Museal quality kits

Tymko1878 said:

What kit models do you mind as a museal quality?

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What I wrote is meant within the context of the original question. It is not intended for anything beyond this. I too, spent time considering kits as my world of choices.
What I wrote is a reply to the above answers the OP question with: none. Why do I say this? Because no kit IS this out of the box. No kit could be - based on cost restraints alone.

serikoff said:

but it could be turned into a very good project

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Which would make that project into a transition into becoming essentially an independent scratch builder. It is probably the major way to do it. But it is unlikely to be "a high quality ship model" itself.
But once a builder has paid the dues to be capable of doing quality work - unless being paid very well to do it - why spend effort using the flawed foundation of a kit when it is easier to start with something unique with actual original plans from the past?

If "a high quality ship model" is the standard then every kit will fall far short of it. From an academic perspective kits produce garbage. Outside of that very constrained world, kits are whatever the builder believes them to be. If definition of what a kit manufacturer means by "museum quality" is the standard then any kit with that appellation is capable of meeting it.

It is all a matter of understanding the limitations going in. It is best to avoid delusions of grandeur when it comes to kits.

kuba91nt said:

And once again we end up in the same place: everything is subjective.
Museum quality, top kit, best model all of it means whatever author wants it to mean.
Problem is that museum quality is not a subjective category. It is an objective one, based on documentation, research value, originality, and the creator’s own contribution.
And a kit can never fully meet those criteria, because it is built on someone else’s design, assumptions, and research.
Reducing a term to pure aesthetics, it looks nice, so it’s museum quality, is a classic symptom of new modern disease of sick subjectivism.

This does not diminish really good kits, some kits are excellent, well designed, and a real pleasure to build.
But calling them “museum quality” dilutes meaning of this term and is simply unfair to people who build from scratch, spend years, tousends hours for researching, and create genuine in all historical reconstructions...

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I completely agree. I was more arguing that kits shouldn't be called trash, especially finished pieces from kits. That said, it's 100% true that a kit will never end up in a museum, but it might look like one, and for many, that'll be enough. After all, frankly, no one builds for museums; only a handful of people build from scratch, researching more than just the manufacturing process.

DAWarden-(Jaager) said:

What I wrote is meant within the context of the original question. It is not intended for anything beyond this.

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This is an important qualifier, Dean. Perhaps you might consider editing your post (and making it clear that is what you have done) because your post can easily be understood the way Sergey read it (as did I). You have honored the OP's intent which is to be commended. Unfortunately, thread drift is common around here and there are quite enough posts that condemn kit building (and kit builders) on this forum for my taste. Peace.

In general, you could build so called "museum quality" model out of most kits. But you have to do a good job and depending on quality of the kit replace its parts as most are subpar. There are kits however that come out of the box on a very high level and all you need to do is assemble it carefully. One such kit was "Vigilant" from MH&B ( Vigilant ), price was similar to a used car (talking back in the 90's). It is unfortunately not available anymore. Russian Falconet makes a very detailed and historically accurate kits but their scale (mostly 1/48) not exactly a museum size. I think the trick to a good model from Chinese kits is sending... every visible part. Hide the work of CNC and laser cutter as much as you can, give every part the feel of a hand made piece. Finishing up with oils and some patina lacquer will give it an antique look. For guidance, look at tons of pictures from museums. Dmitry Shevelev's 76 gun ship is a good reference of recently built "museum quality" model