MSW crew-mate Alec Cap (bigal07), in his first MSW submission, shares a group of four of his IJN Maru's in 1/700 scale, in this "On Display" Feature!
(and there's more goodies to come from Al in the coming weeks! )

Link to Item

If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!
~Gunny

Nice looking work. I take it that one with the aircraft and guns is a AMC, Armed Merchant Cruiser?

The thing that always strikes me about Japanese cargo ships is how so many of them would be named like California Maru, Manila Maru, New York Maru, and so on.

Very nice work Alec.

Alec,
Welcome to the 'softer' side of ship modelling (meaning - there are not too many guns on the Marus!!). Really good looking ships. Any plans for a diorama for any (all) of these?

Jim S

Very nice set, makes for an interesting design study comparing their features, way cool Alec!

The word "maru" originated in the seventh century and has since come to
> serve as a popular name for a host of Japanese vessels. The first ship to
> use the suffix is said to have been the 16th century ship called the Nipon
> Maru, built by the legendary Toyotomi Hideyoschi. However, despite its
> widespread use, the word has never been graced with a definitive
Some time ago I built a large naval base for photographing waterline models, while the dockyard would remain the same, the different types of surface craft would come and go, the huge problem was of course space/room which I honestly don't have a great deal of, when I saw Jim Smith's work it reminded me of - certain models cry out for a diorama - again this raises a problem what to do with them.
With a multi functional diorama base to work from, I can photograph and store models easily, the 4 Maru's I have so far will all go into a diorama in the near future. We're not the same and obviously everyone has different ideas of what a diorama is, and should look like, my idea is basically a bit of everything, my HMS Echo is as small as I would build a diorama for a perm-base.
At the moment I have asked for help with ideas, advise, help you name it in building my next diorama multi base, this time, it will have a maximum of 7 inches wide with a length of 30 inches.
Many thanks for the replies.