Years ago after building and installing my Walthers Ore Dock, I "hinted" to my wife that what I really needed for xmas was the Great Lakes Freighter that Walthers happened to have on sale. It was under the tree, it was big...and it was resin. Fast forward to this winter,and my project is to finish the ADM GrainElevator, the Red Wing Mill, add a slip/wharf for grain loading a "Laker" and finish the water and slip alongside the ore dock. Which means taking a serious look at my Walther's Freighter kit. First of all, its really a Sylvan Models kit, just repackaged for sale thru Walthers. This is my first resin kit, so I'll defer to the wisdom/experience of those of you who have built resin kits before. The fit, the gaps, the flash...all HORRIBLE!! One large piece of the hull was cracked, a large deck piece had a corner broken off, and the smoke stack was missing!! I spent nearly an hour sanding and filing the rear main deck to "try" to get a decent fit. When all was said and done there was still an 1/8th inch gap across the rear. I recalled an old trick of filling gaps with baking soda, then adding CA, which instantly hardens into a servicable gap filler. Did the trick, but c'mon...really?? This will be the LAST resin kit I attempt, if I even finish this one. I understand part of the rationale behind resin kits being a "niche" market for hard to find or kits unavailable otherwise. But if I knew then what I know now... I would rather have spent the extra money and purchased a PLASTIC Great lakes freighter from Bearco, and saved myself all the extra labor and headaches!!! Just a heads-up for those of you modeling the Great Lakes areas...
Hi Jeff:
I hear ya!
Personally I have found there to be a wide range in quality in the relatively few resin kits that I have done. Some are good and some are not.
I have a couple of Kaslo CP caboose resin kits under construction and I have to say that the quality of the castings was very good. There was some flash but it was really no different from cleaning mold lines off a styrene model. There were no cracks or damaged parts.
I have a couple of Sylvan vehicles and the amount of flash was disappointing, particularly on the frames.
I have almost completed a Funaro and Camerlengo McKeen Motor Car (still waiting for custom decals). The outside of the shell was great, but the inside and the window openings were a mess. I had to remove a huge amount of extraneous material from the inside of the roof to get the proper profile. Half of the detail castings were unusable.
A while ago I picked up a garbage truck box on eBay. I'll never buy another cheap resin casting again.
I like building models a lot, but I don't particularly care for having to spend hours getting the kit cleaned up so I can start to put it together. At least the flash on the resin kits is easier to remove than it is from white metal or brass castings.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
The Walthers Greast Lakes Freighter is made by Sylvan Scale
http://www.sylvanscalemodels.com/kits/1050.htm
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
Hi, Jeff
I'm right there with 'ya!
My Sylvan (I bought it before Walthers "marketed" it) ore boat sat for about ten years until just a few weeks ago when I finally decided to have a go at it.
Let me go back before the Sylvan...
Remember when Walthers was offering the Edmund Fitzgerald from Resin Unlimited? Well, I sent a check to the owner of R-U, Jason Davis, for almost $600.00 when he said my kit was ready to ship. He cashed the check then skipped town! I should have bought it through Walthers but that was a big mistake on my part.
SO, the Bearco Marine model? They were actually made by a gentleman in Chardon, Ohio called Voco Marine who sold the business to Esther and Rich Beris in Madison, OH. I bought one of the kits for about $250 and never put it together. It was a huge disappointment and I gave it away.
It is vacuum formed plastic and there is NO detail to the hull, deck or quarters. No rivet or weld lines, it is basically a huge bar of Ivory soap, IMHO.
Then the Sylvan/Walthers kit was my next adventure. Yes, many of the parts were warped and brittle and gluing was a pain. I really try to avoid ACC and use it only when nothing else will do.
I made a six-foot long work surface of 1" plywood to be sure all the hull sections went together squarely. I bought two hull extensions from Sylvan and then when Walthers offered the kit they had the hatches widened for the buckets of the Hulett ore unloaders to fit so I had to widen the hatches on two of the four deck tops.
