Revell Lied to you about this! Weekly Talk Fest about model ship scales and why they are wrong
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- Опубліковано 14 жов 2024
- After a frustrating week trying to make rigging tools for the Revell USS Constitution in 1/96 scale, based off their USS United States 1/150 scale kit, I was pulling my hair out. Nothing added up correctly and I could not scale up from one to other. So I finally got to the bottom of the problem and found Revell lied big time about their kit scales!
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Hi Harry. ON THE SCALE. i''ve worked in plastic injection molding for some years before I retired, and I think that many of the older models especially, were designed to be milded on the size of injection molding presses they had available. The total area of the molded sprue and parts, plus flash, times the injection pressure can't be greater than the tonnage of the press otherwise it will force the mold plates open. So, if you have 30 square inches of part plus sprue, plus whatever flash from worn mold times 1000 lbs injection pressure it adds uo to you needing a of 15 ton clamping force. That is a baby press. LOL Anyhow, that's my two sheckels. I like your videos, thanks for them.
Well that is another consideration I did not know of. Thanks for sharing Rich.
Great info. I did not know where all the “standard” scales came from.
There are many more Bill and maybe I will do a follow up video on how the Waterline scale came about after a huge mess of scales for battleships back in the late 60’s and early 70’s.
Amazing! One video you are Airfix's greatest unpaid salesman, the next a shipwright. And all with a healthy dose of humour. You stand above the vast majority of other model-tubers.
Thanks Neil.. it is rare I stand above anyone being a short bugga
I have one of the old Revell 1/196 Constitution (Old Ironsides) kits and your right Harry, nowhere on the box does it say it's scale. I had to use Scalemates to find out!
Yes they were box scale in inches, then rounded out to the old 1:96 scale
Thanks Harry, very informative, the brain still hurts from the maths!
I did try to keep it simple… but yes numbers do get messy
Now that was a lotta maths. But seriously, it was actually really interesting. THanks!!
Well you know me and numbers… Count Houdini!
Naughty nautically Revelly, Tut Tut. Good rant Harty. All the best.
Good on you Ben
Interesting video Harry. Living in the states we're stuck with Imperial units for the time being, at least until intelligent leaders finally drag this country, kicking and scream, into the modern world. That said, I've worked in the hobby business (retail) and noticed the differences between early, fit the box kits, and modern, scale, kits. I've noticed a few quirks even in modern kits. As an example, Tamiya offered three versions of the Vought F4u Corsair, one in 148, and two in 1/72. The 1/48 kit came in a bigger box because of the size of the kit, but with the 1/72 kits, one came in an appropriately sized box for 1/72, but the other came in a box about the size of the 1/48 kit! As a result, we could have a customer in a hurry grab the large box 1/72 Corsair thinking that it's the 1/48 version because of the size of the box.
I discussed this on my video of the new German reboxing of Heller kits in smaller boxes, yet it was the same kit as Hellers larger, looking more value for money box. Someone knew the answer and it had to do with standard size boxes and shipping rates… but this only effected big ship kits.
A very interesting video I was brought up in both the imperial and metric measurements as we changed to metric in about year 6 at school. First job I got when I left school was in a drawing office and they still used rods, perches and chains😂
Yes I remember those. Base 12 has a lot going for it, as long as you can stay in that system.
Thank you Harry, i was actually starting to look for USS Constitution 1:150 BECOUSE 1:196 is too small and 1:96 too big for me 🤣
Revell does have a 22 inch version of the Constitution. Which sometimes has been reboxed as 1/146 scale. Best get the oldest version of the kit that you can find with the “22 inches” listed on the box. It is actually 1/167 scale but a decent size kit.
www.scalemates.com/kits/revell-05600-uss-constitution--230831
Omigosh, you’ll have me measuring ALL my model kits in the stash now, Harry. 😆 But I really enjoyed this video, it is a gem and helpful when picking out a ship kit to buy, thank you. Cheers, mate. 👍🏻
One ruler to rule them all!
Once again Harry a venerable cornucopia of information. I found this helpful however my old brain is stuck on "looks right it'll work". I know for sure IF I ever bust into building sailing ships I'm going to ask if we can become mates....those things are a complete mystery however the craftsmanship used on the real things is amazing. 'Til next time G'Day and hooaroo.
If it looks right to you, that is all that matters matey
Revell had an age-old kit for a pirate ghost ship in 1/96. Curse of the Black Pearl came out at the movies, and suddenly, by deal with Disney, it was 1/72 scale and named the Black Pearl?
Worse yet, when it was re-released without PotC branding, it remained 1/72...
