Aaagh! That hull! First the Nagato and now the poor Mutsu. Please, PLEASE, Hasegawa correct that ridiculous graph paper hull! I beg of you! Without rivet counting, t's so wildly incorrect and so time consuming to fix. (sigh)

And folks criticise Trumpeter so lavishly about their mistakes. Before the Nagato was released, they were informed about the hull problem and here it is a year later and they compound it by making a second kit with the same defect. I have heard a reasonably easy fix is to get some of that 1000 Mr Surfacer in a spray can and lightly spray it on, then after it all dries lightly sanding down the hull. One guy said it only took a couple of hours to do this and the results were great. I think rather than ruin something, I'll just ignore it.

I just paid 125$ for the Nagato, hard to believe the first thing I will be doing will be sanding the hull down a la old Airfix 5$ kits. I have enough time to think about it...

Don't neccessarily have to sand the hull down. Only those in the know will even be aware that this is an error. When Hasegawa was designing kit from blueprints, they saw the little squares that come out in those things and misinterpreted them as being on the hull. The hull actually looks fine with them, only a few of the die hards took the time to fll in the recessed panel lines

FWIW, I'm not a major rivet counter. In my Musashi build log, I state as much. But I disagree with your statement. The hull just plain looks wrong. No other ship's hull looks like that and it's pretty glaring. Case in point, my fiancee, who took one look at the hull and said, "why does it have those weird lines?" Or my uncle who commented on how bizarre the "grid" on the body looked. Neither of these people are even ship fans and they saw the error, so I strongly disagree that it's only the die hards. I think that most of it is because of shape. In areas where the lines would naturally curve or bend, they don't. They're stamped in like they were overlaid by a giant grid- which they were. I was set up to get this model before Hasegawa officially announced it (I have a little bird in the company), and was willing to disregard the ominous rumblings and pictures the closer release time came. But when it was actually released with that incorrect hull for such a high list price, I flipped. And yes, I know it can be had for cheaper. But that's not the point. For that kind of moolah I want something that looks accurate and isn't spotted by folks who know nothing about IJN ships. I've actually built Hasegawa's 1/350 Mikasa and Yukikaze and am halfway done with the Soya, so I'm a fan. But, making apologies and excuses for this Nagato (and Mutsu) gaffe will only encourage Hasegawa that what they did wasn't so bad.

Steve & Dade - Thanks for the input and opinions, great to read the two sides of the coin. I guess my concern is not being able to "practice" anywhere before touching the kit. I would be inclined to at least decrease the effect, if possible. Again, will have a long time before I start, plenty to do some research on methods/fixes. Cheers all!

As I said earlier, I am not prone to forgive Hasegawa for what they did, and to compound the error by repeating it after knowing well in advance that it is a serious error makes me realize that none of the major manufactures really care as long as it sells. I know a year ago I got into arguments with a few guys over their condemnation of the San Francisco mainly because they were heapng attack upon attack on Trumpeter for their lack of response in correcting things. Now it seems Hasegawa is even more at fault. My understanding that after several errors were found in their 350 Essex, they corrected these in later releases of the kit. the $64, 000 question still remains for those of us that have purchased the kit. How far do you want to go to cover this up? Too much and you lose a lot of nice detail. Ignore it and yes it does stand out. Spend hours and hours filling and sanding...how far do you go there, there are some interesting patterns on the bottom and the bow of the ship. Everything else about the kit is exquisite. It just has to be an individual choice.

What a horror those hull lines... Completely kills any wish to buy the kit imho... G.