1:300 HMS Victory by Langton

[Moideeb]

Chris, what is it like building something at this scale compared to 1:1200? Is it easier? Harder? How would you compare the tradeoff between greater detail, therefore more complexity, and larger scale, therefore a bit easier in terms of seeing what you're painting and rigging, let alone the ability for your hands to do the work? I realize I am making assumptions here.

Me being Me, I typically dive into things without building up to them. Never been one to warm up before exorcise (exorcize for the Americans amongst us), never start small and work my way up to anything. With ships i predictably started off completely the wrong way round. The first ship i made was a much bigger wooden kit of the Victory, about 4 or so years ago now. It was much more complex than these, planking the hull alone was something of a nightmare. Everything had to be fashioned, wetted and bent into place. The rigging took me months to do and felt really complex, i needed a magnifier to do it, where i haven't used one once on my 1:300 scale ships. I also made a lot of mistakes on both the hull and rigging (see picture).



By comparison, getting smaller has meant less details to worry about so it has felt easier to work on. When i made the larger Victory, I found that I needed to try and follow rigging advice properly, where on my 1:300 models ive made, i could begin to cheat a little and tie off rigging where it can't bee seen. I could glue Yards to masts, rather than properly suspending them and having the rigging all properly following down to the deck. Following on in this theme on 1:300 you have many details on the hulls, that are simply omitted on the 1:1200 hulls, and then crew etc as well. Having never made 1:1200 model though, it might well pass a critical point, where at that scale the opposite becomes true. Some of the 1:1200 models I've seen people make on this site are beyond anything i could do and if they tried their hands at 1:300 scale, I'm sure they would do a much better job, than I. Im sure there are many people here who are better qualified to answer this one and may well prove the opposite to be true, but thats my experience so far.

For those who want insane sizes, check out this scale of 1:4800 (not one of my pictures, just found on the web)

[CHolgren]

Me being Me, I typically dive into things without building up to them. Never been one to warm up before exorcise (exorcize for the Americans amongst us), never start small and work my way up to anything. With ships i predictably started off completely the wrong way round. The first ship i made was a much bigger wooden kit of the Victory, about 4 or so years ago now. It was much more complex than these, planking the hull alone was something of a nightmare. Everything had to be fashioned, wetted and bent into place. The rigging took me months to do and felt really complex, i needed a magnifier to do it, where i haven't used one once on my 1:300 scale ships. I also made a lot of mistakes on both the hull and rigging (see picture).



By comparison, getting smaller has meant less details to worry about so it has felt easier to work on. When i made the larger Victory, I found that I needed to try and follow rigging advice properly, where on my 1:300 models ive made, i could begin to cheat a little and tie off rigging where it can't bee seen. I could glue Yards to masts, rather than properly suspending them and having the rigging all properly following down to the deck. Following on in this theme on 1:300 you have many details on the hulls, that are simply omitted on the 1:1200 hulls, and then crew etc as well. Having never made 1:1200 model though, it might well pass a critical point, where at that scale the opposite becomes true. Some of the 1:1200 models I've seen people make on this site are beyond anything i could do and if they tried their hands at 1:300 scale, I'm sure they would do a much better job, than I. Im sure there are many people here who are better qualified to answer this one and may well prove the opposite to be true, but thats my experience so far.

For those who want insane sizes, check out this scale of 1:4800 (not one of my pictures, just found on the web)

I painted up 6 of these for use with GMT Serpents of the Seas. I wasnt going for great detail in the painting so it wasn't too difficult to paint them up. I posted a picture on the War Galley thread.

The 1:300 is looking good.