Yes I am aware of this travesty as well. I have made tools for both and they are the same kit… somehow the Movie version was made out to be bigger than the real pirate version.. that’s Disney for you!
That Harry was totally useful, thanks.
Thanks George, I wasn’t sure if anyone would be interested, but it was all I had to say for last weeks work in the hobby room.
Aside from scale issues they've short changed us on the model of the clipper ship Thermopylae (admittedly and older kit from the 60s). The kits hull is the same as the Cutty Sark, same moulding with very slight variations. The deck pressing is all wrong, again based on the Cutty Sark etc with slight variations. It's the same as if a kit of a BMW car is boxed as an Audi with changes to badging, grill and tail lights...! I bought this Thermopylae kit in the 70s and once discovered what it was, I sent it back and wrote a letter to Revell.
Yes I look forward to making all the scratch changes needed on my Thermopylae kit one day… but at least its pretty much the correct scale though.
Hi Harry, if your a stickler for authenticity, you'd have to create a complete new hull - the hull lines of the Cutty Sark & Thermopylae were completely different in every way.
Oh dear is it that bad… well I can 3D print a better hull if I have the plans
Very sorry Harry, I wouldn't bother with the kit. The hull is of the Cutty Sark as well as the masts AND the yards etc. Revell also made a mess of the deck mouldings to make it look like Thermopylae layout, but even that is a lash up, when you look at correct plans. These vessels were completely different, frankly I'd bin the model - very sorry once again.
It's a pity there are no proper kits out there of this famous clipper.
Very interesting. I am working on the 1/87 Airfix Bounty as well as the 1/200 Zvezda Acheron at the moment. Both scales seem accurate, 😊fortunately.
As long as it looks good to you in the display cabinet, that is all that counts.
Scale! That's a fun rabbit hole to fall down! I collected action figures for a while, they call them 1/6 'scale', the truth is anything but. It was Dragon that started it, they attached a model scale to their new figure line so that modellers would pick them up. Standard gear over a standard body is NOT to scale! Other companies followed suit and the industry is worth millions now. Bandai caused a stir when they released a model kit of an Imperial Stormtrooper in true 1/6 scale. The action figure 'experts' went up in arms because it wasn't to scale with their figures! I had fun explaining to them that it was the other way round. I have the kit and it is properly scaled as though someone my height was wearing the armour. When I built it, I used the actual costumes for reference and they were dead on.
Good idea.. I will scale everything to my height from now on… there are going to be big changes down here! lol
@@HarryHoudiniModels LOL! I was the closest person to hand. The extras and stuntmen did of course vary in height.
Model cars are another example. 1/18 is a popular 'scale' for diecast, but, many are scaled to fit a standard box. Only the high end ones are true to scale.
All Revell kits should come with a pinch of salt for when you read what the marketing department has produced.
Or a book of jokes!
I look forward to the sequel.
The squeak well?
Another Outstanding video and presentation.
Glad you enjoyed it matey
Interesting Harry.
Well after wasting a week trying to sort this issue out, it was all I had to show for this weeks video. I am glad you found it interesting.
Hey Harry, Just had relative buy me a model of Zeppelin Staarken R.VI which is a colossal WW I German bomber which is so big that it wasn’t matched in size until halfway thru WW II. Kit is by Roden in 1/72 scale and is well detailed,even includes all 4 Daimler engines and a lot of rigging which you are the king of. If I were a well off man,
I’d love to send you this kit to see how you’d tackle it. Can’t find anyone on line which features building this kit but if anyone was capable of it! I’m sure it would be you.
I’m sure it would be right down your alley because you’re the best at building things of antiquity.(yeah,we’re both old) and would love to see you take it on someday.Would love to hear your comments on my idea someday. Love ya my fellow brother of the spruce. Rick from FloriDA.
Thanks Rick… I had that kit and know it is huge. Apparently you need to strengthen the wings otherwise they are prone to collapsing after time sitting in the display cabinet. Not a subject on my radar these days, one reason why I sold on my kit. Now if you had a Matchbox 1/72 Dornier Do G1 flying boat… then I would be salivating.
Thanks very much for taking the time in your busy day for the inflammation on the zeppelin staaken and yes I do have a matchbox dornier g-1 in my stash. Would love to get a dornier 26 flying boat for the stash as well,but find it very expensive, the misses says I get prize for my birthday in April so I plan to get one then. Thanks again Harry for your input and I should have figured you had dealt with this big bi-plane before, Keep up the good work and look forward to your next post. Rick.
“It’s not that big”
I’ve heard that before 😂😂
On my… that’s what she said?
The classic 'fraud' is using the 1/110 Bounty hull in the 1/96 HMS Beagle kit.
