Revell HMS Bounty 1:110 quick question

Sealog

Hi John, I couldn't help notice the rudder enclosure on the model of the Bounty you say you built from a Revell kit. Has Revell ever brought out a 1-110 model featuring this? I know Airfix have a slightly larger model with the rudder enclosure up against the stern. I have been wondering whether yours is an Airfix model as there appears to be other disimilar items in your photos.

This is in response to Sealog's post of March 5 (when I was laid up in the hospital).  I apologize for not having answered it sooner.

My little model of the Bounty is indeed based on the old 1/110 Revell kit - or, more correctly seven pieces of it (plus the crew figures).  I used the hull halves, the quarter badges, the transom, the figurehead, and the hull of the launch.  The rest of the kit went into the spares box. 

In retrospect, I'm not sure I'd build a model that way again.  It might have taken me a week to build the hull from scratch - and a week, in the context of a model that took about two years, isn't much. 

I tried to find as much information about the ship as I could.  The most useful source by far was a reproduction of the "Admiralty draught" of the ship after the various modifications associated with her unique voyage to the Pacific.  Bligh's published book and his logbook also were a big help. 

The box over the rudder head is shown in the Admiralty draught.  It's built into the front of a larger "box," which some people have called a flag locker.  I'm pretty firmly convinced that it's the officers' privy.  (The Admiraly draught deck plan shows how the door was hinged.)  The captain had been evicted from his private facility in his cabin when the cabin was converted into a "greenhouse" for the breadfruit plants.

I've discussed the model in some detail before - in this Forum and elsewhere.  The deck, spars, and many of the details are boxwood degama, and basswood; the gun barrels are turned brass, mounted on sheet styrene carriages.  The finished product doesn't look much like the Revell kit.

I'm a big fan of Airfix; most of its sailing ships represented the state of the art when they were first released, and some of them can easily stand comparison with the best.  Unfortunately the Bounty  is the big exception.  As I remember it was released in about 1979 or 1980, when the company was having the first of several financial crises.  In terms of accuracy it's a bit of a mess.  The hull shape looks about right, but trouble started when the designers went to work on the anchor gear.  The rendition they came up with is absurd (among other things the pawl post slopes in the wrong direction), and the hawseholes are sited too low on the bow.  That being the case, in order to bring the hawsers to the windlass the designers mounted the maindeck on a pronounced slope (downward toward the bow), which looks utterly absurd.  That's just the beginning of the list.  The Revell kit, though it has serious problems too, is, in my opinion, actually a bit better.

We have discussed on this Revell's/Ceji repacked kit here (original moulds, how do they come to Revell etc):

/forums/t/114452.aspx

And pictures of this kit are here (on my presentation on Lithuanian forum):

http://www.kvaksiuk.com/forum-lt/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=287&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=30#p3775

Hi John, I couldn't help notice the rudder enclosure on the model of the Bounty you say you built from a Revell kit. Has Revell ever brought out a 1-110 model featuring this? I know Airfix have a slightly larger model with the rudder enclosure up against the stern. I have been wondering whether yours is an Airfix model as there appears to be other disimilar items in your photos.

Lots of information here, more than I expected but thanks for it all.

Looks like I have the smaller, older bounty. It was the lack of crew figures in the ship that made me suspicious of the kit. It seems quite well detailed but I am not sure how accurate it is.

Just picked up an older Revell Golden Hind. The box is dated 1978, with the model number H-345, oddly enough it looks to be a US Revell kit as the box says Printed and manufactured in California.

Other new arrivals include a Revell HMS Victory, it says 1:146 but I take it this the 1:225 model? Also a Revell Cutty Sark in roughly the same scale.

honneamise

Jtilley thank you for your information about the Lindberg Bounty, I was not aware that there were different Pyro and Lindberg Bounties around. The small Revell kit was definitely the Lindberg mold, it had vacform sail and was indeed very similar to the bigger Revell Version. Far more detailed than the average Lindberg ship kit!

Could it be that they did the same "Revell-shrinking-treatment" with the Victory? The small Victory that RoG offered at around the same time seemed equally detailed and it even had the partially open gunports like the bigger 1/225ish Revell kit. IIRC  Revell quoted 1/225 on the box of that small kit back in 1985 while they labeled their bigger Victory 1/146 which is of course incorrect. Newer editions of the big one have now 1/225 on the box. 

 

Honneamise, I think you're right.  I'm relying on my memory here (a dangerous thing to do in my case), but my recollection is that, sometime in the 1960s, Lindberg issued a total of four sailing ship kits that sold for about $1.00 or $1.50 each:  the Flying Cloud, Victory, Bounty, and Santa Maria.  The only one I remember buying was the Flying Cloud.  It quite clearly was pirated from the Revell kit on a smaller scale; even the little coils of rope molded integrally with the decks were there.  I'm pretty sure the other three had similar origins.

