Revell 1/96 Cutty Sark

jtilley

Those were old-fashioned blueprints - blue ink on white paper and a faint smell of ammonia.  I imagine all of them were to the same scale (though I don't know that I actually ever checked).  The blueprint process normally produces prints at full-size.  (I wonder if anybody bothers with genuine blueprints any more.)

Diazo printing (to use the term-of-art) is really only available in the largest of cities and the smallest of towns (where a machine is owned in-house at an engineer's or architect's or contractor's office).  CAD and chemistry have eclipsed its reign.

The "why" of using it was in that the copies were made in contact to the original, so each copy precisely matched its original (which included any flaws or defects).  Ovine vellum was used for originals due to its long-term stability in length and width.  The term was carried forward to all-linen rag paper when that became available.  For serious permanence, mylar film was introduced (but it requires special inks and pencil "leads").  Rolled wet-process blueprints hugely vulnerable to spills, as they are more "ink" than drawing.

Originally, the copy, called a print, was exposed to light then developed wet.  This produced a blue sheet with white lines upon it.  Since the print was wetted, controlling the rate it changed dimension when dry became an issue.  That, and the chemicals brought about the "dry" process, where the paper was exposed to ammonia compounds aver the photo-sensitive sheet had the original "shot" onto it.  Compounds in the paper allowed production of brown, black, or blue lines on a white background.  Which improved the readability no end.  The downside being that the paper never stops being some photo sensitive, and the lines will fade.  Depending on how well-regulated the developer was on printing, there can be traces of the ammonia in the plans too. 

Enter the modern day.  Large-format scanners and printers have kept getting better for lower prices.  The HR cost of having ammonia-based chemicals in one's print shop (along with all the MSDS sheets, and employee briefings, etc.) kept getting ever more expensive.  CAD made it possible to have "direct" printing, too.  So, most print shops either scan one's full-sized "wet stamped" sheets, or print the e-stamped sheets to need.

Good for "us" though, not that difficult to get a set of plans shot to even middling random enlargement (like 13%) at a reasonable cost.

Which reminds me, I need to get a new set of USS Boyd DD-554 plans from Floating Drydock if AFD still carries those, mine are faded to nothingness before I could get them scanned.

Wow - reading Prof. Tilley´s post I wanted to explain the "oldfashioned" blueprint-system, since I to work in a companies internal "copy-shop" were I had to create the micro-films of original drawings and were I was ordered to create the copies from the micro-films and from original ink drawings which were still existing in those days. But .. I would not be able to explain the process THAT precise! Great!

Concerning the copy-right: I do not know how a judge would see that in the US - here in Germany the copy-right is to prevent that the original creator of something does not get money for HIS creation because of someone else selling copies. BUT it is absolutly o.k. if someone who bought legaly a print, a legal copy, .. copies this to create a safty-copy, to create a working-base! So if the copyshop owner fears the copyright: explain that you want to use the copy for your working bench and that you want to safe your original from getting dirty or even destroyed. As long as you don´t sell the copies there is no need to fear someone!

GeoffWilkinson

I have been pouring over the Campbell plans for many hours the past couple of days. The first thing that struck me though was the scale, 3/32” to 1 inch. I dug out my old, antique, architectural scales from when I was at college in the UK. None matched this scale. I have been trying to concentrate on the drawings but I can’t get this question out of my head – ‘Why did they come up with that scale?’

Geoff,

3/32 is actually a pretty common scale, both in architecture and ship modeling. All the architectural scales I have include it and there is a company in England called Fleetscale which produces a large range of warship hulls in 1/128.

That is very odd.  Does it say that it is reduced somewhere on the sheet? I bought a set of the Campbell plans 3-4 years ago and my General Arrangement plan appears to be correctly to scale.  In any case, there is a graphic scale at the top of the sheet that can be used with a pair of dividers, or you can mark off a sheet of paper to make your own scale ruler.

If you want, email me your mailing address.  I have copies of the Campbell plans that I have enlarged to 1/96.  I can send you a set of those and you can work at 1:1.

CapnMac82

Now, Elissa is a very late example from the sailing era, 1877.  But, the photos on the site

http://www.galvestonhistory.org/1877_Tall_Ship_Elissa.asp

Show just how many lines are in use on a working ship, and give a great sense of just how much "more" than "less" is, too.

 

Some very nice hi-res pictures. Thanks for that interesting link.

Geoff

jtilley

I have to confess that this inconsistency in the scale of the Campbell prints is news to me.  I'm glad Geoff noticed it.  I've heard of such things happening elsewhere; it seems the good people who are assigned the job of actually running off the copies aren't model builders, and honestly don't realize what a heinous sin they're commiting when they change the scale of scale drawing - even slightly.

