¹⁄700

Building Hasegawa's IJN Nachi

The included photo etch was very robust and contained plenty of goodies including catapults, DF finder, funnel caps and railings. Unfortunately, no ladders or stairs. The PE is very good... surprisingly so. The metal is a nice thickness, firm, but easy to work with. Everything is sized very well, with the exception of some PE gantries (see below). The railings are the kind I most prefer (and also the rarest type): stanchions with feet. What this means is that instead of railings with one long gutter, or with only stanchions- these are mostly only stanchions, but with small feet every few stanchions or so that must be bent up at a 90 degree angle, thereby providing a larger place to glue and giving added strength and stability to the entire rail (and looking more accurate than the gutter type).

Overall it's a good kit, but it has some annoying fit issues. This kit is really summed up with lots of dry fitting. The problem spots are:

--Above waterline hull to the bottom is not a tight fit- will require some putty.

--The forward funnel base is a little too big where it goes under the superstructure and will need work.

--The upper levels of the superstructure have some gaps that will need to be filled.

--The hole in the structure for the rear center leg of the aft tripod to go into is not big enough. It will have to be opened up more.

--There is a PE platform gantry that goes directly in front of the aft funnel and is surrounded by a walkway on both sides. A small walkway piece goes between to the gantry sides. It will have to be filed down or the gantries will be too far apart. Even then, the fit inside of the outer walkways is too tight, so the inner walkway walls will have to be filed down some to fit around the gantries. This spot will require a lot of experimenting.

--There is a forward platform on PE gantries also. Care must be taken to modify these gantries to fit as well.