There's a good review of the various Victory kits on this site, which was set up quite a few years ago by our good friend and fellow Forum member Michel vrtg:  http://www.hmsvictoryscalemodels.be/MODELS_EN.htm .  To my knowledge his coverage is quite thorough, though he wasn't able to acquire actual examples of all the kits he lists.  I think the pirated Lindberg kit is also the one he lists as the smaller-scale Revell one.  But I'm not certain; I don't think I've ever seen either version "in the flesh."

I'd be interested to see one of those pantograph machines, which several companies used back in the "golden age" of plastic kits.  (I remember an AHM set of HO-scale infantrymen, sold in a plastic bag to accompany the memorable "Minitanks" series of AFVs.  They quite obviously were pantographed down from Revell and Monogram originals.)  What an amazing piece of machinery it must have been!

Another great Bounty! Great piece of work, crackers! The Bounty really gets some love from builders and kit manufacturers. Amazing that there is not a single worthy kit of the Beagle out there!

Jtilley thank you for your information about the Lindberg Bounty, I was not aware that there were different Pyro and Lindberg Bounties around. The small Revell kit was definitely the Lindberg mold, it had vacform sail and was indeed very similar to the bigger Revell Version. Far more detailed than the average Lindberg ship kit!

Could it be that they did the same "Revell-shrinking-treatment" with the Victory? The small Victory that RoG offered at around the same time seemed equally detailed and it even had the partially open gunports like the bigger 1/225ish Revell kit. IIRC  Revell quoted 1/225 on the box of that small kit back in 1985 while they labeled their bigger Victory 1/146 which is of course incorrect. Newer editions of the big one have now 1/225 on the box. 

    Here is my scratch built model of the BOUNTY made from the plans by Harold M. Hahn. The model took almost two years to build. This model has been donated to the Jerome Public Library, and now is on display in the main reading room.

  Montani semper liberi !      Happy modeling to all and every one of you. 

                                    Crackers                        

John,

I agree that all things are rarely equal, therefore, I stand by my statement.  As for wooden ships taking more effort, I really cannot agree. I believe that it takes far more effort to render a plastic kit believable than it does one made out of wood, craftsmanship being equal.  However, building in either requires some very different skills.  But, let's not quibble . . . a beautifully made model is beautiful no matter the medium.

I emphatically agree that plastic masts are not ideal.  I would like to see more affordable sailing ship kits made of multimedia materials as well.  One issue that I have concerning the HECEPOB kits is that they are usually made to a very large scale.  Although I would like to have HMS Vanguard, for example, at 1/75 scale it is simply too large for my house.  I do prefer 1/96 or 1/100, a large enough scale with which to work comfortably.  Eyesight is a problem for me as well!

I also like twentieth century warships but 1/700 scale is too small.  The last one I built was of the USS Benjamin Stoddert for my father, a former crewman . . . those PE pieces drove me crazy at 1/700 scale!  It's now 1/350 for me.  Age does have its drawbacks!

Bill Morrison

I wasn't aware that any of the old Pyro kits had appeared in Revell boxes - but the fact certainly doesn't surprise me.  Nor does it surprise me that the scale indicated on one of the boxes was bogus.  That apparently happens pretty frequently on Revell products.

I think the smaller (1/200-ish) Revell Bounty probably came from Revell Germany.  I can't swear that I would have noticed such a kit in the U.S., but I think I would have.

We did have an interesting discussion here in the Forum a while back in which we established that two relatively small Bounty kits had appeared under the Lindberg label.  One of them, as I recall, had in fact originated with Lindberg, and appeared to be, in many respects, a "pantographed-down" version of the Revell kit; it had vac-formed sails.  (Or maybe it didn't have sails at all; I don't remember.)  The other kit originated with Pyro, and had injection-molded "sails" cast integrally with the yards.

At any rate, it's pretty clear that the kit currently being sold by Revell Germany is a reissue of the grand old original, 1/110 kit from 1956.

Bill, don't worry; I have no intention of giving up on model building.  (I wouldn't know what to do without it.)  I don't entirely agree that the material of which a model is made is irrelevant; if you think about it a minute I suspect you won't think so either.  (All other things being equal, it's almost certain that the wood model has more effort in it than the plastic one.  But all other things seldom if ever are equal.  I personally no longer have any interest in model competitions of any sort, but I especially loath any of them that put restrictions on the materials, techniques, or any other aspects of the models that can be entered.)  