"Milling" the underside of the deck to widen the hatch. I have not made the new coamings yet but they will be .080 Evergreen styrene.
Below is what I have so far. I was careful to match the joints on the "visible" side of the hull and not worry about the port side.
I had to make all sorts of compromises during the "fit-up" including cutting all of the hull dividers so the deck would fit flush and cutting the wall of the crew's quarters so it would fit on the small ledge provided. The resin is about as brittle as dinosaur bones!
I used a medium bodied ACC that set up pretty well and filled some of the gaps a bit.
I have a long way to go but I'm glad I got this far. I have four PRR F-22 flat cars from Fumaro & Carmalingo but put them back on the "to-do" list after attempting to ACC all the tiny stake pockets in place and keep them aligned. Most got glued to my shirt sleeves and one wound up getting glued to my forehead!
Have Fun, Ed
Ed:
That will be quite the scene when it is finished. Neat! I wish I had the space.
Thanks, Dave
It has been in the planning stages for some twenty years now !
Hopefully time will allow me to make some progress. I'll have to set aside another two or three weeks to build two more Huletts
Model Railroading is FUN!
Ed
OK Ed, you have just made me feel much better about my layout progress (or lack thereof). I have only been planning my layout for 12 years!
Gotta get the darned kid out of the house and his gym equipment out of the garage! I'm seriously thinking of telling him to put his stuff in storage and buy a membership somewhere.
Jeff1952 and the smoke stack was missing!!
Jeff,
Any building supply has smoke stack material. And cheap, too! The Home Depot near me sells it in ten foot lengths for $1.75.
At 4.25" in length you can make 28 stacks that will cost you about 6¢ each!
It is 1/2" PVC conduit!
And, the ID is too small to fit onto the boss anyway. I found a piece of 7/8" OD water tube that I might use however, unless you are modeling a coal burner you might want to fabricate a later stack that has a smaller discharge.
Good Luck!
Dave, glad to help you get "motivated"
Regards, Ed
Hey guys, misery loves company. At least I know I'm not the only one "less than enchanted" by my resin kit experience. Thanks for the heads-up on the PVC conduit smokestack, gmpullman. Menards is actually closer to me than Home Depot, but its all good. Depending on what I find that's close to scale or looks good, I may just saw off the boss. I had also considered fitting a "smoke generator" thru the stack from beneath the layout, but have read too many horror stories regarding them online, so I think I'll just forget that idea.
Has anybody ever actually seen one of these kits finished?
I have tried my hand at a number of resin kits and I am not really thrilled by the quality you get for a lot of money. Of course, there is always the exception to the rule, but in general, resin kits seem to require a lot more cleaning and fitting work than other "plastic" kits. Resin is also a rather brittle material and you have to be very careful not to break off some of the delicate details.
No more resin kits for me, please!
Unfortunately in my era, resin kits are about all there is. The quality can vary wildly. I've had castings warped, some not fully cured (one kit the resin caused the plastic detail parts to melt in the box), some broken, some with lots of bubbles. After doing some casting myself, I would be concerned about really big curved castings, high degree of difficulty.
I have actually had pretty good luck with some of the Sylvan buildings, but they are way smaller with fewer parts than the boat.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Jeff1952 The fit, the gaps, the flash...all HORRIBLE!!
The fit, the gaps, the flash...all HORRIBLE!!
And yet we accept that as normal with DPM kits - "as part of our outdated production processes we produce and sell kits that don't actually fit together unless you spend an hour or more sanding the walls (we know you thought you were buying a nice relaxing modelling experience but we figured you need an upper body workout before you get to that point)...at which time most of you will still have gaps of only a millimetre or so and have some areas that need filling because we designed the moulds that way"
Jeff1952Has anybody ever actually seen one of these kits finished?
