Russian Armored Cruiser Ryurik
Reviewed by Norm Koger
| This is one of Combrig’s older kits, so the resin casting is of mixed quality and quite a few small but important details are not included. The reviewed kit hull included a number of large, easily corrected casting flaws, but none of the harder to correct small bubbles or pits that plague some of their other early efforts. | |
| Our kit came with two sets of small parts, as is apparent from the photos. That was handy in this particular case because the boat cradles are very fragile and difficult to remove from the casting plug. I ended up breaking one, and while it could have been repaired I was able to replace it with one of the spares. The Combrig habit of using resin rather than brass to recreate small parts definitely raises some pro and con issues. Pro: the parts are three dimensional and definitely look better than 2d brass. Con: It can be quite difficult to prepare the parts for use. |
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| No hull mounted 152mm or pedestal 47mm guns are included, and as they are very noticeable they will have to be created from scratch or borrowed from other kits. The included mast and yard parts are useless, but that's typical of resin mast parts. Mast and bowsprit assemblies will have to be created from wire. As usual for Combrig kits, bridge railings are cast to appear like splinter shields. They really are too thick to look right when painted as canvas covered railings (see review of Combrig 1/700 Suvorov) so they should be carefully trimmed off and replaced with two rail brass. |  |
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| The instructions are more of a general guide than a complete documentation of the model. It is not possible to do a decent job on this kit with just the included instructions. In some cases the exploded parts diagram is completely wrong. In others it is incomplete or misleading. The high quality line drawing on the reverse of the instructions is essential, as is as complete a set of photos of the original ship as you can find. I've been looking for months for a good photo of the huge, ornate brass bow crest and still haven't found one with as much detail as I'd like. |  |
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| Conclusions:
This kit comes from Pacific Front Hobbies and is listed for $28.00 US. |
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