Reviewed by Timothy Dike
| The HMS Renown was one off Battleship
design similar to the Centurian and Barfleur in size. The Renown had more
beam and better armor protection. The design was an improvement over the
previous Royal Sovereign class in layout. The Renown was armed with four
10" guns in twin turrets ten 6" guns, twelve 12 pdr guns, eight 3 pdr guns,
2 maxims and five torpedo tubes. The spacious layout of the Renown make
her a natural for a flag ship and in that capacity she served for Sir John
Fisher, the Commander in Chief on the North American Station. As more modern
ships entered service, Renown was placed into reserve. Later she landed
her 6" guns and was converted to a royal yacht to carry the Prince and
Princess of Wales to India in 1905. After returning to home waters
she once again entered into reserve. She served briefly as a tender, finally
being sold for scrap just before WW1.
Even more ambitious than the British Battleship building program of the late 1800's is the resin ship building program of Combrig. Yet another important subject has been captured in high quality resin. |
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| HULL | |||||||||||||
| The Hull on this kit is very well done, the casting is very sharp and well defined. Planking is well nicely done and the chocks are molded open. Thankfully the anchor chain is left off so the modeler can add his own real chain. All features are sharply defined and the only thing that might be needed is to clean up some of the porthole openings. |
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| SUPERSTRUCTURE | |||||||||||||
| Superstructure parts cast on a thin resin wafer with really sharp detailing. The deck levels are cast with canvas covered railing all around that are very thin. The funnels are hollowed out and nicely shaped. |  |
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| WEAPONS | |||||||||||||
| The main guns are nicely shaped and have plenty of detail included. The gun barrels are pretty nice for resin. The small guns are very fine with thin barrels so be careful when handling them. |  |
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| SMALL DETAIL ITEMS AND SHIPS BOATS | |||||||||||||
| The small parts are very well cast. The various vents are almost perfectly cast. |  |
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| The ships boats are the best I've seen in this scale. The main launch has rudder detail cast on. A separate stack is included for the large launch. The whaleboats feature nice bottom wood planking. The only way to improve upon these would be to leave the seats out and add them in as a separate photo etch piece. |  |
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| INSTRUCTIONS | |||||||||||||
The Instructions are two pages with bill of materials and
pictures of the kit parts is on page two. Page three and four are exploded
assembly views showing parts placement.
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| CONCLUSIONS | |||||||||||||
:
Yet another high quality Combrig kit. This one features state of the art casting. I wouldn't recommend this kit for a beginner, but any one who has tacked a resin kit and worked with photo etch will really enjoy this one. This kit is listed on the Pacific Front Hobbies website for $32.00 (US), a fantastic price for a ship of this size and detail. It will make a fine addition to your Grand Fleet. |
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