If you Google "Sylvan great lakes ore boat" / images you will find a few.
I would skip the 1/2" pvc conduit and maybe roll your own using styrene sheet wrapped around a dowel. Paging through my book, Cargo Carriers of the Great Lakes, I have not found a photo showing a stack that is not elliptical, or rectangular on the newer ships.
To me, a smoke unit looks like a cigarette burning in an ashtray... and they stink! Good idea to skip that!
I personally would skip the PVC, roll Your own or any Styrene/Plastic tube and look into an alternative like Brass or Copper pipe/tube....I have used it before on wood ship models.
An example: Comes in different sizes. CA or epoxy in place...have used both.
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Mueller-Streamline-1-2-in-x-5-ft-Copper-Type-M-Pipe-MH04005/100558487
Take Care!
Frank
This is going to be nice. How are you going to paint the freighter?
Lynn
Present Layout progress
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/11/p/290127/3372174.aspx#3372174
One thing to keep in mind when building resin kits is the dust is more toxic than that produced by sanding styrene, so wearing some sort of protection is a good idea. Especially with the volume of dust that could be produced building a ship model.
Eric
A progress report. I have actually nearly finished the "stern" portion of my Laker....finally. I have two slips on the north end of my layout, one for the Walthers Ore Dock with Iron Ore loading, and a second further along the "harbor" for Grain Loading. Rather than purchase (and wrestle) with TWO Resin Laker kits I decided to use the stern portion alongside an abbreviated grain loading facility and use the front two-thirds of the ship kit alongside the ore dock as if just preparing to dock. We have discussed the shortcomings of resin kits at length. Just thought I would pass along a few of the solutions I used.
Once I became accustomed to the need to sand/file/scrape virtually every single piece I began to make some progress. I already mentioned back in this thread about the struggles I went through to get the stern main deck to fit the shape of the hull at the rear (filled the gaps with baking soda and super-glue). But there was NO way I could get the crew cabin to fit the hole provided on the stern main deck. The hole for the crew cabin was just too large (or the cabin casting too small). I finally ended up making a paper pattern of the stern main deck, then used that to cut a piece of .040 styrene sheet to cover the entire hole. I beveled the edges of the styrene with sanding until it could pass for a seam in the decking. Problem solved!
The instructions suggest bending the supplied wire into the shape of lifeboat davits. SERIOUSLY???? I replaced those with white-metal davit castings from Sea Port Model Works. I also replaced the kit-supplied brass handrail stanchions and wire with Central Valley Steel pipe fencing...MUCH easier to manage. I did spend a LOT of time with a pin vise drilling holes for all the vertical supports, but it looks pretty decent. The kit bollards were also replaced with metal castings from Frenchman River Models. The steps and handrails were replaced with Central Valley Steel Pipe railings and steps.
The issue of the missing smoke-stack which was also discussed at length earlier was finally solved quite by accident. I stumbled across a set of earbuds my daughter had given me, packaged in a plastic tube, similar to a cigar tube. It was THE perfect size. Only had to use a razor saw at each end and was good to go. The stack top was stolen from a Lindbergh Tug Boat kit I had purchased back when I was contemplating scratch-building my Lake boat. I cut/sanded it to fit the round, smoke-stack shape, then capped it with a short length of 1/4 plastruct tube. Four life-rings were salvaged from a Kibri Riverboat, and a life-raft from the tugboat kit also, all painted Great Northern Orange.
I'll add some pix next week when I've had a chance to do some weathering with Pan Pastels and colored pencils. It looks a little too "plain" right now....
I'm looking forward to seeing your pictures!
