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A brief history
These mortars were designed for coastal defence. They were capable of firing a 197 pound shell approximately 4,000 yards. Heavy and difficult to transport, they were used
as siege guns by the Union Army, where it primarily saw action at Petersburg, Virginia and Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Petersburg guns were initially mounted on railroad trucks,
but the recoil proved too powerful for the trucks, so the guns were later moved to fixed ground positions. At Vicksburg, six mortars were placed on barges on the Mississippi River. Post war the guns were either
scrapped or placed in various monuments around the USA.
The kit
In 2022, Vargas Scale Models is one of the many new players in the 3D printed scale modelling community. This is one of six kits I purchased at the IPMS USA
Nationals in Omaha, Nebraska at Vargas' booth in the vendor room. I performed a quick inspection before my purchase. Unfortunately that inspection was a tad
too quick and when I performed a closer inspection prior construction, I found that many of the parts were substandard. Numerous contacts with Vargas to get some parts reprinted was met with crickets.
The kit is packaged in a small, sturdy top opening cardboard box. Along with the 3D printed parts is a single, two-sided 8x10 inch instruction sheet. One side has a photo of the completed model, the other side
has the same photo with numbers & letters naming the parts. There is no decal sheet, which is to be expected.
The build
The first step with construction dealt with trashing of all substandard parts. This started with the railroad truck pieces. As can be seen in Photo 4 below,
these were horrible. If the wheels had been printed separately they may have been recoverable. Between the wheels you can also see a sample of the tear drop
shaped bolt heads found all over the parts, another of the many surprises discovered in this kit. With that said, there was one extremely nice item, a
delicate set of tongs moulded to one of the cannonballs.
Further inspection revealed printing striations/steps on most parts, a good sample of which can be seen on the top of the slanted portion of the carriage shown in Photo 1.
The wood planks on the truck deck pieces were rife with deep striations that would make their removal destroy any accompanying detail.
I toyed with the idea of rebuilding them from plastic strip, but thought better of it after realizing how much work would be involved. For me the only important portion was the gun,
so I decided to proceed further.
Next, the out of round trunnions (Photo 2) were removed, which also removed their trunnion straps. Sections of plastic rod replaced
the trunnions and strips of scrap brass restored the straps. A layer of Tamiya surfacer roughed up the barrel. Any small chips and
scratches that remained were left as they were, to add some character. There were some print striations on the sides of the mount which required sanding to remove.
The rear vertical panel that spans the gap between the sides was printed much too thin (Photo 1), giving it an unacceptable warp. It was rebuilt
with plastic sheet. All of the thin and not very round pieces, such as the axle, gun positioning poles and the handles for the cannon
ball rammer & barrel swab were replaced with round rod.
With the trucks tossed I decided to construct a small base to mount the gun, built from plastic strip and square rod. I also added a scratch built triangular cannon ball rack. If you look closely at
the pre-paint photo you will notice the exquisite tongs mentioned above. On the real gun, tongs were used by the crew to lift and place a cannon ball into the barrel's muzzle. My kit's tongs
surprisingly survived construction and painting, only to be destroyed as I was placing the muzzle cover on the base. Too bad, they would have looked great with the finished model.
Below are some kit measurements:
| Real
Dimension | 1/72
scale | Kit
Measurement | Kit
Actual Scale |
| Barrel Length | 56.6in | 0.78in | 0.75in1 | 1/75 |
| Barrel Diameter | 43.0in | 0.60in | 0.55in | 1/78 |
| Barrel Bore Diameter | 13.0in | 0.18in | 0.17in2 | 1/76 |
1 - measurement taken after kit assembled, so this number might be a few 100this of an inch too small
2 - my digital calipers are not small enough to get a good measurement for the inside bore diameter,
so this number might
be a few 100ths of an inch too small
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Conclusion
This kit isn't one for the fainthearted. Some rebuilding will be needed to make this into an acceptable display model. The awful printing
is rather disappointing as is their customer support. Seeing as I was remiss in doing measurements before construction, my attempts to measure the constructed kit later, while trying
to not cause any damage, probably resulted in measurements showing the kits to be slightly under scale. I suspect pre-construction measurements might show this kit to be closer to 1/72 scale.
Review sample purchased by the author.
References
[1] Civilwartalk.com discussion thread (civilwartalk.com/threads/the-13-inch-seacoast-mortar.204166/)
[2] Civilwartalk.com (civilwartalk.com/threads/the-dictator-a-13-inch-seacoast-mortar.168351/)
[3] Civilwartalk.com (https://civilwartalk.com/threads/13in-mortar-dictator-at-petersburg.126290/)
[4] wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_artillery_in_the_American_Civil_War)
[5] Cannons: An Introduction to Civil War Artillery, Dean S. Thomas, Thomas Publications, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1985, ISBN: 0-939631-03-2
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