Reviewed by Timothy Dike
| Pit Road known by most of us waterline builders for their Skywave 1/700 kits, also has a line of resin kits under the Waveline name. My kit was cleanly cast with only a light film of flash, that is easy to remove. Waveline makes their kits using a two part mold so there is no overpour to sand away. The Hull dimensions seems to be good and closely matches the length and width for this class. The superstructure pieces are sharp and fit together nicely. The main guns include separately molded gun barrels cast in metal that will require a little cleanup with a file. The secondary dual 5 inch 38 Caliber turrets come from the same. | click images
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| Skywave E-9 weapons sprue are included. You get two of these sprues, more than enough to build the kit and stock up your parts bin. |  |
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| For the AA guns you have your choice of metal or plastic on the 20 mm and 40 mm as they are come from both the Skywave sprue and are also separately cast in metal. Unfortunately the metal one appear to be copies of the plastic, so your choice is merely the material. The many fittings can be obtained from either the weapons set or the individual metal castings thought the boat cranes and searchlights are sharper and more accurate in shape than their plastic molded counterparts. | |||
| Resin kit manufacturers take note; Brass rod is included for the mast so an additional trip to the hobby shop is not needed to finish the kit. . No photoetch is included, but Gold Medal Models USN Cruiser set has what you need. If building the Baltimore you will need to get two sets as this cruiser had two set of aircraft cranes on the fantail. | |||
The weak point of this kit is the instructions, they are
in Japanese and will take a little studying before building should be attempted.
I would recommend getting a set of plans from The Floating Drydock to get it right they list two sets # TFW-CA68/8 draw in 1/96 scale of the USS BALTIMORE CA68 as she appeared in 8/44 and set #TFW-CA68/16 same as above in 1/192 scale. The instructions have dimensions for some of the platforms, such as the radar platform on the mast which will ha to be fabricated from plastic sheet. The patterns appear to be 1/700 scale so they will make good templates. These parts should have been included in the kit, IMHO. |
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| A Camouflage design sheet is included to paint the ship in her MS 32/16d
paint scheme. A quick visit to the Ship
Camouflage Site will assist with the painting
Overall this is a great kit and will make a fine addition to your WW2 USN waterline fleet. I highly recommend this kit for all intermediate and above modelers. |
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