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Revell Staghound

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  • Member since
    June 2005
  • From: Walworth, NY
Revell Staghound
Posted by Powder Monkey on Wednesday, December 3, 2008 9:28 PM

Here are some pictures of my Revell Staghound. I have added a fo'castle, photoetched dolphin striker and pump flywheels. I have just started rigging. I am not sure yet how I will do the deadeyes. The kit ones are not too bad, but the chainplates are awful. Maybe I will cut them off at the channel and use wire to make new chain plates.

Thanks for looking.

  • Member since
    February 2008
  • From: San Bernardino, CA
Posted by enemeink on Thursday, December 4, 2008 10:38 AM

nice build!

what's the scale?

"The race for quality has no finish line, so technically it's more like a death march."
  • Member since
    June 2005
  • From: Walworth, NY
Posted by Powder Monkey on Thursday, December 4, 2008 10:56 AM
It is 1/150. The hull is from Revell's 1/150 Cutty Sark. We have had some discussion earlier about the inaccuracies of the kit. I decided to build it anyway. Adding the fo'castle corrects one of the kit's problems. The Staghound figurehead is out. I am looking for an N scale Mermaid for the bow.

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Thursday, December 4, 2008 9:58 PM

Mighty nice looking model.  Powder Monkey has succeeded in getting rid of most of the glaring goofs Revell made in the original.

We did indeed discuss this kit in several other Forum threads.  It was, in fact, based on one of Revell's very first sailing ship kits:  the Flying Cloud, originally released in 1957.  (Sheesh - that makes that kit more than fifty years old!  And I remember when it was released.  Sheesh indeed.)  The bible on the subject, Dr. Thomas Graham's Remembering Revell Model Kits, gives the scale of that kit as 1/232.  (Those were the days when manufacturers were more interested in packaging their kits in standard-sized boxes than in working to established scales.)  By the standards of 1957 it represented the state of the art, and in many ways it still holds up pretty well.  (Take a look at the countersunk detailing of the deck and hull planks, for instance.)  This is one of several grand old Revell sailing ship kits that I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing on the market again.

It's rare to find a mistake in Dr. Graham's book, but I do think he made a minor one when he said the (much later) small Revell Cutty Sark, originally released in 1977, was based on the Stag Hound kit.  I contend that this version of the Cutty Sark was a completely different, and genuinely new, kit.  (Caveat:  I'm looking at the second edition of the book.  There's a third edition; it's entirely possible that the goof has been corrected.)

The Flying Cloud (for the benefit of anybody who's new to this stuff) was one of the great masterpieces of the Boston naval architect/shipbuilder Donald McKay.  One of his earlier ships was the Stag Hound.  In 1962 (according, again, to Dr. Graham's book) Revell issued a somewhat modified version of its Flying Cloud kit in a box labeled "Stag Hound."  It was a rather weird product.  Apparently it was conceived primarily to take recycle most of the parts from the Flying Cloud kit while producing something that would look noticeably different.  Some good contemporary sources on the real Stag Hound do exist (Howard I. Chapelle's The Search for Speed Under Sail includes a redrawn set of plans for her, based on the originals); it seems the people who designed the kit didn't look at them.  For example (as Powder Monkey noted), Revell's deletion of the forecastle deck is ridiculous.  (Imagine what the model would look like without it.  And imagine what would happen the first time a ship with a hull shaped like that, and no forecastle deck, stuck her bow into a good-sized sea.)  Powder Monkey is to be congratulated for turning a...shall we say...bowdlerized version of a nice old kit into a fine-llooking model.

The precise scale of the Stag Hound kit is hard to determine, but I have to say I think it's considerably smaller than 1/150.  (Dr. Graham's figure of 1/232 for the Fllyling Cloud certainly is believable.  He gives 1/213 as the scale of the Stag Hound.  Since she was a somewhat smaller ship, that sounds believable too.  I'd have to look up the dimensions of the real ship and measure the kit - which I haven't seen in years - to form a firm opinion.) 

