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Poor kit from Model Shipways

No disrespect intended, all opinions respected. My comments are not criticism of anyone or their work.

What is being paid for is a set of plans, and a gathering of materials. Imagine the amount of time it would take to gather all of the materials on your own - find vendors, order, shipping, etc.

The first step in the instructions is usually inventory the parts and contact the vendor for missing parts. After starting the Constitution about 8 years after purchase, noticed a plan sheet missing, Model Expo sent the sheet no questions asked.

After many, many kits, from just about all vendors, have yet to come across a problem with the kit that prevented completion. Including scratch building many parts I have lost or broken. But that’s the beauty of woodworking, when you know it, making parts is easy. Nowadays, discard the dowels representing yards and make them with popular.

Some interesting questions here - just asking and not criticizing anyone or their work.

First what is the problem? Is the kit “defective”, or does the builder lack the skill to deal with the perceived defect?

And what is a design defect? The kit is a representation not a miniature ship. Are real ship components, not represented in the kit a design defect? Or parts out of scale, like grommets for portholes?

Like how many licks to finish a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.

Cheers
 
I have only built Model shipways kits during my brief modeling career - their 3 boat intro series and now their Harriet Lane. I loved every minnute of building them, but they all had some issues. Some are WTF, like mistakes in the instructions that could be corrected simply; a few are inherent in the kit (like spars that are too small in diameter on the Pram); and some appear to be quality control issues (like the bulkheads on my Smack. They seemed too big. Model Expo sent me a replacement sheet, and those bulkheads were all 2mm smaller than my originals. How does that happen with laser cutting?). It's also clear the instructions are written and photographed during the construction of a prototype, not a production kit.

Despite all that, I ended up with some good looking models, thanks to build logs and HillBilly Modeling on YouTube. I assumed the issues I found were inherent to all wooden ship model kits, but maybe they're not? I can't comment on the issues with the Pilar kit as I don't own it, but I will certainly but another Model Shipways kit - in fact I have several in my stash. It's too bad they can't correct some of these fixable problems.
 
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