Several years ago a well-meaning friend, knowing about my hobby, gave me a Revell 1/570 Titanic kit. It sat in my stash until I recently took it out and opened it up. I wondered, does the world really need another completed 1/570 Titanic? But something about the hull looked familiar to me. Both the bow and stern reminded me of a photo I have of a ship my father served on as Radio Operator back in the early ‘50s. The ship was the Exermont, of American Export Lines. All American Export ships had a distinctive stern. You can see it on their liners, the Constitution and Independence. The Titanic had the same overhung stern.
So here was my idea. Why not use the Titanic hull to form a base for scratch building a model of the Exermont?
First of all, the Titanic hull was longer and narrower than the freighter's. Dividing the beam of the Titanic by her length, you get a ratio of .103. The Exermont was 473 feet long and had a beam of 66 feet. This gives a ratio of .139. So, the problem is, how much do you cut down the length of the Titanic hull to make the ratio .139? I figured I could cut a section out of the mid-body of the Titanic kit while keeping the shape of the bow and stern.
I'll spare you the math, but I calculated that I had to cut 133 mm out of the Titanic. When I was finished I calculated that the new hull would be 337.2 mm long by the original 47mm wide.
Here is the hull with a main deck added. I am going to waterline it. It was NOT fun to sand off all that plating detail.
Comparing the model's length with the real Exermont's, the scale works out to about 1/425. ( I ended up with a slightly longer hull than I calculated)