I've never built a Lake Boat & don't expect that I ever will in the future. However, the comments about resin kits "resin-ated" with me. I've built quite a few over the years, and agree that the quality varies widely. In the very early years, some of the early resin material was extremely unforgiving. Some of the early Westerfield kits used a resin material that was about as delicate and breakage-prone as potato chips! I only succeded in building one of those car kits & still have some others on the shelf that will never be built. Sometimes I raid those kit boxes to get grab irons, plastic brake components, etc. for other projects. Fortunately, Westerfield and others quickly realized the old material just wouldn't do, and more recent kits use a much higher quality resin material that is much easier to work with.
A big part of the problem has to do with the pattern work, which can vary a lot, depending on the pattern maker. If the patterns aren't carefully made, the resultant parts won't fit. Some of the cars designed by really fine pattern makers like Frank Hodina and Randy Anderson (among others) are true works of art. Take a look at the Westerfield PRR X23 boxcar, with patterns by Randy Anderson and Byron Rose, and you'll see what I mean. The Sunshine MILW rib side boxcar (out of production) also had patterns by Randy and probably has the most accurate ribs on any MILW rib side model ever produced by anybody in any scale.
Some kit manufacrturers like F&C and Westerfield have been in business many years, and their products have improved over time. Some items were designed & had patterns made a long time ago, and those older patterns may not be quite as good as those used on some of the newer offerings. In some cases, F&C obtained early patterns from other manufacturers and still have those in their line. But F&C also has much newer items that are of higher quality. I certainly don't suggest F&C should stop offering those older items just because they aren't perfect, because if they discontinued them we wouldn't have those products at all. Sometimes an imperfect product is better than none at all.
Shrinkage of the kit parts has also been an occasional problem in the past, resulting in poor alignment of parts. This is much less of a problem today.
I have found that the whole resin kit industry has improved by light years in the past 30 years. More recent kits are vastly superior in fit, overall detail accuracy, material, and ease of construction, when compared to those of a generation ago. I have been extremely impressed by some caboose kits by Wright Trak, for example.
They certainly don't fall together by themselves. You don't shake the box and open it up to find a completed car. They take time, care, attention, work, and sometimes a bit of creativity. But the results can be well worth the effort, especially if the item isn't available in any other form short of scratchbuilding.
Tom
A tip from a Guy that knows.....Anytime You have gaps and seams not correct on any plastic model, epoxy resin, especially Polyurethane resin, which is what the Sylvan kits are made out of.....do not try to fill the gaps with ACC/CA, You're wasting Your time and could make a mess out of it...I recommend using Squadron White Putty, sandable, paintable, and drys fairly quick and can be used on any type of plastic or resin, with a lot better results. I have done so on many of Sylvan Vehicle kits and ship models and many other type kits and You can't even tell it has been patched or filled. It does help if You have any experience with Auto body work, but it is possible for anyone to learn, that is if they choose to.
https://www.amazon.com/Squadron-White-Putty-Carded/dp/B017PD1T3Q/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1476357784&sr=8-3&keywords=white+putty+squadron
EDIT: I also use and it can be used on white metal and pewter casting kits.
ACYI have found that the whole resin kit industry has improved by light years in the past 30 years. More recent kits are vastly superior in fit, overall detail accuracy, material, and ease of construction, when compared to those of a generation ago. I have been extremely impressed by some caboose kits by Wright Trak, for example. They certainly don't fall together by themselves. You don't shake the box and open it up to find a completed car. They take time, care, attention, work, and sometimes a bit of creativity. But the results can be well worth the effort, especially if the item isn't available in any other form short of scratchbuilding.
As for building a laker, it seems to me that most of it could be easily done in styrene, at both a cheaper cost and in a manner that the work would be more pleasant to do and more satisfying when completed. Styrene is readily available in 4'x8' sheets, and is easy to cut with a utility knife. Solvent-type cement is readily available and fast-acting, too. The only real difficulty I see would be the stern, with its compound curves, and I'm sure that, were a person interested in building such a model, that could be figured out, too. I do enjoy figuring out compound curves, but not on boats.