The plans are printed on A1 size paper (23.4" × 33.1"). Campbell probably used the old Atlas size paper when he drew this plan (26" x 34"), a size used by Architects and Industrial designers in the UK before WWII.

The worst thing about this reproduction is the loss of detail when the originals were digitised. This may have been the thing that caught my attention when trying to read notations on the drawing. Below are photos of parts of the drawing and it is possible to see the pixellation in the reproduction.

You can also see the scale on the drawing measures 86.25mm when it should be 95.25mm.

jtilley

Suggestion one:  take the offending sheet to a local printing firm that has a photocopy machine that can do enlargements and reductions, and have a print made to the right scale.  Some such places have self-service machines.  (One used to have to worry that proportional distortions would creep in, but I think the copier manufacturers have solved that problem.)  If the guy running the machine raises a stink about the copyright notice, white it out and take the sheet someplace else.  (I guarantee Mr. Campbell, who was a model enthusiast himself, wouldn't mind.  And he'd be furious at the person who changed the scale.)

I have no idea why Mr. Campbell picked 1/128 (3/32"=1') for those drawings.  (It does happen to be a scale that I like - or used to like.  It's the one I used for my model of the frigate Hancock.  That was a long time ago, though; I'm not at all sure my 59-year-old fingers and eyeballs are up to that sort of thing now.)  If you can get access to a self-service copier, or if the guy running the non-self-service one isn't too uptight about copyright law, you can quite easily - and not-very-expensively - get the three sheets enlarged to 1/96.  And I'd recommend doing that.  There's just no substitute for having easy access to a set of plans on the same scale as the model. 

If I were scratch building I would have been very upset by this issue but this is a kit. I am more interesed in the detail. Enlarging the plans would not improve the resolution.

I'll see how I get on with a magnifying glass and spreadsheet for now.

I like the metric scale of 1:100 - don't need a calculator for that, even my slightly senile brain can handle that convertion.

Geoff

I honestly can't tell whether I'm looking at pixelation or just mediocre-quality printing - the equivalent of third-generation xeroxing or something of the sort.  Part of the problem may well be that by the time the current vendors got around to doing whatever they did to the drawings, the originals were getting old.  I'm not sure exactly when Mr. Campbell made them, but I think it was in either the very late fifties or early sixties. 

The bottom line is that the drawings are first-rate and the printing job is third-rate (at best).  That's a real shame.  And I'd be willing to bet that the individual responsible for changing the scale on one sheet honestly didn't know that he/she was doing anything wrong.

The flip side of the coin, of course, is the price.  Even if the modeler has to change the scale, those three sheets of paper still represent one of the biggest bargains in ship modeling.

Personally, I always like to have a set of plans on the scale of the model available.  Geoff's right, of course:  that's especially important if you're working from scratch.  But even in a kit-based project it's mighty handy to be able to take dimensions directly from the plans.  And having model-sized plans on hand makes it a lot easier to visualize in advance what the finished model's going to look like.

As a demonstration of how such things have changed, I recall what I had to go through in order to get drawings of the frigate Hancock on the scale of my model (3/32"=1').  I ordered a set of Howard I. Chapelle's plans from the Smithsonian.  (They cost, if I remember right, about $35.00 - in 1978.)  They consisted of two blueprinted sheets, on 1/48 scale.  (And the Smithsonian folded them up and sent them to me in an envelope, rather than rolled in a mailing tube.  Arrgghh!)  I took the blueprints to a local architectural printing firm (in Columbus, Ohio), which took photographs of them with an enormous camera that generated negatives on sheet film at the right scale.  One of the guys there painstakingly touched up any little spots and glitches on the negatives with a brush and correction fluid, on a light table.  He then made me a stack of contact prints (which came out as white lines on a blue background).  I don't remember the bill for the whole job, but I think it approached $100 (1978 dollars, that is).  But once I had the negatives I could get as many prints as I wanted for very minimal expense.  I bought a big stack of them and cut them up to make templates - thereby eliminating a potential source of error because I didn't have to trace them.

How times have changed!  A few months ago I bought a set of plans for the U.S.S. North Carolina from the Floating Drydock; they're on 1/350 scale.  Since I want to build my model of her from the 1/700 Trumpeter kit, I laid the plans on the glass of my Epson all-in-one printer/copier/scanner ($125), set it on 50%, and pushed the "copy" button.  The 1/350 plans didn't fit on the glass, of course, so I had to make my copies in several shots and glue them together.  But the total outlay for the copy job (i.e., the ink and the paper) was surely under a dollar - and took about fifteen minutes.

