Marivox kits, anyone here built one??

chrisonord · January 31, 2011, 04:02:36 PM

I bought a Saab 105 kit in 1/72nd scale from this firm in December, and the box art, paint sheet, photo etch and amount of decals really impressed me. Well I started building it last night, and what a disappointment

Flash I can cope with, but badly fitting parts on sprues made from tungsten, well you know the picture.
Has anyone else had any experience with these kits? I was going to get another 105, but I don't think I will bother now.
Chris.

Ed S · January 31, 2011, 06:15:03 PM

Yes, I built one of the Saab 105 kits a few years ago. And it took lots of work to get things together (in truth, it was a PITA). There are no alignment pins and many of the parts are just butt joined together. There were a few parts where I added small tabs of sheet styrene as gluing surfaces. And I drilled out the horizontal tail and rudder and put pins in place to hold it together. It did take a little putty as well. It was particularly troublesome fitting the sides around the engine bays. The cockpit had a bunch of fiddly parts but looks pretty good once it's finished. I did use the kit rockets but cut all new fins from .005 inch styrene. The decals worked ok. But in the end, it does look like a SK60/105.

http://i213.photobucket.com/albums/cc250/esveum/100_3069.jpg[/img]]

Ed

PR19_Kit · February 01, 2011, 04:22:46 AM

Nice job Ed, and out of a pig's ear of a kit too!

The Wooksta! · February 01, 2011, 04:35:01 AM

I've their Vampire F1 somewhere but the wings are horrid and the less said about the tailfins the better. If they were scaled up, they'd look like railway sleepers. I'll probably use the brass and the decals on the A Model kit.

The plastic they use looks like the same stuff that Ventura used to use. Awful stuff to work with, very hard and quite brittle. Not sure how many Ventura Spitfires I've got in the stash but it's quite a few!

upnorth · February 01, 2011, 06:00:31 AM

Quote from: The Wooksta! on February 01, 2011, 04:35:01 AM
The plastic they use looks like the same stuff that Ventura used to use. Awful stuff to work with, very hard and quite brittle. Not sure how many Ventura Spitfires I've got in the stash but it's quite a few!

I'd concure with that. I had the Saab 105 on the go for a while and spent more time running liquid cement into fractures that kept forming.

Eventually, I grabbed the PE and the decals and binned the rest.

chrisonord · February 01, 2011, 06:39:19 AM

Thanks for the info lads, I hope mine comes out half as good as yours Ed, I will be more than happy then. I have done as far as putting the fuselage together and cockpit in on mine and put it away, the windows just behind the pilots are waste of space and the fuselage had broken in the same place on both sides so crystal clear will have to be used on those. It really makes me wonder why they went to all the effort of including all that P.E, decal sheets etc, then leaving the actual kit as a POS!! Hmmm? you live and learn don't you

Chris.

NARSES2 · February 01, 2011, 06:59:44 AM

Yup built the SAAB 17 and it put me off doing the 22 and Vampire for a while. Hard work, but it was worth it. Agree the plastic is a little hard

pyro-manic · February 01, 2011, 10:55:01 AM

I've been considering getting the Saab 17 and the 105 for a little while, but I think I'll wait until I can find them cheap now...

P1127 · February 03, 2011, 08:40:03 AM

Quote from: The Wooksta! on February 01, 2011, 04:35:01 AM
I've their Vampire F1 somewhere but the wings are horrid and the less said about the tailfins the better. If they were scaled up, they'd look like railway sleepers. I'll probably use the brass and the decals on the A Model kit.

The plastic they use looks like the same stuff that Ventura used to use. Awful stuff to work with, very hard and quite brittle. Not sure how many Ventura Spitfires I've got in the stash but it's quite a few!

I thought their Vampire was basically Heller's kit with a few conversion parts?

kitnut617 · February 03, 2011, 09:12:54 AM

Quote from: P1127 on February 03, 2011, 08:40:03 AM
I thought their Vampire was basically Heller's kit with a few conversion parts?

The 'few' conversion parts include a complete new wing, booms and tail. When I get to do mine, I'm just going to use an Airfix or Heller kit, chop the wingtips off and change the fin/rudder. Doing a comparison with the various kits in question, I couldn't find any other differences.

What's horrible about the kit is the plastic, very brittle and warped to no end.

upnorth · February 04, 2011, 03:13:37 AM

Quote from: kitnut617 on February 03, 2011, 09:12:54 AM

What's horrible about the kit is the plastic, very brittle and warped to no end.

Brittle and HARD. It did a real number on two razor saw blades I used to cut the parts from the runners.

I actually had to use proper metal files rather than sanding sticks to grind off the gate stubs on the parts.

chrisonord · February 04, 2011, 05:01:55 PM

I have been tempted to use some of my tools from the shed on my kit, My 24 inch bolt crops, 41/2 inch grinder, 8 inch grinder and a friend says he has access to a plasma cutter

Always good to know.
Chris.

PR19_Kit · February 05, 2011, 12:49:34 AM

Hehehe, birngs back memories of a long forgotten Merlin kit that was driving me nuts some years ago, I think it may have been their MB5, but no-one would have known that from the shape. It too was moulded in poly-concrete, and as I was doing some work on it in a hotel while on the road I managed to break THREE Swann-Morton blades on the damn thing!

The next morning I took the wreckage into my customer's factory and we used the MB5 as a compression test specimen in their 50 Ton test machine!

It ended up as a plastic laminar about 1 micron thick, RESULT!