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Kits and let downs

zoly99sask said:
Dave is this kit includes the whole ship fittings,blocks etc.?or just a hull frame?
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the 1890 tug would be the total ship from every frame to every fitting complete. But it is on hold due to the high production costs.

the other project is the cross section of a bomb vessel you can follow its progress on the project design group. This one is in its final stages of design.
 
this is a subject that has gone through the mill over and over in every model ship forum. bottom line kits are what they are and a lot goes into their production from raw materials, design, instructions and plans, tooling, mold making, casting parts or 3D printed parts, packaging marketing research etc.

kits are designed, produced and marketed to the toy and hobby industry retail cost is a big concern. The higher the quality the higher the cost and there is a limit to what a hobby builder will pay.

you can not judge kits because what is a flaw to someone is nothing to be concerned about to someone else.

if you want the best of the best in every respect learn how to scratch build models then YOU have total control.

one idea tossed around in the project design group was to create a top end kit custom made for a group build project. The problem here is not enough kits can be sold to cover production costs, so each kit would be very expensive because you can not spread the investment costs over a large sales.

it is what it is
 
Every aspect of the building project is top of the line and it would retail for just a bit under $2,000.00 so how many kits do you think will sell?
That is a question you would have to ask a retailer. Ages of Sail have kits that sell for that amount. So, there is a market for quality.
 
I would like to add that a kit that may make cost $2000 build over quit a few years is cheap entertainment.
 
DAVE AND ALL WE HAVE HASHED THIS TOPIC GOING ON FOR YEARS,THE MAJOR THING TO LOOK AT IS THE INTERMEDIATE MODELER THE BULK OF THE HOBBY is this group, PROJECTS TO APPEAL TO THIS GROUP NEED IN MY OPION ONLY, EASE OF BUILD( WHICH TO ME PERTAINS TO THE INSTRUCTIONS AND PLANS HOPEFULLY AIDED BY 3-D INSTRUCTIONS THIS IS A MUST TO KEEP THEM INTO THE HOBBY) TIME REQUIRED SHOULD BE FOUR TO EIGHT MOS. NOT YEARS, AS FOR ME WHEN I GET A EUROPEAN KIT AND EVEN SOME M/S KITS I UPGRADE THE TIMBERS PROVIDED, and FINALLY IF THE PLANS AND INSTRUCTIONS ARE GOOD I CAN PRODUCE A DECENT MODEL IF THEY ARE GENERIC AND BAD SO IS THE FINISHED PRODUCT, as for cost DAVE IS CORRECT it matters but having said that just LOOK AT ZHL, AND OTHER CHINESE MANUFACTOERS< THERE PRICES ARE VERY EXPENSIVE BUT THE RUSULTS SPEAK FOR THEM SELVES< SEE THE MANY SOS BUILDING LOGS SO THER IS A MARKET OUT THERE. JUST MY OPION.Don
 
GaryM said:
Every aspect of the building project is top of the line and it would retail for just a bit under $2,000.00 so how many kits do you think will sell?
That is a question you would have to ask a retailer. Ages of Sail have kits that sell for that amount. So, there is a market for quality.
Click to expand...


I would agree with this there is a market for anything but the question is volume. Sure a high end kit can be made of say a wooden steam tug with every last detail. That production cost would run into the thousands. Starting with 3D design taking that design and creating a 3D print file, now take that print there is cheap printing and high resolution printing at 10 times the cost. Now you have a master so you need to have production casting molds made and on and on. If a company that produced a line of 20 kits and the tug is a slow seller the rest of the line will pick up the slack. But if you produce 3 kits and the tug sucked up thousands of $$ then that is a huge loss to recover. No company is going to take that risk.
 
Aussie048 said:
I would like to add that a kit that may make cost $2000 build over quit a few years is cheap entertainment.
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true but still there is the up front cost and surveys taken do show model builders do not spend years on one project. 90% want the project done in less than a year so they can move on to something else.
 
Don is right the intermediate hobby builder is the majority of the customer base. Sure there are the high end builders but those are far and few between you will sell 100 average kits to 10 expensive high end kits.
 
Dave

I totally agree. One issue is what do we think we need with hobby tools. You are probably aware I have spent many hours helping Don and that is part of our hobby. I cannot advise him on his builds as I do not have the experience, but I have taught him a lot so he can put a build log together. I think this might be his first build log he has done with his Halifax, One the forum we can all help in different ways, and mine was on the IT side and Don and I are now good mates now.
If Don has an issue on say uploading a photo, he will contact me. Don will agree totally with this

Cheers
Geoff
 
I find one of the big problems in AUS is availability. Unless you are prepared to pay for import costs or very high margins by a certain AU supplier, All I can get is AL( okay for the cost ( cheap) but plans/ doco sucks, & Caldercraft ( good value, good kits) or pot luck at a victorian parts supplier( who is great).

The Asia market products are reasonable value but the AU cost of delivery high. ( does not need to be, but forced to use TNT DHL pricing absured. ) US postal ( forget it).

I will definitely never do a Corel again.
 