Modeler these days don't know how good they've got it.

In an effort to throw brief clarity on several subjects raised, here follows:

Microsoft and it's brethren have robbed math from the scaling game, in favor of an evil thing called "paper size". Much as they destroyed the definition of a font, which is a type family; in favor of it's children, the variations involving the attributes of being "condensed" or "bold" among many others: they have made scaling a process that now relies on graphic rather than numerical scales.

I have found that the only sure way to get a set of drawings printed at a size one needs is to take the mother drawings, the "originals"; draw a very precise set of two points on them, then do the math and instruct the person at the keyboard of the repro house to make those two points a certain different distance apart on the reproduction.

As for what a blueprint is: originally it was a sheet of paper that had an emulsion in it that when exposed to ultraviolet light and then washed with water, turned blue.The process was by contact print. Drawings on paper are transparent, the pencil is opaque. The exposed areas were fixed; the lines washed away. The second generation, "bluelines" use an emulsion that washes away with ammonia gas, leaving the blue as lines. When run through a UV exposure between rollers, the paper was then run through an ammonia atmosphere and the print was made.

Currently all prints tend to be large format laser prints, black lines deposited on white paper.

I recently bought a set of plans for the Bogue class CVE carriers from Floating Drydock. They are blue with white lines, but they are color inkjet, not blueprints.

jtilley

The flip side of the coin, of course, is the price.  Even if the modeler has to change the scale, those three sheets of paper still represent one of the biggest bargains in ship modeling.

Personally, I always like to have a set of plans on the scale of the model available.  Geoff's right, of course:  that's especially important if you're working from scratch.  But even in a kit-based project it's mighty handy to be able to take dimensions directly from the plans.  And having model-sized plans on hand makes it a lot easier to visualize in advance what the finished model's going to look like.

Modeler these days don't know how good they've got it.

I am more than happy with the price and it makes me feel good that I have made a tiny contribution towards the rebuilding of the original.

It also makes me feel comfortable just having the plans since the Revell drawings are so poor they do nothing to inspire confidence.

I agree that modelers these days don’t know how good they’ve got it. I am sure that if I had attempted this project a third time without the benefit if the internet and dissemination of knowledge from a forum such as this I would have ended up disappointed once more and a third shipwreck!

Domestic duties have conspired to keep me separated from my computer, workbench and model for the past couple of days. On the plus side, while shopping in Wal-Mart, I suddenly found myself in the sewing department examining the small selection of reels on the Coats and Clark rack (imagine that!). I remembered seeing mention of this firm elsewhere on the forum.

I picked out a couple of reels, one mercerized Egyptian cotton labeled ART A271 – T37 and one 26%cotton 74%polyester labeled ART A220 – T3 to be going on with. I asked one of the assistants about silk thread. She replied “They don’t make silk anymore” I made some smart comment about the extinction of worms but they didn’t get it. Anyway, I thought I would look at the Coats & Clark website when I got home, expecting to find a wealth of information. No such luck.

I know I have a long way to go before seriously worrying about rigging but I did make a start on a couple footropes (that was just before the original question that started this thread) but I was unhappy with the ‘fuzzy’ thread I had used. The yarn supplied with the kit was just too big for the footropes.

I have just tried to compare the threads I now have.

I anticipate that I have a whole new confusing world to explore when it comes to yarn and I know this has been much talked about before. At this stage of my knowledge I would be reluctant to start ordering stuff online so any advice would be much appreciated.

One thing is clear – the stuff from the Dollar Store is going in the trash!

Geoff

Geoff thanks for posting that photo, and Thanks John Tilly for informing that those things are shroud fairleads.

Forgive the late response.

Longridge used silk thread, and he de-fuzzied it by passing it over a flame. Might be worth a try.

Geoff:

I'd like  to make a suggestion on the stirrups and footropes. On my Constitution I 1st made a simple rig (a couple of pieces of flat balsa attached to a balsa base with a paralel gap bewteen to hold the yard) to rig the footrope assemblies off of the masts. I used very fine wire to make the stirrups and attached them to the yards. Then I used black thread and ran them through the stirrups. Lastly. I tied them to the stirrups where they passed through and put a small drop of super glue at each point. What was nice about the wire stirrups is they could be aligned as needed and held their alignment. Once painted a dark color (black), they looked like rope. I tried stirrups made of thread but unless they were stiffened somehow they wouldn't hang right but tended to curl slightly up. Give this a try, I think you'll like it. Also on my jig I put spacing marks for the various lengths of yards such that I could get the spacing of the stirrups right each time.

