Dragon 1/350 USS Buchanan "Smart Kit"
Posted: Sat Nov 23, 2013 1:56 pm
I would have normally done a video review of this, but I am having issues uploading videos from my phone just now so thought I would just do a picture and text review on here.
A bit about the kit. As far as I know from reading online, and within the kit itself, this is a new step in ship kit molding. With extensive use of slide mold technology allowing the tiniest details to be rendered in the plastic, something which is apparently a new thing with ship kits. However as with all ship kits, there is quite an amount of PE details for this kit.
The boxart is a lovely artists drawing of the ship in convoy with another. Nicely done.
I didn't take any pics, but the side and rear of the box is covered in 3D CAD images of various parts in the kit, and parts which are PE are coloured gold, giving you an idea right away of what details are PE and which are plastic. Very nice indeed and could be a good reference.
Upon opening the box you are presented with a coloured leaflet again describing the technology used to make this kit, nice touch.
Normal Dragon instructions, with a sprue map and icon legend. Unused parts are shaded in blue, I believe they do another ship from this class as a kit which has slightly different weapons (3 tube torpedo launcher compared to the 5 tube on this ship).
Two colour schemes are included for this ship, an earlier dazzle camo scheme and a later dark blue scheme. You can get a mask set I believe for the dazzle scheme, but I think I will play it safe with my first ship and just do the single colour scheme! But I would like to try out some ship specific weathering etc.
PE doors, and other details on two frets. Small fabric stickers for the signal flags etc, I believe this makes them poseable for wind effects etc. Decals look nice, but I have yet to check in detail. Most of the decals are deck walkways with just the hull number and one or two other small ones.
I believe this PE update set was only included in some of the first run of releases for this kit, and then would only be available as a stand alone set for a limited time afterwards, so its cool to see that it was in this kit, a nice surpise. The set includes a preformed replacement radar antenna and railings (which are otherwise not included in this kit).
Um yeah, this kit includes figures! To get a sense of scale, the squares on the mat underneat are 1cm square. One of the figures is even 2 parts!
The kit comes with a one piece base, with slide molded stands as well. Nice touch indeed!
Slide molded waterline hull. This is separate to the lower hull so you have the option of building this as a full or waterline hull. I think I will build it as a full hull and use the nice stand.
Slide molded lower hull with inbuilt sponsons and keel. Really nice indeed!
Deck, propellers, prop shafts and capstans. The deck surface is slightly rough compared to the other parts which is nice to see. Props are nice and thin and quite in scale which is good to see. They are well protected on the sprue as well.
Here are a series of pictures of the other sprues in the kit.
This one shows the PE jigs included in the kit, again a nice touch and certainly welcome for some of these small parts!
So that concludes this review. My thoughts at the moment are that it should build into a lovely, detailed kit. I will need to get a hold of some thin EZ line in order to do the rigging, I haven't checked yet if the instructions give you the rigging positions, if not then I should be able to get most of the main ones from the box art and reference pics online I am sure.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
A bit about the kit. As far as I know from reading online, and within the kit itself, this is a new step in ship kit molding. With extensive use of slide mold technology allowing the tiniest details to be rendered in the plastic, something which is apparently a new thing with ship kits. However as with all ship kits, there is quite an amount of PE details for this kit.
The boxart is a lovely artists drawing of the ship in convoy with another. Nicely done.
I didn't take any pics, but the side and rear of the box is covered in 3D CAD images of various parts in the kit, and parts which are PE are coloured gold, giving you an idea right away of what details are PE and which are plastic. Very nice indeed and could be a good reference.
Upon opening the box you are presented with a coloured leaflet again describing the technology used to make this kit, nice touch.
Normal Dragon instructions, with a sprue map and icon legend. Unused parts are shaded in blue, I believe they do another ship from this class as a kit which has slightly different weapons (3 tube torpedo launcher compared to the 5 tube on this ship).
Two colour schemes are included for this ship, an earlier dazzle camo scheme and a later dark blue scheme. You can get a mask set I believe for the dazzle scheme, but I think I will play it safe with my first ship and just do the single colour scheme! But I would like to try out some ship specific weathering etc.
PE doors, and other details on two frets. Small fabric stickers for the signal flags etc, I believe this makes them poseable for wind effects etc. Decals look nice, but I have yet to check in detail. Most of the decals are deck walkways with just the hull number and one or two other small ones.
I believe this PE update set was only included in some of the first run of releases for this kit, and then would only be available as a stand alone set for a limited time afterwards, so its cool to see that it was in this kit, a nice surpise. The set includes a preformed replacement radar antenna and railings (which are otherwise not included in this kit).
Um yeah, this kit includes figures! To get a sense of scale, the squares on the mat underneat are 1cm square. One of the figures is even 2 parts!
The kit comes with a one piece base, with slide molded stands as well. Nice touch indeed!
Slide molded waterline hull. This is separate to the lower hull so you have the option of building this as a full or waterline hull. I think I will build it as a full hull and use the nice stand.
Slide molded lower hull with inbuilt sponsons and keel. Really nice indeed!
Deck, propellers, prop shafts and capstans. The deck surface is slightly rough compared to the other parts which is nice to see. Props are nice and thin and quite in scale which is good to see. They are well protected on the sprue as well.
Here are a series of pictures of the other sprues in the kit.
This one shows the PE jigs included in the kit, again a nice touch and certainly welcome for some of these small parts!
So that concludes this review. My thoughts at the moment are that it should build into a lovely, detailed kit. I will need to get a hold of some thin EZ line in order to do the rigging, I haven't checked yet if the instructions give you the rigging positions, if not then I should be able to get most of the main ones from the box art and reference pics online I am sure.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
