Royal Sovereign (1891) 1:600

[Paperwarrior]

Carl,

This is a great looking model thus far. I'm with Don. There are two things that immediately jumped out at me about this ship. The open barbettes(which I've always found interesting on ships of this period) and the cluster of vents.

I completely understand and support your 1:600 arguments as they make total sense.

Jeff

[GreMir]

Carl,
That was just curiosity - I was always under the impression that 1:700 scale was the standard one for somebody wanting smaller size with good detail. I was not even aware that there are aftermarket details for 1:600 but that just proves how little I know about ships...

[georgerutherford1861]

I like the idea of smaller ship models that can be built by those without the patience of Job. I like the detail folks are able to put into the larger ships, but if I ever built one it would have to be smaller for storage as well as to give a viable reason why I didn't super-detail it.

Would love to see this and other ships released at this scale - if digitally released I could always rescale it.

Doug

[Golden Bear]

Doug, on the rescaling thing... this is designed to be built at 1:600. Thus all the allowances for fit are for 1:600 and would not work at a larger scale without redesign. Also, the level of detail is drastically reduced with much of it being represented by lines. "Blowing up" the scale would fatten the lines excessively and again would need redesign. Also, since part of the reason for the small scale is that I don't have any record of the actual structures in parts of the ship that I cannot see in photos nor have plans for, their lack would become obvious when rescaled. Oh, and the framing simply would not work.

And, Mike, you brought up a topic that is of interest to me. I do not know the genesis of the 1:700 scale for resin/plastic boat models. It doesn't make sense to me but there is probably a completely reasonable logic and history to it. For me, I built dozens of balsa ships models at 1:1200 back in the '60s when I was a teenager. This was a very accesible scale since it means that 1" = 100'. I recently considered trying to make card models at this scale - and I may yet! - since it is the desired size for use with Fletcher Pratt naval games. However I wanted a little more detail than that but not as much as at 1:400. So I opted for 1:600: 1"=50'. By the way, after building two ships at 1:400 I came to the conclusion that if I did that I might as well model at 1:250 since I would try to put in the same amount of detail anyway.

Soooo, does anybody know the reasons for the choice of 1:700 scale for resin ship models?

Carl

[jimkrauzlis]

Originally Posted by Zathros

I think you may get more interest in this ship than you think. Some people like to model small ships for all the reasons you just pointed out! Besides, I could see these going into quite a few bottles!

And those are many of the reasons why I choose to reduce any ship models I purchase to 1/600 scale...I like the way they look at that size, they don't take up much room and it's still enjoyable and a challenge when trying to add any details, etc., at that scale...but no ships in a bottle...yet.

Not sure of the origin of the 1/700 scale, Carl, but I understand that is the scale chosen by many Japanese plastic modeling companies for their ship models, mostly the waterline versions, so perhaps the thought being to make the resin models of comparible scale for the buying public who want a collection of common scale (that is my reason for using 1/600, to keep them mostly of the same scale for comparison); and they also use 1/350 scale, twice as big, when they are making models showing more detail. However, the 1/600 scale is fairly common for English ship plans and plastic models, being one tenth of a nautical mile as it turns out....

As always, I a very excited to see whatever Carl is working on and am glad I caught this thread...been rather distracted the last few months with work and haven't had the chance to pay as much attention to the goings on here as I would like, but this is project is a treat to see!

Cheers!
Jim

[YankeeBoy]

"Olden Days" naval wargaming used 1:1200 metal models. About 20-30 years ago there was a flood of plastic WW2 ship models from Japan at either 1:700 or 1:720 (can't remember which.) Then Tamiya released some "super-sized" plastic ship models at 1:350 in plastic which remains a popular scale for capital ships. I cannot shed any light regarding the reasoning for these various scales...

[Golden Bear]

There are more 1:600 fans out there than I imagined!

[Barry]

You have found the right balance of detail and drawing as usual Carl. I am impressed by the detailed quality of the line drawings

[Don Boose]

1/600 (twice 1/1200) seems to have been popular in the UK. Back in the 1950s and early 1960s, I had a subscription to a British magazine called Model Boats (and still have my stash), which featured a regular column in which plans in 1/600 scale were provided.

Don

[SJPONeill]

Although it's a little too fiddley for my eyes, there are many ship builders out there always on the look out for 1/600 ships to expand their fleets based on the old Airfix 1/600 scale series...

Regardless of scale, a great build BTW...