Wayne
zstripeA tip from a Guy that knows.....Anytime You have gaps and seams not correct on any plastic model, epoxy resin, especially Polyurethane resin, which is what the Sylvan kits are made out of.....do not try to fill the gaps with ACC/CA, You're wasting Your time and could make a mess out of it...I recommend using Squadron White Putty, sandable, paintable, and drys fairly quick and can be used on any type of plastic or resin, with a lot better results.
Tom Fox put two of those resin kits together to come up with his version of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which is docked beside his 18-foot long ore dock.
See more on my blog at http://cprailmmsub.blogspot.ca/2014/11/amazing-ho-scale-lake-superior-ore-dock.html
John Longhurst, Winnipeg
chutton01 zstripe A tip from a Guy that knows.....Anytime You have gaps and seams not correct on any plastic model, epoxy resin, especially Polyurethane resin, which is what the Sylvan kits are made out of.....do not try to fill the gaps with ACC/CA, You're wasting Your time and could make a mess out of it...I recommend using Squadron White Putty, sandable, paintable, and drys fairly quick and can be used on any type of plastic or resin, with a lot better results. I have used Squadron putty a lot (and even more so Tamiya putty, when I remember to buy some), so I agree with using putty - but don't dismiss the CA yet. CA alone, meh, even with accelator not that great a gap filler...but CA + Baking soda does a really good job. That combo dries hard (in fact, if you wait too long it's rather hard to sand/file), but really good gap filler.
zstripe A tip from a Guy that knows.....Anytime You have gaps and seams not correct on any plastic model, epoxy resin, especially Polyurethane resin, which is what the Sylvan kits are made out of.....do not try to fill the gaps with ACC/CA, You're wasting Your time and could make a mess out of it...I recommend using Squadron White Putty, sandable, paintable, and drys fairly quick and can be used on any type of plastic or resin, with a lot better results.
I have used Squadron putty a lot (and even more so Tamiya putty, when I remember to buy some), so I agree with using putty - but don't dismiss the CA yet. CA alone, meh, even with accelator not that great a gap filler...but CA + Baking soda does a really good job. That combo dries hard (in fact, if you wait too long it's rather hard to sand/file), but really good gap filler.
I have used many ways to fill gaps/gouges in all kinds of models, CA baking soda, lacquer thinner with styrene shavings, mixed together, Ambroid Pro-Weld, with styrene shavings mixed together, (You actually have more time that way) but in all the ways mentioned above....it is more work and in some cases, hit or miss, can't sand, etc. etc. The simplest, easiest, is just to use the putty .....and that is My point. Another proven way is to use Evercoat, ever-glaze & spot putty....I use that a lot on White Metal, Pewter casting kits.....again, simple to use, easy to sand...no mixing, etc. etc.. Apply right from tube, let dry, sand, paint.
BTW: Nice job on the Ship, JDL56
Rather than mess with fixing a kit, why not scratchbuild the boat? Plans for Great Lakes Freighters (and anything else) are readily available and cheap. A print shop can re-size the drawings to your scale to avoid all the conversion calculations.
The hull is basically a box with a pointed bow, simple to build especially if you are making a waterline model. Sheet balsa over bass wood or aircraft ply bulkheads will do the trick, coat with fibreglas resin and sand smooth for a metal look. The stern is more complex so use blocks of shaped balsa.
Jim
Marine Fareing Compound (Bondo), can be your friend. Have used it on multiple occasions on boats that I have owned. Worked well.
herrinchoker
In case anyone is curious, I posted a couple of pix of the "nearly" finished Lake Boat taking on a load of grain at the General Mills Elevator in the Photo Galleries section. Had planned to post here, but must confess I'm not sure how to do that. My bad!!
Jeff1952:
Jeff1952 Had planned to post here, but must confess I'm not sure how to do that.
Go to the first thread in the General Discussion category. Steven Otte has posted the instructions.
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/249194.aspx
Thanks Dave... someday I really have to start reading the instructions....!