1:350 Anchor Chains

Jason,

   Your best bet for these chains would be a model railroad shop...they usually have several size chains and often they're already blackened. For a 1:350 scale ship I would probably look for chain with about 24 - 28 links per inch. I recently scratchbuilt a 1:350 fleet oiler and I used 24 link-chain. Another good place to look for chain is a swap meet: check out the old necklaces and stuff, but make sure you get a nice plain chain and not one with flattened links. Hope this helps.

Try these chains from Tiger - these are the very fine and look great on destroyer-sized ships and smaller.  The smallest model railroad chain is about 45 LPI and these look better.  You can go up a bit. perhaps to 30 - 36 LPI for a BB/CV sized project.  I've seen some models where the modeler went above that and it really looked bad.  Its like the modeler was saying look at these - look at what I did.  It drew attention away from what whas a decent model to something which was grossly overscale.  What you want is subtlty.

Hobby Lobby has a selection of chains in their jewelry making section. Some could be used for ship's anchor chains, I bought some for my Trumpeter/Banner 1/350 Arizona for about $1.99 and have enough to do about 3 Arizonas.

Tracy

 

Thanks for your quick replies!  I'll be checking out all the suggestions you all made.  They all sound very usable.

Thanks again!
Jason

Most navy anchor chain has an overall oval shape, round link chain of any LPI would look out of place. A 12" long link, in 1/350 would be 0.034" X 0.023", this would serve for a Destroyer anchor chain. I have seen some "oval" link chain in antique jewelry.

Pete

Yes, round chain does look a little "funny" even at that scale - IF you know what it's supposed to look like. If you don't, and think it adds to the model, then I say use it. I've used the flat photoetched anchor chains that come on PE frets for my 1/700 scale ships, and for the small lengths involved, it looks just fine. I well remember the one PE fret that had individual 1/700 anchor chain links you were supposed to join to get the 3-D effect and I thought, "Nope, not gonna go there..."