Manufactures do it more than you might realise. Rather than completely redesign for a kit with limited potential sales, ship kits do not generally sell in the millions like aircraft and armour, they just reuse and cannibalise what they have to make something new.
Of course now with CAD it is a lot easier, faster, and less costly, to let the computer spit out a new design. Still the number crunchers will look at cost to create compared to the demographic who might buy. This is why we get few new ship models.
Educational, brilliant inch to metric calculations Harry 08]
I had to use my abacus Thomas.
Thanks Harry did enjoy that
Glad you liked it John
I came across this problem when modlling figures -- what exactly is 54mm. scale? Some people say it is 1:32, but most military modelling is in 1:35. Is the figure 6 feet tall? Or is it measured to the eyeball level? What to do? Soldiers vary greatly in height -- 2 figures from different companies can look radically different.
The trick is to find something in their kit that is a known quantity. A Lee Enfield rifle or a Mauser 98k are I known length -- they don't get bigger or smaller with the size of the soldier. Find the equipment that matches the scale and that soldier kit is in the scale you want.
The soldier's size may vary from model to model, but his kit has a given length.
Yes that is the trick. Find something you can measure that won’t vary and use that as your yardstick to work out the scale. I haven’t heard of 54mm scale. I knew of inch scale, which is 50.82mm to 6 foot
@@HarryHoudiniModels here's an old Hinchliffe 54mm being rescued from a horrible paint job..... Or there would have been but adding a picture seems beyond the app 😅
But anyway, was a classic metal figure scale in the UK
Your Revell "1/150" UNITED STATES kit, with the one-piece hull, started as a Monogram kit, which was, in turn, pantographed down from a 1/120ish kit (Monogram 3706) that was a version of a similar USS CONSTITUTION (Monogram 3705) kit that replaced a re-pop of the Imai 1/120 CONSTITUTION kit (Monogram 3703), which molds did not work with Monogram's plastic.
There was a Revell 1/146 USS CONSTITUTION kit, but it has nothing to do with your kit.
The Revell ship catalog is full of misstated scales. For example, the current MAYFLOWER kit is marked 1/83 on the box when it is, in fact, closer to 1/110. There was a 1/83 kit, but Revell offered this larger version briefly, and it is no longer available. By the way, the kit depicts the modern MAYFLOWER II, so such measurements are valid.
If you measure it, the "1/130" Airfix/Heller is 1/180-an eternal typo.
True however Monogram listed those kits as 1/225 scale which is not far off. Revell must have surely known this when they reboxed them?
In a related note, I've always wondered why aircraft models lean towards 1/32 and armor is 1/35. Diorama jenkiness. Facepalm.
That would be an interesting topic to research but not in my naval theme these days
@@HarryHoudiniModels Yeah, just scale weirdness. Dig the ships!
A separate post - the inconsistent scales of sailing ship models annoys me - especially if you like to add figures etc.
Luckily now with 3D printing you can have any scale you want.. just slice the little buggas to your needs.
You lost me after g'day but I still watched the whole thing
LOL good on you matey
Count the teeth on a 1/150 or a 1/250 figure 😅
Ordered my first plastic ship kit 😜
Good on you Basil, and remember to floss
You get,em Harry. I’d be pissed too. Half the scale means half the price,to say the least as well as being a bunch of morons.
It’s all marketing BS to suck you into buying the kit.
I don't even think they did math. I believe they just used opinion to pick a scale. Scale discrepancies crop up now & then. What do they care. It's not going to be displayed with any other kit of the same scale. They're kids..... Just kids, they won't know the difference.
They certainly assumed we would be too stupid to notice. Apparently it is a rebox of an old Monogram kit which was 1/225, so they knew what scale it was but tried to BS us.
Revell have being lying to us FOR YEARS.lol🤣🤣🤣
They are a bit loose with the facts but this one takes the cake
@@HarryHoudiniModelsit's a very old cake though Harry....
Inflation hits retro-actively! By the way, isn't it pronounced "re-VELL," with the vocal stress on the second syllable?
I speak with an Aussie accent so here it is pronounced “flucking Rev All mate”
F.cken oath ,ey@@HarryHoudiniModels
Scalemates calls the scale "error" out on their website (they obviously watch your videos). But, let's be honest,the scales used for kits back in the day were all over the place - kits were designed to fit inside standard box sizes, rather than the other way around - f**k you Woolworths!!!
I have noticed scalemates add my review videos and scales change when I complain about them… I am an influencer! LOL
Revell kits in those days were really construction toys for kids that were designed to fit a box size. Scale accuracy became important later when kits were aimed at older modelers that wanted more than a toy. Same as your proverbial T-34 by Tamiya, more of a toy than serious model.
