Halberd Models 1/32 Curtiss SC-1 Seahawk

By Boyd Waechter

Halberd Models is known for producing very highly quality resin kits and conversions, both in 1/48th and 1/32nd scales, of unusual subjects that mainstream manufactures will not touch. Their Curtiss SC-1 Seahawk kit is a good example of this mind set, available in both scales. All of their products can be highly recommended and it is amazing to me that they can produce these kits in the middle of a war zone while being located in Soviet occupied territory in the eastern part of their worn torn country. When I ordered this kit paying via PayPal, it only took eight days from the Ukraine to Katy, Texas. Hell, the USPS can barely get a letter across the U.S. in that amount of time! The box and all of the kit parts were wrapped in lots of bubble pack to insure a safe transit and it arrived with no damage.

If you are considering building this kit, I would highly suggest you get Ginter’s book on the Seahawk, Naval Fighters Volume 38. I bought mine from David Doyle Books (www.daviddoylebooks.com) because David had it on sale and offers free shipping. This book was a lot of help and answered a lot of questions I had when building the model.

The kit only has 65 parts all molded in the high quality greenish resin that they are known for. The wings, tail surfaces, main float, outer floats, and about 20% of the rear fuselage are all molded in solid resin, making this a very heavy model when assembled. There is a small fret of PE and the decal sheet has options of two aircraft, one in the USN tritone scheme and the other is in a later war gloss dark sea blue over insignia white finish.

I started with the cockpit by making my own instrument panel, seat belts, and shoulder harnesses in lieu of using the PE parts supplied in the kit. Since the cowl opening is so large, I also decided to use a Matters of Scale 3D printed R-1820 engine instead of using the one provided. It was a bit more detailed and saved a lot of time.

Since there are so few basic parts, the model goes together very quickly and the instruction sheet is well done in helping this assembly. I left off the outer floats and added them last. The fit of the parts is excellent and I used very little filler during it’s construction. As I added more and more parts, the model got quite heavy and took some effort to move around without dropping it. Once the main float was added, I used it as a handle when painting the model. After priming the model, I chose to build the earlier USN tritone scheme and used AK Real Color paints through-out the painting process. I preshaded the model with Tamiya flat black, then added the colors in thin layers.

The registration of the decals is excellent, though a bit thick. I had to apply multiple coats of Solvaset to get them to snuggle down into the panel lines. At first I thought the yellow codes were too bold, but photos of this airplane in the Ginter book shows them painted this way. They do very much enhance the look of the finished model.

There were a number of Seahawks which had the two rear panels of the canopy removed, clearly shown in the Ginter book, but no explanation as to why this was done. The instructions have you remove these panels which I did using my Dremel tool. Photos of WI5 and W38 show them removed.

Although an all resin kit, don’t be turned off to this build if you have never done a model in this medium. The molding and details of the parts is excellent with no real fit issues. Again, this model is available in both 1/48th ($112) and 1/32nd ($179) scales. I would urge anyone to review all of their products at www.halberdmodels.com and help this model company survive and continue producing new products in a war torn Ukraine.

Halberd Models 1/32 Curtiss SC-1 Seahawk

By Boyd Waechter

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