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This is a Huge Titanic 74 inches (1880mm)

I realize that I live in the past, and like it, but I can’t imagine spending almost $1000 for anything based on the sketchy information provided in the ad for the kit.

By wooden hull, I assume that they mean POB. That’s a hard way to build a model of a steel hulled ship. One would need a huge amount of goop to smear over the hull to hide the planking. Or, one could, and probably should, add plating over the wood planking. To do this accurately the kit mfgr would need to provide a plating expansion drawing.

Roger
 
Love it but being a former plastic and resin builder Id have to say that building the hull with wood is all well and good but it would have to be covered with plastic to simulate the plates and especially the rivet or weld detail.
 
Beautiful ship. But big problem. $1000 is way out of my league for a single ship model.
 
Roger Pellett said:
I realize that I live in the past, and like it, but I can’t imagine spending almost $1000 for anything based on the sketchy information provided in the ad for the kit.

By wooden hull, I assume that they mean POB. That’s a hard way to build a model of a steel hulled ship. One would need a huge amount of goop to smear over the hull to hide the planking. Or, one could, and probably should, add plating over the wood planking. To do this accurately the kit mfgr would need to provide a plating expansion drawing.

Roger
Click to expand...
Model Expo is, and always has been, a reliable and ethical shop to deal with. That said, their descriptions have always been a bit sparse, and in earlier days when you were looking at a paper catalogue, even less to go from. But today is far different, and if a person wants more detailed information on any given kit they are selling, you simply have to look up the kit manufacturer's website and glean all the additional needed details from their description of it.

In this case, here's the link to their page... the written description is pretty much what Model Expo used in their ad for it, but you'll see on the Billing Boat site, there are links to the .pdf's of the build instructions, and from that you should be able to ascertain whatever remaining information you need to be able to make a decision. https://www.billingboats.com/index.php/modelboats-footer/80/120/boats/the-expert/P-bb510-titanic

On page 18 of the first .pdf of instructions, you'll see the parts they include to replicate the hull plating... and later on how they're used over the first layer of conventional hull planking used to build the model. Looks pretty good to me, but way to large for anyplace I could actually display it. If I were a single guy maybe I'd enclose it in glass and turn it into the base for a coffee table in the living room. Being that I'm not single, if I attempted something like that, I likely would become single in short order. The spousal unit would not be amused. (She often doesn't see things that same way as I do. lol).
 
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I apologize for the amount of information, but like it's been said, that's what the manufacturer has on his website. We made the instructions available in our listing, too. Billing Boats RMS Titanic 1:144 Scale - Wooden Hull Kit

I found a thread here in the forum with lots of pictures of the contents:

Titanic - Billing Boats 1/144

Where do I start first of all it's big very very big. It's 188cm long or 6 feet 2 inches in old money. I won't be building anything yet as it will take me a few months to get everything sorted Right on with the contents. What I was confronted with on opening the box And don't expect it to be a...
shipsofscale.com

By the way, what kind of information you think is paramount to have on our product's listings? I am always looking for ways of improving it. And nothing better than feedback from modelers!

Thank you all
 
Hmmm! I do not like the lifeboat lifeline detail. Very cheap. To not do it in cord at that scale is a huge boo boo.
 
Model Shipways said:
I apologize for the amount of information, but like it's been said, that's what the manufacturer has on his website. We made the instructions available in our listing, too. Billing Boats RMS Titanic 1:144 Scale - Wooden Hull Kit

I found a thread here in the forum with lots of pictures of the contents:

Titanic - Billing Boats 1/144

Where do I start first of all it's big very very big. It's 188cm long or 6 feet 2 inches in old money. I won't be building anything yet as it will take me a few months to get everything sorted Right on with the contents. What I was confronted with on opening the box And don't expect it to be a...
shipsofscale.com

By the way, what kind of information you think is paramount to have on our product's listings? I am always looking for ways of improving it. And nothing better than feedback from modelers!

Thank you all
Click to expand...
Such that your request doesn't get lost as part of this thread, my suggestion would be to create a new thread asking for that exact input. I know I have thoughts on the topic that I'd love to share, and I'm certain there are many others here that would do the same. You folks have always treated me really well as a customer, and it seems only fair to provide more in return... aside from the regular commerce side of things.
 
I looked up the contents of the kit from the post referenced by Model Expo. From the pictures some thoughts. I admit that I have not looked at the instructions. Much of what I am writing below follows from my current project; a relatively small scale (1:96) model of a steel hulled Great Lakes steamship built in 1909 and lost on Lake Superior almost exactly a year after Titanic. So, the technology used to build both ships was virtually identical.

First of all both ships had riveted steel hulls. Electric arc welding would not be commonly used to build ships until WWII approximately another 25 years. By 1913 riveting was a mature technology codified by rules established by classification societies such as Lloyds. Rivet sizes and riveting patterns varied by location in the ships hull. Accurately representing them would require deep research into these codes. The good news, at 1: 144 scale there is no reason to show rivets. At any reasonable scale viewing distance they would be invisible.

Accurately plating the hull requires access to a drawing called a Plating Expansion, knowing how to read it and how to mark out the strakes of plating. A plating expansion drawing is available on the internet. Is one provided in the kit instructions? The contents of the box give no idea of the material to be used for the hull plating. There are what appear to be brass coils and some photo etched brass plates. If the hull is to be plated in brass, I have found that pressure sensitive adhesives are not able to keep the edges of brass plating from lifting. CA or Epoxy are possibilities I’ll leave to others. For my model I plated the hull with Shellac saturated paper secured with reliable PVA glue.

Finally, if I were trying to sell a ship model kit for $1000 I would find someone to build an impressive example to demonstrate what could be achieved. The example shown in the ad does not do this. Things that stick out like the proverbial sore thumb:

First of all the lifeboats. This is, after all, Titanic and the lifeboats are the focus of anyone’s attention. These boats look like blobs of plastic accented by those awful embossed black lifelines. The covers could also have been painted a different shade of white. Also, it’s generally understood that Titanic’s boats were clinker planked.

The rigging appears to way over scale. At 1:144 rigging would fine as a hair.

While a picky point, the ship’s three propellers would be bronze, not red. The kit supplied props are already brass, why paint them.

All in all the example has a toy like appearance.

Roger
 
I'm building one at the moment and it's been a LOT of fun so far. Purchased it from Amazon.de (Germany) for around 670 Euro about 4 years ago. It was a good price and might even have been an error because they kicked back my review congratulating them on such a competitve price. Is the kit manufactured in Denmark by Billings? If so they will have to pay fairer wages than kits manufacured in China which may explain why it appears expensive. Anyway, it allows me to build a beatiful ship to a standard otherwise unattainable and many hours of pleasure. I explained to my wife that this would liberate her from my company for a very LONG time which seemed to help the purchasing process.

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Interesting to compare this to the Amati Bismark. In the past Billings had a poor reputation for quality of content and plans. I hope this is marks a change. Most important, have fun.
 
seadeep said:
Such that your request doesn't get lost as part of this thread, my suggestion would be to create a new thread asking for that exact input. I know I have thoughts on the topic that I'd love to share, and I'm certain there are many others here that would do the same. You folks have always treated me really well as a customer, and it seems only fair to provide more in return... aside from the regular commerce side of things.
Click to expand...
Glad to hear we've been treating you right, sir. I know sometimes things fall down the cracks...
I'll start a new thread as soon as find where it should be.

thanks!
 
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