This is my first attempt at modeling in quite a few years and, after a lot of work (and even more rework), I feel satisfied to the point where I am not afraid to show this photo to the public at large. I selected a Revell 1:350 SMS Emden as the test case. Actually the selection was easy since it was the only kit in the shop from an era I am interested in building.

"The rigging undoubtedly contains the greatest number of flaws, otherwise, if I had it to do over again, I would probably use a buff color on the superstructure and stacks instead of the flat white. To dress it up I used small gauge steel wire to fabricate hand railings for the lookout and searchlight platforms, and some of Tom's 350 3-bar railing along the deck-hull junctions. It was a lucky thing that I elected to just use some generic PE railings because I soon found out that I was not ready for a full blown detailing set. The generic supplied plenty of good practice. Probably the most fun was using a bit of water coloring and pastel artists chalk to do the weathering. The smudge towards the aft end is a chalk induced weathering effect . . . the poor quality of the photography helps to hide the magnitude of the smudge! Also, maybe someday I'll build a real mounting base for display.

As a learning tool, a model in the 200-250 size range (or at least a 350 battleship) would probably be better since this would help to train the fingers in the gentler techniques. I would also expect that a larger scale subject would let the beginner see progress early on and help avoid the frustration of modeling details without seeing obvious progress toward the finished project."