1/350 USS Maine (Iron Shipwrights)

The loss of the Maine was a great tragedy and remains a mystery.  Even today the cause of the catastrophic explosion of the forward magazine cannot be determined by forensic investigation.

This kit has been in my stash for around 10 years.  When I went to build it, I realized a lot of the details - boats, davits, guns etc. were missing.  I wrote to ISW and the missing parts were replaced immediately and at no charge.  This is a sweet little kit.  Bit of a research challenge I found I had to go over the available photos time and again.  The two large steam launches are in many drawings but I have yet to come across a photo of them actually in place.  My gut feeling, and this is just an educated guess, is that they were provided under the original builders contract but once delivered, it was too difficult and time consuming to get them off and on so they remained off.
I very conservatively weathered the ship.  By all accounts sailors of the period spent a disproportionately large amount of their time cleaning, scrubbing, polishing ,and painting their ships. Large unsightly rust streaks were simply not the norm.

I used Clear coats smoke polyester thread for the rigging.  It’s very thin and can be worked like stretched sprue.

I had a lot of fun building this kit.  Many thanks to ISW.
 

Gallery updated 5/21/2018

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