The Minicraft
Titanic is not new - the molds are at least 25 years old - but the latest issues of the kit feature parts that have been "accurized" with the benefit of research by historians and undersea explorers. The revised kit comes two ways: all plastic, and this "Deluxe" edition featuring photoetched rails and ratlines to replace the kit's plastic parts.
Compared to today's kits, the plastic parts are heavy and many have flash that needs to be trimmed away. Mold seams are prominent and several parts had sinkholes that required filling.
The instructions state that more than 50 corrections were made to the original molds. Some are evident - forward anchor well, new forecastle deck, skylights - while others are less obvious, like the correct 16 portholes on the port side of the forecastle (instead of the earlier 15), modifications of the welldeck cutouts, and the correct 46-star U.S. flag on the decal sheet (yes, I know, it was a British ship, but the flag of the destination country was flown).
The photoetched rails and ratlines are well done and a vast improvement over the plastic parts, though no stairs or lifeboat details are included. The 60-step, 30-page instructions have clear illustrations with numbers labeling parts. A history of the ship and paint formulas are included. A four-page supplement has illustrations and photos for the photoetched parts. The four-color decals are crisply printed and the colors appear accurate.
I built the model according to the instructions, but I left subassemblies unattached to ease painting. There were no surprises in construction, but I had to cut away what appears to be a screw-mounting socket in the bow so the new foredeck would fit flat on the hull.
All the major assemblies fit together well, but the smaller bulkheads and related parts wouldn't form tight joints. Much of my time was spent filling and sanding edges to form 90° angles. Another frustration was locating the parts on the sprues - parts that made up a subassembly were often scattered among several sprues. Overall detail was heavy-handed, and in the case of some bulkheads and windows, detail was either omitted or overly simplified. But the overall clunky look of the model was wonderfully transformed by the addition of the photoetched parts.
With everything in place I followed the paint formulas using Polly Scale and Tamiya paints. The mixed colors appear accurate.
For all the shortcomings in detail, the kit scales surprisingly well, according to the information at
http://titanic-model.com (which also supplied information to Minicraft).
I spent 62 hours building the
Titanic, a titanic amount of time for a kit in this scale. Despite the welcome improvements, the kit's age shows. It can be built straight from the box, but if you strive for greater detail, you may want to add even more photoetched parts (available from Gold Medal Models).