Pyro 'Picture Perfect' Antique Ship C365-50, Sir Francis Drake's "Golden Hind" |  | Here's a real change of pace from my normal fare. I don't normally do ships or boats but since I picked up a few of these old Pyro models and their Life-Like reissues in a collection I recently bought out I thought I'd take a look at one of them.  This is a really small model of a small ship that was only about 65' long so don't look for much in the way of detail. The hull is about 5 1/2" long which makes the kit around 1/140 scale if my math is right. There are only 25 parts molded in off-white plastic with two of them making up the stand, another indication of the level of detail to expect. The smallest parts are eight crude cannon, two even more crude crows nests, and a pair of very basic anchors. Four masts, four overly thick billowed sails with raised outlines engraved as painting guides for decorations, a one-piece deck, and two hull halves round out the parts list. All flags and pennants, along with the stern decoration and stand nameplate, are printed on the instruction sheet and need to be colored in before cutting out and mounting to the model!
 The parts themselves are cleanly molded. There's little flash and ejection pin marks are confined to unseen surfaces except in the case of the sails and even then they're on the backside and not very prominent. A dry fit of the major parts shows that even a novice should have no trouble assembling this kit except perhaps for the eight tiny cannon. I also have the Life-Like release of this kit and it is identical in layout and quality although molded in a cream-colored plastic.
 Rigging instructions suggest following the box art but such a small picture isn't really much help, and good luck making those ratlines from scratch! The lower corners of the sails feature oversized guide holes for mounting some of the basic rigging. Painting callouts are given in the instructions but are at variance with the box art. This is probably a moot point since I doubt that anyone knows for sure what colors were used on the original.
I've checked online pictures of the replica 'Golden Hind' based at London Bridge and the model bears only a passing resemblance to the real thing, neither the bow nor the mast arrangement looking quite right, and there are only eight cannon included for the main deck - only about half the number actually carried. All in all an interesting if not entirely accurate little model; a good example of the kinds of kits available in the 50s and 60s. Pyro apparently made a total of 21 similar kits in this series even though the instructions list only eight. Many of them were reissued by Life-Like after the purchase of the Pyro tooling and at least some may also have later been released by Lindberg who now owns most of the former Pyro/Life-Like kit tools. As always, till next month, "Build what YOU like, the way YOU want to".
Be sure to visit Al's Place while you're surfing the 'Net!
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