Michael Lacey 

Geoff Wilkinson

I know I have a long way to go before seriously worrying about rigging but I did make a start on a couple footropes (that was just before the original question that started this thread) but I was unhappy with the ‘fuzzy’ thread I had used. The yarn supplied with the kit was just too big for the footropes.

I have just tried to compare the threads I now have.

I anticipate that I have a whole new confusing world to explore when it comes to yarn and I know this has been much talked about before. At this stage of my knowledge I would be reluctant to start ordering stuff online so any advice would be much appreciated.

Oof.  The subject of rigging line is a complicated one, and one that's guaranteed to raise controversy among experienced modelers.  I have to start by admitting that it's been quite a few years since I rigged a reasonably complex model, and the market has changed a good deal since then.

The clerk's assertion that "they don't make silk thread anymore" is, of course, baloney.  Do a google search on "silk thread" and you'll immediately find several sources.  But I've never used any of them; the last time I rigged a full-rigged ship model (the little Hancock, which I finished in 1984), it was possible to buy silk thread in well-equipped fabric stores.

The big problem with any kind of commercially-produced thread is that it only comes in a small range of diameters.  (As the Campbell plans make clear, the rigging of a ship like the Cutty Sark included wire and rope in dozens of sizes.  We can't hope to reproduce every one of them, but a good rigging job will include six or eight.)  I was able to find two sizes of silk back in the early eighties, and almost all the line in the Hancock was made from it.  I built a "rope-making machine," with which to "spin up" any diameter I wanted.  The mechanics of the gadget aren't actually especially complicated; the basics of it are explained in most advanced books on ship modeling.  (I made mine from the gears and other parts in a Lego set, screwed down to a four-foot-long board, with a piece of model airplane rubber to produce the necessary tension.  I have no idea how many different sizes of thread I eventually made.)  But I'm not sure I'd encourage anybody to go that route on a first effort. 

Some experts say the only acceptable rigging material is linen, because it doesn't deteriorate.  I disagree.  When I was working in a maritime museum I saw plenty of old - and not-so-old - pieces of linen rigging that had snapped.  I also saw examples of silk thread that had lasted longer.  Plenty of surviving medieval tapestries are made of silk thread stitched on a linen backing.  The truth is that the atmospherice conditions, handling, and care to which a model is subjected have far more to do with the longevity of its rigging than the material of its rigging.  (Linen doesn't respond any better to attacks by incompetent observers of the feline variety than any other material does.)

The one kind of thread that most experienced modelers do reject is cotton.  It's flabby, it's fuzzy, and it has an abominable habit of over-reacting to changes in humidity.  (A line that you set up nice and taut tonight may go slack tomorrow - especially if you didn't run it over a cake of beeswax.)  I did, however, rig my model of the pilot boat Phantom ( http://www.hmsvictoryscalemodels.be/JohnTilleyPhantom/index.html ) with the stuff that came with the Model Shipways kit (and available separately from Model Expo).  Model Expo describes it as a "cotton-poly mix."  To my notion it's pretty nice stuff; it really looks like rope, ties easily, and generally handles very nicely.  I'm not sure I would have used it on a major project, but in that case I figured if the rigging all fell apart at once I could replace it in a few evenings.  The model's been finished for about five years now; so far so good.

There are a couple of specialty firms nowadays that sell twisted linen line made specially for ship models.  The samples I've seen look excellent, but I haven't had occasion to try them.

I usually use wire for any line that has to sag.  (That includes footropes and ratlines.  The ratlines on the Hancock are made from a spool of nickel-chromium wire, about .002 in diameter, that a friend happend to find in a war surplus store.  I probably would have used thread if I'd been working on 1/96 scale, though.)  Either copper or brass wire works well for footropes.  If you've got a well-stocked hobby shop within driving distance, try its model railroad department.  If not, try Radio Shack.  Copper wire may well be soft enough to work without modification; brass will be flexible enough if you pass it over a candle flame before trying to bend it.  Be on the lookout for small, sharp-pointed pliers; they're a boon to that kind of work.  The footropes of the Hancock are made of brass wire; the stirrups were pinched together around the footropes themselves, and soldered (with lead-free solder), before they were attached to the (wood) yards.

Hope that helps a little.  Good luck.

bondoman

Longridge used silk thread, and he de-fuzzied it by passing it over a flame. Might be worth a try.

I did use this technique with the yarn supplied in the Revell kit of the Beagle which did have some 'fuzz'. Of course, you cannot do this with polyester - it melts/catches on fire instantly!

I was fairly impressed by the stuff in the Cutty Sark kit (see earlier post) but then, I'm new to this so am easily impressed at this stage.

