The aft boiler house deck, pilot house roof deck and an alternate deck are all cast as separate pieces. The boiler house and bridge decks will need to be cut out of casting wafers, while the pilot house roof deck has some excess resin to remove. The skylights on the boiler house deck need to be cleaned up a bit and I opted to remove the cast on boat cradles to replace them with the photo-etch versions included with the kit. The cast on bridge deck and pilot house roof deck have solid bulwarks to simplify construction for more novice modelers. If you decide you want to use photo-etch railings instead, you will have to remove these. Additionally, if you go this route, you should add the alternate bridge deck with extends further out on each side, which is what I did.
The smaller resin parts include the funnel, large and small cowl vents, life boats and davits, water tanks, anchors and a propeller. Since this is a waterline model, I don’t know why a propeller was included but you now have something for the spares box. The casting is generally good and the life boats have a nice amount of detail to them. The funnel has a ladder cast into it which really should be removed and replaced with photo-etch. All of these parts will need to be removed from casting blocks and will probably need a swipe or two of a sanding stick to clean them up. The photo-etch provided with the kit is a general set that is included in the majority of the Loose Cannon merchant ships. It provides 3 styles of railing, vertical and inclined ladders, a catwalk, an assortment of ratlines, doors and other fittings. There are enough parts to detail a couple of ships depending on size, so it looks like I will have some left over parts when I am done building this model. A length of brass rod is provided for the masts and spar at the bow.
A small decal sheet is included with the ship’s name for the bow and stern and gold stars for the funnel. The decals look ok but the name for the stern is very faint for some reason and there is no flag included. As a precaution I would apply a coat of MicroScale Liquid Decal Paper to seal them. The instructions are printed on nine pages, with the first four providing background on Great Lakes ore carriers, the 1913 storm and the S.S. Isaac M. Scott, along with bit of information on the kit, a description of the paint scheme and Bob Nixon’s personal ties to the ship. A paint mix for the deck color is provided, though I misread it somehow and my mix came out more reddish that it should have. Page 4 has a photo of the ship and one of grand-uncle Norman Dwelle, which gives a face to the ship’s tragic story. The following pages describe the build using drawings, some photos and written guidance. While not as fancy as CAD drawings, so far they are doing the trick in my opinion.
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