Regarding the deadeyes and chain plates....Powder Monkey, unless I'm much mistaken you came up with a superb solution to that problem some time ago with your 1/350 model of the Coast Guard training ship Eagle when you made photo-etched metal parts to replace the shrouds, ratlines, and rigging screws.  I suspect that approach would work for this model as well.  You could include the shrouds, ratlines, deadeyes, lanyards, and chainplates for one side of one mast (or topmast, or topgallant mast) in one piece of etched metal.  I'm not an expert in the intracasies of photo-etching, but it seems to me that designing such a part would be a fairly straightforward exercise.  And you'd only have to draw the rigging for one side of the ship; the other side could use identical parts, flipped over.

You'd have to replace the channels, which are molded integrally with the deadeyes, lanyards, and chainplates, with scratchbuilt ones; those could be made in a few minutes with strips of styrene.  (I'd recommend reinforcing their connection to the hull with metal pins.)  The photo-etched chainplates could then be bent over the channels, and stuck the hull planking below with CA adhesive.  For that matter, you could make the chainplates too long and insert the lower ends of them into holes drilled in the hull.  And while you were at it you could include the deadeyes and lanyards for the backstays. 

There is, of course, always a problem with using photo-etched metal to represent rope: in any but an extremely small scale, the eye picks up the fact that the metal part isn't round.  But this scale might be just about small enough to let a modeler who knows what he's doing get away with it.  (Photo-etched metal shrounds and ratlines surely would be preferable to the injection-molded plastic ones the manufacturers have been putting in kits lately.)  You'd have to figure out some ingenious way to deal with the connection of the shrouds to the mastheads, but in such a small scale the eye probably wouldn't mind some deviation from the prototype there.

I've never tried anything like this; it might not work.  But I don't see any obvious reason why it shouldn't - in the hands of a designer who knows what he's doing, as Powder Monkey obviously does.  I'd be most interested to see how some well-designed photo-etched parts could be used to enhance a plastic sailing ship kit.  That's an idea that hasn't gotten much attention, and I think it has considerable potential. 

Good luck - and thanks for showing us your model. 

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    June 2005
  • From: Walworth, NY
Posted by Powder Monkey on Friday, December 5, 2008 8:43 AM
Thank you Dr. Tilley. I have been giving some thought to photoetching the ratline assemblies. I might get away with it at this size. I just have to sort out the "particulars".

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Friday, December 5, 2008 8:53 AM

The more I think about it, the more firmly I think it would work.  At any larger scale the problem of "flatness" would start to be serious, but I think this sort of model is just about the biggest where it wouldn't.

If relief etching is an option, you could make the deadeyes thicker than the shrouds.  For that matter, you could make the shrouds thicker than the ratlines.  (Ratlines, in reality, are only half an inch or so in diameter; they just have to support the weight of human beings, whereas the shrouds have to support the masts - and, for that matter, transmit the force of the wind in the sails to the hull, in effect pulling the ship through the water.  In a small scale like this the shrouds would be pretty thick; the ratlines ought to be as thin as is practicable.)  The whole assembly could be held together by the sheer pole - the wood pole that stretches across the shrouds just above the deadeyes. 

I wish I had the wherewithal to try out this idea myself.  It's also one the manufacturers ought to consider.  At least one company, Skytrex, makes cast metal 1/700 sailing warships (primarily for wargamers) with photo-etched brass shrouds and ratlines, and they look remarkably good.  I don't see why the same principles couldn't be applied on larger scales - up to a point.

Good luck.

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    March 2007
  • From: NJ
Posted by JMart on Friday, December 5, 2008 1:15 PM
Beautiful work... a bookmark for future reference. You did a great job with the scratch/kitbaching of the ship.  Thank you Prof Tilley for the great mini-lesson, always appreciated!

 

 

  • Member since
    September 2005
  • From: Groton, CT
Posted by warshipguy on Saturday, December 6, 2008 11:18 AM

This is a very beautiful job indeed.  I fully concur with John Tilley's comments about photoetch.

Bill Morrison

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