Geoff

caramonraistlin

Geoff:

I'd like  to make a suggestion on the stirrups and footropes. On my Constitution I 1st made a simple rig (a couple of pieces of flat balsa attached to a balsa base with a paralel gap bewteen to hold the yard) to rig the footrope assemblies off of the masts. I used very fine wire to make the stirrups and attached them to the yards. Then I used black thread and ran them through the stirrups. Lastly. I tied them to the stirrups where they passed through and put a small drop of super glue at each point. What was nice about the wire stirrups is they could be aligned as needed and held their alignment. Once painted a dark color (black), they looked like rope. I tried stirrups made of thread but unless they were stiffened somehow they wouldn't hang right but tended to curl slightly up. Give this a try, I think you'll like it. Also on my jig I put spacing marks for the various lengths of yards such that I could get the spacing of the stirrups right each time.

 Michael Lacey 

 

Michael,

Thanks for that input. I have taken a look at the few footropes and stirrups that I have made and I am very disappointed with their appearance. I am now seriously considering using wire for some parts of the rigging as you suggest. I do know that I have to redo the existing work and am pleased that I paused when I did.

Geoff

jtilley

The one kind of thread that most experienced modelers do reject is cotton.  It's flabby, it's fuzzy, and it has an abominable habit of over-reacting to changes in humidity.  (A line that you set up nice and taut tonight may go slack tomorrow - especially if you didn't run it over a cake of beeswax.)  I did, however, rig my model of the pilot boat Phantom ( http://www.hmsvictoryscalemodels.be/JohnTilleyPhantom/index.html ) with the stuff that came with the Model Shipways kit (and available separately from Model Expo).  Model Expo describes it as a "cotton-poly mix."  To my notion it's pretty nice stuff; it really looks like rope, ties in knots easily, and generally handles very nicely.  I'm not sure I would have used it on a major project, but in that case I figured if the rigging all fell apart at once I could replace it in a few evenings.  The model's been finished for about five years now; so far so good.

John,

Humidity, I live in Florida - tell me about it!

Seriously though, that is very useful input. I did use beeswax on the yarn supplied for my Beagle - but mainly to try and get ris of the 'fuzz' - it didn't seem to help that much. The rigging still looks good (tension I mean) but then it is only a few months old.

I have just looked at the Coats and Clarke thread I bought the other day, one of which is a 26% cotton 74% polyester mix. It looks good on the reel but seems to develop 'fuzz' when I start handling it. It does not look good it I try to 'de-fuz' it with a flame.

I am going to try and find a good fabric store locally as I was disappointed with the range stocked at Wal-Mart, not to mention the knowledge of the shop assistant.

Wire. I was so pleased with myself when I 'discovered' the source for a very malleable wire to make the minature eyebolts and cleats (the wire in sandwich bag ties) also the not so malleable copper wire for the belay pins.

So, now I need to find sources for both thread and wire but I don't want to just order stuff, blindly, online.

Geoff

GeoffWilkinson

I was contemplating and extension to this so I could take measurements from the plans and convert those to mm at the 1/96 scale.

Then I noticed something odd. The rigging sheet and sail plans are to scale, however, in the infinite wisdom of marketing people (something I never did understand) they have taken the original drawing of the ‘General Layout’, digitized it and reduced by about 10% so the scale is now meaningless. 

This comment by Geoff kind-of got my attention because I have been doing some scratch building according to Campbell's plans. So I went back to the drawing board. What I found was that all three of MY Campbell's plans are consistent within about a 1% margin of error.

What I did find is that my Campbell plans were about 5% larger than the 1/128 scale should be compared to the stated actual length of 212.5 feet. This variance may be due to inconsistencies in reference points. For example Campbell and Longridge seem to measure the length from different points on the stern.

If you were building a Cutty Sark from Campbell's plans, it might end up being 9 feet too long; but converting small measurements to 1/96 scale would not create enough of a variance to worry about.

That said, your Campbell plans may have different variances than mine.

If you're interested there is a Yahoo Group for Cutty Sask builders here is the link and you need to join the group, not many conversations but some of the post are decent.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cuttysark/

BTW I'm doing a very special Cutty Sark Project that should blow off your deck shoes! 

Yes, it is dealing with the Cutty Sark

Yes it's Different

Yes, you'll love it

John Tilley was told about it some month back and I've been in the dry fitting stage for a few months.

AND YES It will still be a few months more to see it...............friggin' Oil Spill got me up to my eyeballs in the stuff at work.

I don't know it for a fact, but I rather suspect the good folks at the Cutty Sark gift shop print up those plans to order.  If so, the errors we've been discussing may depend on how the machine was set up on that particular day by that particular person.

