Understanding scales

[kier]

Hi builders please don't think of me as being stupid but I can never understand the so called theory of the scales of models. Well I mean the understanding of it, I can never understand what length for this and that.

. I am at the moment of trying to make sure of the deck and hull planks lengths or even should I not so called bother will be at some point be thinking of building AL Santa Maria which has an overall length of 560mm.. Can anyone help. 

.           many thanks

[rtropp]

I was having difficulty with accurate, and quick, calculations.  I found an application for my IPhone called Model Scaler.  It was a free application in the Iphone app library and best of all, while it had some presets geared to train enthusiasts, it allowed you to put in custom scales.  So, I could enter the actual size, say 60 feet, and it would translate it to the size in 1/64, i.e., 11.25 inches, or convert into any other scale I chose.

 

Richard

Edited March 6, 2019 by rtropp
spelling correction

[tkay11]

You are not really clear as to what you do not understand about 'the theory of scales', so I apologise if you already understand that 1:65 means that on a model 1inch would represent 65inches on the real ship. If you hadn't understood this, to estimate the lengths that you need to use, all you have to do is divide the length you expect on the full size ship by 65, as the scale stated for the Artesiana Latina model is 1:65. So a 20ft length would work out at 20x12=240inches, which divided by 65 would give you 3.69 inches, or 93.8mm.

 

I don't know anything about plank lengths on ships of that period in Spain but there are plenty of build logs on this site for your particular kit which may help, as well as for other kits of the same ship.

 

As far as I understand, hull planking tended to be in the 20-24ft range, although that may be different on Spanish ships of the period. I don't think the length of the ship would have much to do with the length of planks used. This would be more dependent on the lengths of cut available which would be set against the need to have as much stability and waterproofing as possible. The widths of the planking would, of course differ depending on their position on the hull, between 1.5 times the width at the centre (which I think might have been 10-12inches), and 0.5 times that width.

 

For the deck planking, zu Mondfeld in his book 'Historic Ship Models' says that before the 16th Century the width of deck planks was 12-18 inches, the thickness of the top planking 3 inches, the gap for caulking about 3/8th of an inch (and here I think he's referring to English inches). The treenail pattern would vary according to the width of the deck planks.

 

I believe the length of deck planking would vary between 12ft and 20ft, but could well be wrong.

 

More than the particular lengths of plank used it will be important to ensure that you have the pattern of butt shifts correct on both deck and hull.

 

I can see that you've built a few models before, so you may well have read the excellent planking tutorials in the download section of this site, but I do recommend them in case you haven't.

 

I hope this helps, but I would emphasise I'm certainly no expert.

 

Tony

[kier]

Thankyou Richard & Tony I think I am a bit nearer and clearer of the facts regarding scales of model ships now, despite having read many tutorials in the past. 

.          Many thanks

.                          kier