| USS
Yorktown (PG-1)
WM03501 Oceanmoon, 1/700th Scale, Resin Reviewed by Devin Poore, November 2019
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| Commissioned in 1889, USS Yorktown, (PG-1), the second US Navy ship to bear the name, was the lead-ship of the Yorktown gunboat class. Considered a third-class cruiser, she was armed with 6 X 6" guns for her main battery, with a secondary armament of 6, 3, and 1 pounder guns. Her career started out in the Atlantic, taking part in the Squadron of Evolution, and ceremonies that returned the remains of John Ericsson, of USS Monitor fame, to his native Sweden, in 1890. Transferred to the Pacific in 1891, she participated in the Baltimore Crisis of the Chilean Civil War, and interdicted seal poachers in the Artic in 1892. Decommissioned for maintenance, she missed the Spanish-American War in 1898, but was recommissioned later that same year, to take part in the Philippine-American war in 1899. Besides another stint of repairs and maintenance between 1903 and 1906, she spent the rest of her days patrolling the U.S. Pacific coast, Mexico, and South America. Still active during WWI, she performed escort and patrol duties. She continued on much in that manner post-war, until her final decommissioning in 1919. She was sold for scrap in 1921, eventually broken up in Oakland, California. | ||||||||
| HULL and OTHER RESIN | ||||||||
| Upon opening the box, one finds a small plastic storage
box with individual compartments, which contain the resin hull, other resin
structures such as the stack and gun shields, and turned brass gun barrels.
The resin hull looks good, with some slightly soft detail on the portholes near the gun sponsons. A little sanding of the hull surface and drilling out the portholes should clean this up nicely. There's a casting gate at the bow, which blends in smoothly at the stem, so it will remove and sand cleanly. My hull has slight hogging, but nothing that can't be cured with a bit of heat. The other resin components come on two casting gates. The first includes the gun shields for the main armament. The second gate has the stack, and several other pieces that aren't shown in the instructions. My assumption is that they are for forming the brass superstructure pieces, or perhaps to use instead of folded brass, if the modeler so chooses. The last components in the storage box are very nice turned-brass gun barrels. These, combined with the resin gun shields and styrene mounts, make up the ship's main armament. According to web and and print sources, Yorktown was 244 ft 5 in overall in length. In 1/700 scale, that translates to 4.2", with the Oceanmoon hull coming in at 4.1", which is pretty close. |
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| INJECTION MOLDED FITTINGS | ||||||||
| A generic injection molded styrene sprue provides accessories and fittings such as the ship's boats, vent cowlings, anchors, davits, and small gun mounts. These are well-molded and should fit in well with the rest of the ship, but some of the detail such as the openings of the vents and the seats on the boats are on the heavy-side. I think they'll look fine, but there may be resin aftermarket that are cast finer. |
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| BRASS | ||||||||
| A sheet of photo-etch parts supplies many of the structural parts of the ship. The main decks, superstructure, bow crest, cranes, railings, yardarms, ladders, railings, ratlines, and many other parts are included here. I'm curious to see how well the brass decks will blend into the resin hull, but otherwise everything seems nicely relief-etched and well detailed. |
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| INSTRUCTIONS | ||||||||
| A single-sided, single sheet of instructions, covers the entire assembly sequence. There seems to be quite a bit more on the brass detail sheet than shows in the instructions, so I assume there are extras included. The illustrations are made up of CAD renderings of the brass and styrene decks and fittings superimposed over photos of the hull. It all looks quite straight-forward. |
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| CONCLUSIONS | ||||||||
| The Oceanmoon USS Yorktown (PG-1) kit is a cool
little model. Simple in design and low in parts count, it should make for
a fun and relatively straight-forward build. I wouldn't recommend it for
a first-time resin and brass model kit, as the parts will likely take a
bit of patience to assemble. While the details on the injection molded
boats and vents are a bit on the heavy side, they look fine, and make for
a really nice and easy way to add these details to the kit. The main apprehension
I have is the minimal instruction sheet. It'd be nice to have more steps
to better show part placement in detail, and a rigging diagram of some
sorts would be nice. How well what instructions are supplied translates
to a trouble-free build remains to be seen, but even if there are omissions,
there are enough photos of Yorktown online that most modelers can
sort out where things go.
Highly recommended. I ordered my kit through eBay, where it cost me $35 plus $8 shipping from China. |
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