In any case, the best way to resolve any question about measurements on a set of plans is to check the size of the "scale bar" - the line (usually near the bottom of the drawing) that indicates how "long" six, twelve, twenty-four, or a hundred feet (or meters, or whatever) appear in the drawing. 

If there's no such scale bar on the drawing - shoot the draftsman.  A competent draftsman NEVER relies on a verbal statement, like "Scale:  1/8" = 1' ", to stand by itself.  He knows that, at some time or other the drawing is likely to be published in either enlarged or reduced form.  (I wish I had a dollar for every time I've preached that sermon to a grad student who's made a drawing of some archeological artifact to include in a thesis.  Theses get reproduced on microfilm; to the viewer of a microfilmed drawing a verbal statement of the scale is utterly useless.) 

Example - on a drawing that's supposedly on 1/96 scale, the distance between 0 and 50 feet on the scale bar should be exactly 6 1/4".  If it isn't, that means the drawing, somewhere along the line, has been reproduced at something other than full size. 

Whether the dimensions shown in the drawing correspond precisely to those of the real ship is another question entirely.

jtilley

In any case, the best way to resolve any question about measurements on a set of plans is to check the size of the "scale bar" - the line (usually near the bottom of the drawing) that indicates how "long" six, twelve, twenty-four, or a hundred feet (or meters, or whatever) appear in the drawing. 

John,

If you look closely at the photo I posted on 06/26/2010 you should be able to see my metric scale aligned with the scale bar on the drawing. That was how I confirmed that the reproduction was not at full scale.

Back in the day I used to draw on velum then a plastic film using Rotring pens. I would take my drawings to a local architects office and they would reproduce them on white(ish) paper. The print had black(ish) lines. I have been trying to remember the details of that process but my memory bank is not doing too well in that department. I have the feeling that the drawing film was a little costly. I think the reproductions must have been fairly inexpensive and became a matter of routine.

I was taught always to include both a scale bar and a statement on drawings.

One thing I occasionally came across was the definitive disclaimer “Not to Scale” on a set of dimensioned drawings that included both a scale bar and a statement. Very often the scale bar matched the statement so why the disclaimer? I hate the assumption that we are all idiots (or was it lack of self-confidence on the part of the draftsman).

Geoff

Two of Campbell's three sheets have graphic scales drawn on them and these should allow one to scale the drawing, no matter what size the sheets are printed.  Several years ago I enlarged Campbell's general arrangement plan to 1/96, the same scale as the Revell kit, and compared the plan to the kit hull.  Per the Campbell drawings the Revell kit is about one inch, or eight scale feet, too short.  The angle and profile of the stem and stern, the number and locations of the small portholes at the bow, and the number of freeing ports along the bulwarks also do not match the Campbell drawings.  In short, if the Campell drawings are accurate, then the Revell hull is "off" in quite a few areas.

The specifications for the Cutty Sark call for a length of 212.5 feet. Campbell, per his note, used that for his drawing.  If you convert 212.5' to 1/96 scale it comes out to about 26.563". My Revell CS hull is 26.312". That is close enough for me!

If you take Campbell's plans, which are in error, and convert them to 1/96, you will just multiply the error. For example, the General Plan has an 20.750" length (on my copy of the plan). In 1/96 that is about 27.659", which creates your difference of 8' plus a little. Each of my copies of the plan have a different hull length, so it depends on which one you use as to what the error will be. My guess is that an actual ship based on the plans would be about 9' longer than the 212.5' specification.                 

Shipwreck

If you take Campbell's plans, which are in error, and convert them to 1/96, you will just multiply the error. For example, the General Plan has an 20.750" length (on my copy of the plan). In 1/96 that is about 27.659", which creates your difference of 8' plus a little. Each of my copies of the plan have a different hull length, so it depends on which one you use as to what the error will be. My guess is that an actual ship based on the plans would be about 9' longer than the 212.5' specification.                 

If you use the method you describe of measuring an object from a drawing, and then using that measurement to base your enlargement on, and the drawing you measured is not printed precisely to scale, then you are right and there will be an error.   I did not take any measurements from my copy of the plan, I enlarged the plan so that the graphic scale, or scale bar, on the drawing was correctly sized to 1/96, therefore the original size of my copy was irrelevant. 

As far as the length of the ship is concerned, it's been a while since I went through this exercise so I will have to pull out my plans tonight and check my figures.  If your contention that Campbell drew the ship 8' to 9' too long is correct, then that would be a pretty monumental error on his part.

Steves, it sounds like you have an excellent set of Cutty Sark plans in 1/96 scale. I am wondering if you have been following this entire thread. Geoff discovered some discrepancy in them several days ago. It set me scrambling to verify it since I have be scratching building pinrails from them. I have made my comparisons based on the specifications for the ship. But then, who knows if the Cutty Sark was built to the specifications.

