Part 3: All Done, sorta ...

Bottom Line Up Front The review is done, the work isn't -- simply put, I got far enough to make a recommendation and didn't want to spend another 100 or more hours for a finished product. More discussion of this at the end. Continuing the Build OK, with the limber done, on to the meat of the subject, the gun itself. One can divide a towed gun into 3 component parts -- the carriage and trails, the mount, and the gun itself. The kit and the detail set divide themselves into a few sub-parts, so we have: the carriage, the mount, the gun, each trail, the spades, then putting it all together. You can start these in parallel, obviously less the final assembly. I did my usual management trick of color coding the kit step numbers, and then breaking the detail set instructions into numbered steps in a different color. Unlike the limber, it won't do much good to mention how I did this in detail as that would entail posting the marked up instructions sheets and that is overkill. Anyway, I went back through both the kit and detail instructions, cross-ref'ing colored step numbers on each. That is when I found that the Griffon instructions did not always follow the kit sequence - in fact there's a bit of jumping around. I soon reverted to tracing kit parts noted from the detail instructions back to the kit instructions to be sure I got everything. Let me leave it here -- you must pre-plan your build in detail. The detail sequence does not exactly match the kit sequence. The items jump around a bit. And, as with the limber, the kit parts to be deleted or retained do not total 100%, so you have to dig deeply to figure out what to do with the unaccounted for parts. As with the limber, some are kept, some are not. With something like 500 PE parts to fiddle with, this is no small task. Before we start, one big word of advice -- there are a lot of holes in the PE that need to have rod or wire run through them. I soon learned to redrill all holes to be sure they were large enough for whatever went through them. I formed a rather odd attachment to my pin-vise and a .018" drill bit... The Carriage Enjoy, the first few steps are the easiest you'll have from here out and yet they are not without issues. Just for reference, we are doing kit steps 1-3 and the top half of page 1 of the Griffon instructions. The carriage goes smoothly. Griffon portrays the trail locks (F32,F33 replacing KC42,KC43) wrong - the diagram shows the right under the left, when it should be the other way around. It is strange that with the springs replaced on the limber, Griffon did not replace the springs on the carriage -- would have looked better if they had. Last, when putting all the kit bits on the front of the carriage, be sure to get them on tight and square -- later on the fit of the rod connecting the brake assemblies is very tight.

Please take your seat and fasten your seat belt. We are now at step 4 of the kit instructions and on page 1-bottom / page 2-top of the Griffon instructions. The Trumpeter kit has 11, count them 11, pieces for the two wheel and hand brake assemblies - Griffon has 68, count 'em, 68 pieces NOT, repeat NOT, counting all sorts of bits of wire and rod needed to hold them together !!! Here I take a break and re-endorse Gator's Grip -- I would never have got through this with CA. Gator's Grip allows you plenty of room to adjust parts and you will spend hours doing so. OK, there is a big problem right off the bat -- Griffon has provided the backing plates (C72,C73) for the Dragon kit, not the Trumpeter kit -- the axles are D-shaped on the Trumpeter kit and square on the Dragon kit. Before you start assembling get a file out and fix the axle holes, being very careful to maintain location and alignment, again because getting the rod to fit across the front is very tight. The Griffon instructions are tough -- they give no detail sequence of how to put all the parts together, and it isn't simple. If you've been around farm equipment, it's easy -- if not, study is required to understand the relationship of all the parts. It does not help that the instructions do not give you lengths for the various rods and wires, so it's a bit of trial and error. Once you get the backing plate, framework, and wheel cylinders on, it's into all the levers. Your goal should be to get all the levers and things on both wheels to be in the same relative position. In my opinion, the key parts are the rods (A6) going into the wheel cylinders -- get them in, straight and glued tight. Then make everything else fit and that's really a lot -- I think you can do that two ways. The first, which I like, is to use Gator's Grip so you have plenty of adjustment time and space -- this is particularly critical because of all the cutting, bending, and fitting. The other, which is possible, is to start gluing things into place at the A6 rod with CA and working down to where the cross-carriage rod goes.

When you get each wheel done, they have to be connected by a rod. Here be ready to wiggle and fiddle a bit to get the rod under and past all the kit bits on the front of the carriage -- remember my notes above. Here's the picture -- pure kit and Griffon-detailed.

On to the Trails I figured that with the limber and carriage done, it would be logical to do the trails next and so I started. The Trumpeter kit is pretty straight-forward, the Griffon instructions are less easy to follow -- mostly because there are so many new or replaced parts -- I didn't even count them. Watch the trail and pintle locks on the kit. The pintle (KD3) on the limber must fit into the lock assembly (KB12, KB13, KC12) and that won't happen without opening the hole and turning down the pintle, a little of each. Same with the assemblies on the end of each trail where the spades go if in firing mode. There are lock handles for each of these, but a third trail-lock handle is missing and Griffon does not correct this. There are lots of bits and pieces going onto trails and I soon noticed I was adding mounts and straps for things not included in the kit. So I started looking at my refs and decided that Trumpeter was missing 3-4 items from the left trail, such as a hatchet, and a couple rods of some sort. Griffon added the mounts and straps, but gave no indication about how to fix up the missing items. I found similar issues on the right trail, such as a pick. I wish that Griffon had put in some full-size, side-view drawings of the trails. It's hard to put all the pieces down so they stay out of each other's way later on. As it was, I had to keep my refs handy to get exact locations of items, assuming those items were still present on the museum guns. Recommendation At this point, I decided this was no longer worth the effort -- it wasn't any one thing, just a cumulation of little things and the knowledge that I had way more to go through. There are too many little issues with the Trumpeter kit that Griffon doesn't adequately address and I'm left to do it ... or not ... And remember, the Trumpeter kit only builds into the traveling position (although one can work it up into firing mode). The Trumpeter kit also has no accessories; it's really bare bones... I looked at the Dragon SFH18 kit, these issues don't exist -- it's not perfect but the problems above don't exist, it can be built in traveling or firing position, and it comes with some goodies. It appears to me that Griffon did the Dragon update set first, then hacked it into a Trumpeter version. I already noted the axle-holes in the backing plate, to that add the mounts and straps issues noted above. Apparently the Griffon team(s) did not sit down and reconcile the differences between the two kits. If you want to add some detail to the Trumpeter SFH18, wait until Eduard puts out a small set. If you want a really, really detailed SFH18, then get the Dragon kit and the Griffon update for it. Just don't waste your time putting this much effort into the Trumpeter/Griffon combination unless you want to spend a lot more time bringing the whole thing up to standard. The Griffon set is very high quality, but graduate level photo-etch that will result in a superior representation of the sFH18, BUT I'm still not sure this isn't just plain overkill. So, I give a qualified recommendation for the Griffon/Dragon combination, for very experienced modelers only. I would like to again thank Dragon Models USA, Griffon Models, and IPMS/USA for providing this detail set for review and for allowing me to review it. Note to Griffon -- why not put half this much effort into an update set for the AFV Club Long Tom or 8in ???

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