I have built a few kits:
- Chebec from Amati (tiny, ugly plastic gratings, ugly metal cast companion),
- Carracca Atlantica from Mantua (erroneus belaying pins, week desktop furnishing, bad blocks)
- Royal Caroline from Mantua (cast decorations up to sh..., blocks to forget, rigging too, incorrect hull shape) - at the end I did not used from the box anything just the bulkheads.
- Rattlesnake timbering set from Lumbryard: the only good quality kit I built, I can recommend it to anyone.
Seen but not built ZHL Royal Caroline kit (Greg's): sensational.
Janos
 
a big problem seems to be some kits have good parts and bad parts. builders buy a kit and replace the wood or the fittings, rigging etc. So you paying for a kit and paying again for replacement parts. What the ship modeling community needs is a kit junkyard where you can buy only parts that you need or want like buying a set of bulkheads from one company and the milled wood from another. Once a builder is done with a kit the plans can go to the junkyard to be resold to someone who can cut their own bulkheads. or where you can find bundles of milled wood someone else did not use. buying kits off Ebay and using them for parts. Someone may of not used the bundle of wood in their kit but for someone else it may be just fine.

I don't know if anyone tried to buy just a set of bulkheads or fittings or a carving set from ZHL or any kit company or just buying the plans for the DIY builder.

reminds me when I was a kid and my dad and I would go to this place called 6 city salvage a huge warehouse of everything you could imagine. I can not see any one person collecting kits, parts, plans, fittings vintage and used reclaimed and recycled stuff for model ship building. But what I think might work is an on line junkyard where members can post stuff they have laying around to sell.
 
ON MY SOAP BOX AGAIN, This is just my opion as stated before PLANS AND INSTRUCTIONs, REPEAT PLANS AND INSTRUCTIONS, THIS WILL MAKE A KIT BAD OR GOOD WITH OTHER THINGS, AGREE WITH JANOS, THE LUMBERYARD KITS ARE THE BEST FOR TOTAL QUALITY< AND THE PLANS AND INSTRUCTIONS THE NEXT THING THE HOBBY NEEDS IS 3-D DEVLOPMENT< THAT IS THE FUTURE, I WILL NOT PAY EXORBANIT PRICES FOR THE CRAP THAT IS SOLD FROM THE ESTABLIHED COs. IN EUROPE rather wait for new stuff from the LUMBERYARD or SAVE UP ENOUGH TO GET A QUALITY KIT THAT I CAN BUILD FROM ZHL OR OTHER COs LIKE THERES, THER HIGH END KITS ARE GREAT BUT THEY SELL OTHER KITS THAT ARE NOT SO GOOD MOSTLY DUE TO BAD TO TERIBLE PLANS AND INSTRUCTIONS,,,,and do not foreget the Japanese WOODY JOE INTERESTING SUBJECTS. JUST MY THOUGHTS. Don
 
One other thing I forgot to mention are the VERY MANY BUILDERS THAT DO NOT BELONG TO FORUMS, MODELERS THAT WE NEVER HERE FROM THEY SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED TO EXPRESS THERE DESIRES ALSO, SOMEHOW DO NOT KNOW HOW TO GET THERE REACTIONS. Don
 
you get members attention by posting "hot" subject issues subjects with different points of view controversial stuff

side effects are 1 more work for the moderators to keep it civil 2 it can get unruly and ugly
 
thanks for the comments on the lumberyard but I must add these timbering sets are not for most of the kit builders out there the timbering sets are exactly what the name implies "timbering" and that's it. you have to have some experience to tackle one of these kits. First off the timbering is dimensioned milled stock not finished material, there are no fittings or rigging you have to source them from someplace or learn how to make them, no how to instructions at all so you have to know how to read plans and research through the Hahn archives and other builders build logs.

thoughts on this type of kit are

if I were to provide a set of plans I drew, step by step instructions, wood that is "finished" smooth, everything fits to within .0005 of an inch, all the fittings, and pre cast and finished carvings
if we were standing at a table looking at the model and you said "I built this" I would say no what you did was assemble the parts I provided.
Watching Don's build log the Halifax is not an easy build, parts have to be finished and shaped then fit to the model. There is a learning curve to this, figuring out the how to of it all. His Halifax build is far closer to scratch building than building a kit. bonus is, finishing the project and actually learning something you can use on the next one.
 
If you are building a model that ends up with 5,000 parts or more and lots of rigging, then good quality parts helps make the ship look right. I don't care if you say that I assembled the parts you gave me. I say, I was able to create a great looking vessel because of the great care and accurate parts provided. If you look at my doll house, it uses 4,800 shingles in eight different shapes. For a home hobbyist to create those and get them all the same wood be a real chore. Just putting them together on the doll house and getting them right is a chore. I would not have built the doll house if I had to create all those parts.
 
One important step would be if the modellers could collect and publish their expectations of a kit (this might be a possibility) and the next one to press the kit manufacturers to accept it (most likely an illusion). Every model maker is different as is every kit manufacturer. Even the same modeller could have quite different expextations towards his/her next kit so obviously there is no perfect solution. In my opinion the perfect compromise would be if the kit manufacturers could provide a module-based system so everyone could find the best solution for himself. So in a perfect world we could buy steps like plans+rib, planking materials, timber furnishing, metal accessories, masting, blocks, rigging all in modules. Another question is of course how this could be made as an acceptable and marketable solution for the manufacturers. I believe that the current technological advances and the emergence of new manufacturers (Chinese, Russian) might point in this direction.
Janos
 
Just answering an earlier question a few days ago I asked Max whether ZHL would be interested in selling me the rib only of one of their kits. The answer was NO.
Janos
 
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