I believe that the general consensus is that Campbell's drawings are good, but were distorted when copied! Please let us know what you find.

Shipwreck

The specifications for the Cutty Sark call for a length of 212.5 feet. Campbell, per his note, used that for his drawing.  If you convert 212.5' to 1/96 scale it comes out to about 26.563". My Revell CS hull is 26.312". That is close enough for me!

If you take Campbell's plans, which are in error, and convert them to 1/96, you will just multiply the error. For example, the General Plan has an 20.750" length (on my copy of the plan). In 1/96 that is about 27.659", which creates your difference of 8' plus a little. Each of my copies of the plan have a different hull length, so it depends on which one you use as to what the error will be. My guess is that an actual ship based on the plans would be about 9' longer than the 212.5' specification.                 

I’ll just throw this observation into this discussion.

Both Campbell and CS website specify the ships length as 212.5’. Campbell further clarifies this as “measured length on upper deck planking from its extreme ends”.

To me that means the length of the deck not the actual length of the ship

I measure the three assembled deck sections of the Revell model to be 25.5 inches.

At a scale of 1:100 25.5 inches equals exactly 212.5 feet!

Interesting….

Shipwreck

Steves, it sounds like you have an excellent set of Cutty Sark plans in 1/96 scale. I am wondering if you have been following this entire thread. Geoff discovered some discrepancy in them several days ago. It set me scrambling to verify it since I have be scratching building pinrails from them. I have made my comparisons based on the specifications for the ship. But then, who knows if the Cutty Sark was built to the specifications.

I believe that the general consensus is that Campbell's drawings are good, but were distorted when copied! Please let us know what you find.

Shipwreck,

My first post on this thread was several pages back, before the plan scale issue even came up, so I can assure you that I have been following the entire thread.  The only set of 1/96 plans I have are the Campbell plans which I have enlarged and printed myself with the large format scanner and plotter at my office.  I have sized them using the graphic scale bar, put on the drawings by Campbell, and I am quite sure that they are correct to 1/96 scale.  And I would disagree with you that the general consensus is that the drawings were “distorted” when copied.  The issue appears to be that some people have received copies of the drawings that are not sized correctly to be at the 3/32”=1’ scale that they are stated to be.  This is not the same thing as a distorted drawing, which would be unusable.  The point that I have tried to make is that, while it may be inconvenient or annoying to be sold an incorrectly sized drawing, it really doesn’t matter what size the drawing is, as long as you use the drawn graphic scale to take your measurements they will be correct.

Regarding the length of the ship, I have rechecked the Campbell plans and am confident that he has drawn the ship correctly and that the Revell kit is too small.  As you say, Campbell states that the registered length of the ship is 212.5’, but that needs to be measured at the correct location.  If you look above the hull on the Inboard Elevation, which is the top drawing on the General Arrangement sheet, you will see two vertical lines labeled “Register Length”.  These lines show exactly where the 212.5' should be measured from, and the distance between these two lines on a correctly sized 3/32” scale plan (which I have) is just a hair under 20 inches, right on the 19.92 inches  that 212.5’ in 3/32” scale should be.  If you measure the Revell kit hull from the same points, I believe you will you will find that it falls about one inch, or eight scale feet, short of the 26.56 inches that 212.5’ should measure on a 1/96 model.  To confirm it, check the other dimension for the ship's length that Campbell gives: 203’-6” for the keel length.  That’s 25.43 inches in 1/96 scale and the kit keel measures about 24.5 inches-again, about an inch short.

And in 1/96 that’s exactly one inch too short.  But, I take your point, the kit hull is slightly undersized in all directions, per the Campbell plans, and overall is probably closer to 1/100 than 1/96.  Now, did  Revell design the kit the kit in 1/100 and then call it 1/96, figuring no one in 1959 would know or care?

To expound a bit on Prof Tilley's foot rope technique, I too use wire. 

I like to use annealed steel wire that is already black.

If it's a ship with jackstays, and the jackstay is moulded in, I drill a hole for the wire, and superglue it in place (for those scale large enough for a proper jackstay, then it's get in there with the fine pliers.  For older vessels, the wire gets snubbed up to the yard in the right spots.

For the supporting lines, I use thread of  a proper size.  This is superglued to a hole in the correct location (or looped around the yard and tied off--whichever is appropriate).   This thread is hung down abaft the yard, a gauge block then used to tie the thread off to the wire foot rope.

That teeny-tiny knot just looks better to me, and the wire will hold the sag in between nicely.

[quote user="steves"

GeoffWilkinson:

I measure the three assembled deck sections of the Revell model to be 25.5 inches.

