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"Mississippi Riverboat" |
1/50 Scale - Mantua Kit "Mississippi Riverboat"
by Gary Maple
The model from Mantua is typical of their line.
This was only slightly modified and is listed as intermediate.
What people do not think about is that every manufacture only uses 3 levels and it applies to their
models only. What is intermediate to one is usually different that from another company.
Beginning, intermediate and advanced should be subdivided into up to 3 ranges. Entry, beginning,
advanced beginner, easy intermediate, intermediate, advance intermediate, advanced, difficult advanced
and expert.
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"Mississippi Riverboat" |
If they did this, we might not lose some of the first time modelers who think that this hobby is not
that challenging and see that the quality of intermediate is usually a lot better and contains more
interesting models.
This model contains 6,225 pieces and took 700 hours to complete.
I would call it an advanced intermediate since there is a lot of precise measuring required and like most
Mantua kits, limited instructions and inaccuracies between different views. However, when completed it is
like all their intermediate and above models in being a beautiful model worthy of display and gives a good
feeling of accomplishment.
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"Mississippi Riverboat" |
If you don't look ahead and figure out how each step must
be built and tried to just follow the plans and numbered instruction steps, this could be a very hard
model to assemble.
The order of steps for me was almost totally useless. I found that it was best to figure out your own steps
and sometimes even do part of the step and come back to finish it later on in the construction project.
In some cases I would do a step that was about 25 steps further in their instructions before going
back to a previously numbered step.
In conclusion, I made a few changes to the model to improve on the design, but did not write down
what they were and do not remember all of them.
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"Mississippi Riverboat" |
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