Tidying up the 1/600 Musashi

I set out to finish Arii's 1/600 Musashi in 18 days, and so I did. I've spent 20.2 hours on the project so far, and it has been 15 days since the beginning of the project. That comes out to about 1.3 hours per day. From the get-go I wasn't going to superdetail this model. To do that requires spending more money on aftermarket parts, and more time installing them.

Painting and Masking behaved very well- and produced nice results.

I am going to get chewed out by accuracy purists- but I simply don't care. The kit I built captures the essence of a Yamato class battleship, and that's all I care about. Missing parts? sure- but they would certainly be on a 1/350 kit. I am debating trying my hand at rigging. In the end, I am going to have to give this kit a grade, so why don't we develop a matrix system to grade and evaluate the performance of the kit. These factors should be included:

Gate placement
Flash and Sinkholes
Kit Essence
Ease of Assembly
Finished Result
Price Point

I think that is detailed enough. Gate placement, if poor, can cause more work than is necessary. The gates were placed pretty well with Arii's kit, but flash is another story. There was flash everywhere with this kit. It isn't a problem to remove, but I feel that detail is overlooked with excess flash. Some minute trace of flash is to be expected, just not flash the size of half a penny.

The kit was somewhat easy to assemble: instructions were straightforward, but they made some assembly steps hard to complete by not making a peg hole or small indent on where that oddly shaped part should go. They let you take a wild guess. Tamiya would have had that s**t covered. The price point is also excellent: at 1800 JPY, that is:

21.76 USD
13.68 GBP
20.98 AUD
21.72 CAD
16.33 EUR

For that kind of money, you shouldn't be expecting much- but for the value, the detail in this kit is above par. You can't get everything though- and a photo-etch set would make this kit stand out. If you pay anything over 2500 JPY though, you're getting ripped off. The finished result also looks pretty good- I attempted a wash that came out with good results. Paint applied very nicely, and I have had little to no issues fixing errors I made, none of which were due to kit construction.

A quick photo shot of 90% of the finished product.

Gate placement (****)
Flash and Sinkholes (***.5)
Kit Essence (****.5)
Ease of Assembly (***)
Finished Result (****)
Price Point (*****)

Overall: 4/5 (****)

Arii's Yamato class ships aren't bad, but don't expect high detail for the price. A fun project for 20-30 hours, no doubt. Once I finish the tower radar and deck machine guns, I will make sure to have a photo shoot and a new episode of Sprue World. On second thought... I may go back and paint the chains; they look a little barren in the photo.

Colors:
Tamiya X-7 Red (Acrylic)
Testors Gunship Gray (Acrylic)
Testors Aircraft Interior Black (Acrylic)
Tamiya Xf-59 Desert Yellow (Acrylic)
Testors Gunmetal (Acrylic)