At a scale of 1:100 25.5 inches equals exactly 212.5 feet!

Interesting….

And in 1/96 that’s exactly one inch too short.  But, I take your point, the kit hull is slightly undersized in all directions, per the Campbell plans, and overall is probably closer to 1/100 than 1/96.  Now, did  Revell design the kit the kit in 1/100 and then call it 1/96, figuring no one in 1959 would know or care?

[/quote]

Very interesting stuff.

On another website a few months ago we had a discussion of this kit; one of the participants had an example that he'd bought in Canaday quite a few years ago.  He said the box of his kit was labeled "1/100 scale."  Whether that was actually the case, or whether his memory was incorrect, or whether Revell was or was not selling some kits that were slightly larger than others at some point, I have no idea.  (The latter scenario seems highly unlikely.  On the other hand, in those days Revell had a pantograph machine that was capable of amazing things....)

One other factor we should take into consideration:  I don't know exactly when the Campbell plans were published, but I'm pretty sure it was after the Revell kit hit the market.  I'm not sure what sources the Revell designers worked from, but those sources almost certainly did not include the Campbell plans.

I've said quite a few times that, in terms of accuracy, my favorite Cutty Sark kit is the one from Imai.  (It quite obviously was designed on the basis of the Campbell plans.  A Forum search on "Imai Cutty Sark" will explain why I'm so certain of that.)  It's advertised as being on 1/125 scale.  I'd be curious to compare that kit to the Campbell plans.  My guess is that they'd match precisely, or very nearly so.  (The plans are on 1/128 scale; my strong suspicion is that Imai picked 1/125 as the nearest convenient metric equivalent, and I wouldn't be surprised if the designers just ignored the difference between 1/125 and 1/128.) 

If I were actually planning to build a model of the Cutty Sark  from a plastic kit I'm not at all sure which one I'd pick.  In many significant respects the Imai offering is superior to the Revell one.  But the big problem with working on the smaller scale is the vast amount of chain rigging.  The smallest chain I know about is 42 links to the inch, which is about right for the sheets, halyards, etc. on 1/96 scale.  But it would be pretty conspicuously overscale on 1/125 (or 1/128).  In all honesty that fact makes me shy away from this particular ship as a model subject.

The chain problem comes up in almost any post-early-nineteenth-century sailing ship model on a relatively small scale.  It's occurred to me that the photo-etching process just might hold the solution.  But none of the photo-etched chain I've seen offered by the aftermarket companies (as anchor chain for 1/350 and 1/700 warships) is anywhere near small enough. 

Several days ago there was a question about shroud pairings and what to do with the fifth shroud. I referred the question to Ms. Jessica Beverely who is the Curator for the Cutty Sark Trust. She in turn conferred with her rigger  and this is her response:

Pair seized with 3 seizings in middle, Stb (1+2) Ditto Port Pair seized

in middle with 3 seizings, Stb (3+4) Ditto Port Single with 3 seizing's

Stb (5) Ditto Port

1 being most forward and 5 most aft.

Upon clarification, (5) is a single cable that is seized to itself. So, there is a (5) starboard, and a (5) port.

Shipwreck

Several days ago there was a question about shroud pairings and what to do with the fifth shroud. I referred the question to Ms. Jessica Beverely who is the Curator for the Cutty Sark Trust. She in turn conferred with her rigger  and this is her response:

 Pair seized with 3 seizings in middle, Stb (1+2) Ditto Port Pair seized

in middle with 3 seizings, Stb (3+4) Ditto Port Single with 3 seizing's

Stb (5) Ditto Port

1 being most forward and 5 most aft.

 Upon clarification, (5) is a single cable that is seized to itself. So, there is a (5) starboard, and a (5) port.

Shipwreck,

I appreciate you contacting the CS Trust and am delighted to hear that they responded!

The clarification is most useful as I had proposed to make the forward shroud the single.

At the time I thought there was some sort of logic in that arrangement but I can't remember what it was now.

Geoff

steves

At a scale of 1:100 25.5 inches equals exactly 212.5 feet!

Interesting…. 

And in 1/96 that’s exactly one inch too short.  But, I take your point, the kit hull is slightly undersized in all directions, per the Campbell plans, and overall is probably closer to 1/100 than 1/96.  Now, did  Revell design the kit the kit in 1/100 and then call it 1/96, figuring no one in 1959 would know or care?

Does anyone know where the original molds were made? Were they made by German engineers? If so, would it not have been natural for them to have used a metric scale. If they did then it is possible that they did design the kit at 1/100. That scale does not sit too well with the Imperial system of measurement whereas 1/96 does.

Geoff