Ah so just as I said in my video then?
@@HarryHoudiniModels Sorry, I must have missed that bit were you said scale didn't really matter in those days.
I have to admit that talking in metric units kind of made this video hard to follow, but that is a USA issue not Harry Houdini!
Yes it is. Although I did give the inch lengths for the original kits, and explained the inch/foot scales of 1/72 and 1/144 in imperial measures.
Harry have you ever built a Heller Ship kit-good or bad ?
I have reviewed a few Heller ships on my channel. The ones I have look good in the box, and by all accounts go together well.
Interesting to say the least. I wonder of that is the case across aircraft, cars, armour etc?
I know of Aircraft in 1/50 scale reboxed as 1:48, but the worst is old HO scale armour (1/87) palmed off as 1/72.. every figure is a little person.
@@HarryHoudiniModelsTransposition typo there, HO is 1/87, aka 3.5mm/foot. One of the several flavors of O scale is 7mm/foot, which is where HO, half-o, comes from. While we're at it, the British train scale of OO is 4mm/foot; 1/76 scale is 4mm/foot, almost but not quite 1/72 scale's, 6ft/inch, or 4.23mm/foot.
@@HarryHoudiniModelsHO is 1/87 (except in Japan). Did you mean the old Matchbox kits? They are in OO.
@@HarryHoudiniModels It was always a problem dealing with the Small armour scale as they could be HO (1/87), OO (1/76) or 1/72... But they could all be the same physical size but different manufactures claimed they were different scales depending on the market.. or be Airfix and do them all.. (I'm sure I remember 1/87 scale Airfix in the 70's but I could be wrong!!)
I have the Constitution, Alexander von Humboldt, from Revell, and the Passat (2 of them), Amphitrite and Cape Horn ( a heller fantasy based on the Preussen) from Heller, all supposedly 1/150. I'm now wondering what scale they really are as there all from the late 60's early 70's moulds, except for the Alexander von Humboldt which is a 90s moulding, but I don't know if that ones based of an earlier one. As well as 3 1/144 HMCS Snowberry, 2 1/144 HMS Buttercups , 5 1/146 Trawlers. That's what happens when you start building an N Gauge Port railway and need some model ships to fill the scene!!!
@@HarryHoudiniModelsHO (half O gauge) in trains is also wrong the wheels are larger than they should be but it looks like a train and runs like one it was never meant to to be accurate.
The same with the Black Pearl. It is not 1:72 it is 1:96
Yes I have come upon these two in my Rat Harp rigging tool orders. Same dimensions but again labeled in absurdly different scales.
The swines! The only Revell stuff I trusted for scale was the 1/72 planes, otherwise they were all over the place. 1/48, 1/154, 1/90, 1/pick a number that will not fit with anything else you have….
Yes it all started out as a free for all with scales back in the 50’s
I always thought Revell was overpriced kraut wallet-buggery and skull-duggery. Never should've let then consume Monogram. Revell are like "The Blob" or John Carpenter's "The Thing". They either assimilate a rival and choose it's form for profit or just eat the rival like a jiggly macro-germ... 🙁
They all do it matey… even your beloved Tamiya has reboxed kits from Italeri, and still demands high prices so old and very average kits.
@@HarryHoudiniModels In Tamiya's defense, they at least try to tidy up those Italeri molds and replace those plastic-eating vinyl tires. But that's not enough to justify the premium they add.
Which ship models (firms) are closest to the 1/150 scale?
Airfix and Heller sort of hover around 1/150 give or take 10%. The thing is 70 years ago when the moulds were tooled, as I said in the video, they just found a wood model about the right size to fit in a standard box and measured the dimension off it without any consideration to scale. One exception was the Wasa. When the Swedes refloated her Airfix sent over a boffin with a tape measure and a camera. So that kit is actually scale accurate.
Imperial still easier for me!!
Well it is what you are used to… but base 10 for all measurements is far easier once you get used to it believe me.. I have lived under both systems. However I still prefer 100 mph and 100 degrees… they make sense as numbers to describe things. 161 kph and 37.8.C just don’t have the same commanding ring to them.
General Dickering and Intolerancing? Wait, that's not the GDT
I don’t think shipwrights from half a millennium ago used GDT
That is one of the reasons i stopped building ship , all those bloody scales . Why can the all not build ships on one scale all the same so if you display them along side , you can see the difference in lenght like it was in real time . 🙄🙄🤦♀🤦♀
The moulds for most of these kits were made 70 years ago before CAD. And they just measured and cast off wood kits to get a product made quickly and affordably. These days with many ships having been scanned and measured accurately, like the Wasa and Victory, that data could be used in a computer to spit out an exact scale model.