockpit, and well-equipped steering and navigation stations both on the flybridge and in the salon are all part of the package. There are countless attributes of a Grand Banks that contribute to its reputation as one of the most reliable, high-quality yachts designed and built for cruising.

The kit

This Amati Grand Banks kit release is packaged into a highly attractive box with a glossy lid that depicts the completed model, including some scrap detail views. The scale of this one is a crumping 1:20! In real terms, that equates to a finished model which will be around This box appears to be the same size, or thereabouts, as the HS Vanguard and Orient Express kits, but possibly a little deeper. In fact, the kid itself doesn’t extend to the bottom of the box! One thing you’ll notice on the lid of this very heavy box is that the hull in this release is made from ‘resin’, or to be more accurate, glass-fibre resin. The large, single-piece hull is made from white resin and has a satin, slightly chalky but very smooth appearance. One thing I need to say here is that this model CAN be fitted out for RC and Amati sell an additional kit that can be used with this model. Ok, back to the contents.

This is another of those kits where I don’t seem to be able to get everything back into the box once I’m done. Frustrating! The inner box has an integral lid which gives the box a load of rigidity as well as stopping anything easily piercing through the lid, into the contents. Lid off, and the first thing to be seen is an envelope with the manual and plans, with sheets of enveloped timber underneath. For the purpose of this article, I’ll tackle the contents in a different order.

Many key constructional areas are laser-cut in a very nice quality birch ply. No parts numbers are shown on these sheets, and you need to cross match the sheet with the pictorial parts sheet that’s included. Of course, each sheet is numbered to identify it. Here you can see parts that will build up to create the entire superstructure. If you intend to make this RC, this whole area will lift out to provide access to the motor and servos/linkages below decks. Having looked through the instructions for quite a while, I do think that if you are capable, sheathing the entire superstructure in thin, white plasticard sheet, such as Evergreen, would produce a stunning finish. Anyway, that’s just me thinking out loud.

Whilst the hull is glass-fibre, there are some thin ply strakes which fit below the gunwale. These can be seen in the two sheets at the top of this photo. There is some darker laser marking on some parts, but thankfully the parts aren’t degraded because of it, and some light sanding will remove it.

Two sheets are cut from 1mm mahogany, and contain many cabin interior parts, plus window frames etc. The grain on these parts, in thinner areas, will be a little more fragile, so some kid gloves will be needed to handle them. It’s a case of not removing parts from sheets until they are needed.

Of course, the exterior of the superstructure will need to be skinned, and these parts are for that purpose. Going back to possibly using styrene sheet to skin the model, you could in theory, use these as templates for doing just that. However, that’s not what’s intended here.

Some parts are included on these two 3mm sheets, manufactured again in mahogany. These include more substantial parts, such as the multipart gunwales and ornamental scroll rails etc. The mahogany here is a little lighter and I think a staining varnish would be nice here to give the parts a deep, rich colour.

A small cradle is supplied for the hull, and not the large stand shown on the box lid. This cradle is a simple MDF affair. Personally, if you are spending £500 on a kit like this, I’d look at buying/building a nicer mounting solution to this one. The smaller sheet contains parts for the dinghy/launch.

There is a small amount of MDF in this kit. Here, the parts are for superstructure.

A little area of familiarity is the inclusion of wood strip for various things, such as framing, deck planking etc. There is also a quantity of brass rod too.

The two boxes supplied here are found at the bow and stern of the hull when packed. One of these supplies all the pre-shaped, chromed rails, and they are superb. These are quite complicated shapes and I don’t see any deformation etc. I really do suggest you remove this box to a safe place, right up until you need to fit them. Damaging these would be annoying.

The other box contains a suite of various seating parts. The bases are cast in a matte white resin, and the seating is beige faux leather. All are very nicely made.

A smaller box is included, containing the boat’s dinghy, cast in the same matte white resin. This of course will be fitted out with various mahogany parts etc.

Residing in the boat’s hull are two packs of fittings. This first one contains two PE parts frets, some timber section, the boats props, wheel, rigging blocks, cleats etc.

The second fittings box contains trim tape, brass ferrules, rigging cord, plastic grating, brass pins etc.

An envelope contains a steel PE fret due to the nature of the parts on there, such as the grilles on the side of the superstructure. In this thickness, steel isn’t quite as flexible as brass, therefore not as easy to damage in key areas. There is also acetate in this package, for the various cabin windows. I think the cloth is perhaps for the cabin curtains.

The last envelope contains a set of plans, full colour instruction manual, written notes and colour-printed sheets that have details for the parquet floor, flag, rugs, maps, charts, and even magazines for the cabin tables!

Here a number of selected images from the manual.

Conclusion
On the box, Amati say that this is an ‘easy to build model’. Ok, everything is relative. Anything is as easy as you want to make it, but it’s the result which will define the effort you put in. This is by no means a beginner kit, but the construction of the kit, the beautiful fittings, chromed rails and small details, will make this an enormously enjoyable project to build, and if you’re like me, a very welcome change from regular masted, wooden ships. The plans and manual are also excellent and show all aspects of construction extremely well. It could be said that this isn’t a cheap kit, but I think it’s very reasonable for what you get, including that superb glass-fibre hull. There’s very little you can get wrong with this if you work objectively, and of course, it will make a really unique large shelf display model. If you’ve been thinking of taking the plunge with this, or in need of something a little different, I’d most definitely recommend Amati’s Grand Banks Heritage 46.

My sincere thanks to Amati for sending out this kit for review on Model Ship World. To buy this kit direct, click the link at the top of the article, or head over to your local Amati distributor.