If you have ever built on of the various Waterline 1/700 scale US Navy
Battleships, then you were probably horrified by the 5 inch gun turrets.
They are barely passable and in some cases grossly over scale. The turrets
on the old Matchbox
San Diego
class CL also suffers from this inaccuracy.
Well finally a manufacturer has stepped in and made a replacement set. Loose Cannon Productions is relatively new on the scene, but their kits are very detailed and accurate. They have recently started making some of their accessories available separately. One of these is a completely new Dual 5 inch gun turret. One of the drawbacks to injection molding is that parts have to be slightly tapered in order to release from the mold without distorting. So even the most accurate of the plastic turrets out there have a slight draft to them. This is not a problem with a resin mold as it is flexible and the result is that these sides are vertical and flat. There is also cast on sighting hoods and tapered gun barrels with molded on hoods. |
This set comes with ten turrets which makes it enough to refit any ship the US Navy had. There will be some cleanup necessary to remove the casting gates and to fit the gun barrels properly into the gun slots, but you can expect a lot of the 1/700 scale ships out there to be refitted soon as modelers learn of these new turrets. |