I do find myself gravitating toward larger scales, mainly out of deference to my aging eyeballs, but I've got a long list of models I want to build while I'm still an occupant of the planet.  Some are wood kits, some are plastic kits, some are scratchbuilt.  (And some are twentieth-century warships.  I think my next project is going to be Trumpeter's 1/700 North Carolina - a popular subject in my neck of the woods.  I've laid in a couple of photo-etched detail sets for it - from WEM and GMM.  I'm not at all sure I can see well enough to do those parts complete justice, but I'll give it a shot.) 

I have to say I don't really consider myself an evangelist in the cause of plastic sailing ship kits.  I do think some of them are excellent - and I think that, in terms of scale fidelity, the standards of the plastic kit manufacturers over the decades have been higher than those of the wood kit manufacturers.  (Some of those HECEPOB kits are real monstrosities.  I wish I had a nickel for every time I've uttered the statement:  "Most plastic sailing ship kits are junk, and most wood sailing ship kits are worse.")  Styrene really isn't, in many respects, an ideal material for sailing ship models.   It's great for hulls, decks, and many fittings, but lousy for masts and yards.  In an ideal world I'd like to see a proliferation of multi-media sailing ship kits, with each component produced in the material that's best suited to represent the prototype - styrene, wood, resin, machined metal, cast metal, etc., etc.  A handful of such kits are on the market today, most of them priced beyond my means.  I saw a nice little American revenue cutter kit from a firm called Cottage Industries at the IPMS convention last year.  It had a resin hull, cast metal fittings, and wood spars; I think it had the potential to produce a beautiful model.  But it cost something in the neighborhood of $200, which is simply more than I can justify for such a small model that would occupy me for such a short time. 

I don't know where the future of the sailing ship kit lies.  I don't think it's in the realm of plastic kits; the plastic sailing ship kit seems, to all intents and purposes, to be dead.  The best of the wood manufacturers (Model Shipways, Bluejacket, Calder/Jotika, and, recently, Amati, in its "Victory Models" range) are putting out some really high quality, well-researched products these days, but they sure are expensive.  I dunno.... 

John,

I hope that you don't quit trying!  Your Bounty shows just what can be accomplished from a plastic kit.  I am reminded of an earlier post by Santa in which he lamented the decision by IPMS to allow wood sailing ship models to compete against plastic. I commented at the time that the actual building material is irrelevant; excellent workmanship is what matters.  Your Bounty epitomizes that observation.

Bill Morrison

jtilley your Bounty is outstanding, in fact it puts many wooden 1/50 models to shame. Great work!

Regarding the initial question, there were in fact 2 Revell Bounties in the 80s. The 80s kit was in fact smaller and, if I remember correctly, hat 1/110 scale written on the box. The boxart was different from the former (and later) Tahiti scenes of the "real" 1/110 kit and the kit itself was substantially smaller than the former offering. 

At the time Revell (o.G.) had added  many Lindberg/ex-Pyro models to their range, I remember the Sovereign of the Seas, St.Louis, Gouda, Wappen von Hamburg, Bomb Ketch and others. Some were part of a smaller ex Pyro series consisting of Revenge, Victory and the said Bounty.

If your boxart features the ship sailing in a storm with no Tahiti in sight, you will most probably have this kit from Pyro molds. Very nicely done (one of the best Pyros I know), but definitely not 1/110 scale, more like 1/200. These Revell issues disappeared after a few years (there had been modern warships and some planes, too), the kits apparently went back to Lindberg where they enjoy their usual lives as pirate ships.  

Many thanks, subfixer.  That little model is now more than thirty years old (and, I'm happy to say, still looks as good as new - or nearly so, due to the simple Plexiglas case I built for it).  I long ago reached the point where the mistakes and inadequacies of it jump out at me (the overly-heavy ratlines, for instance, and I have no idea where I got the idea that eighteenth-century British sailors were anemic).  On the other hand, I'm not so sure my post-middle-aged eyeballs and fingers would be capable of doing such a thing again.

It's been quite a few years since you posted that link last, John. It stills wows me.

I haven't seen the latest reissue, but I find it difficult to believe that it's different in any significant way from the old, 1956 original (other than the fact the the photo on Revell Germany's website shows a finished model sitting backward on its stand).  My strong suspicion is that somebody, in the advertising for either the new version or one of the old ones, got the measurement wrong.  Revell is notorious for doing stuff like that.

I have a soft spot for that particular kit.  It represented the state of the art in 1956.  It doesn't any more, in a number of important respects, but some of its features can stand comparison with the best kits of today.  (Take a look at the crew figures, or the figurehead, under a magnifying glass.)  It is, in my personal opinion, a more accurate representation of the ship than the much more recent Airfix kit.

For what little it's worth, here's a link to some photos of a model I built from the Revell kit quite a few years ago:  http://www.hmsvictoryscalemodels.be/JohnTilleyBounty/index.html .