Why 1/35 scale - where did it come from?

[Tim Marlow]

This is fun, can we do figure scales next

[Steve-the-Duck]

Oh,d

This is fun, can we do figure scales next

Oh, don't get me started. wait,I think I already did...

5mm, 10mm, 15mm, 20mm, 25mm, 28mm, 32mm, 54mm, 90mm, 120mm, 200mm, 6inch, 12 inch. Shall I continue?

[Tim Marlow]

Well you’ve left out 2, 3, 6, 12, 18, 40, 45, 75, and 100mm for a start……and I’m very sure there are others out there…..LOL

[Guest]

1/35th scale does not, as far as I can see, equate to a nice linear conversion like most scales

That is only a concern to those raised in Anglo-American measurements. Metric-raised people just shift the decimal separator, and dividing by (multiples of) 5 is relatively straightforward too if everything you do is in base-10 instead of base-whateverthehelliscommonlyusedatthisparticularsize. If the majority of scale models back in the Olden Days™ had been from Europe and East Asia, we would quite possibly all be using things like 1:50, 1:75 and 1:150 for aircraft, for example, instead of 1:48, 1:72 and 1:144.

The received wisdom is it's Tamiya-san himself's 'fault' having decided on that as the 'size' for his tank model/toys. The first tanks they put out were motorised, so they had to 'fit-to-box' and 'fit-to-battery.'

The culprit, apparently, being the original Panther tank kit Tamiya released: the hull was made wide enough to fit two C-size batteries, and that turned out to be about 1:35 scale.

There are some 1/35 aircraft, mostly helicopters or army communication aircraft and Border Models have started introducing a range of 1/35 aircraft such as a bf109c Val, Zero and Fw190. Many of us who build 1/32 scale are, shall we say, rather unimpressed with the 1/35 aircraft and won’t go near them. To large scale aircraft builders they are a distraction that should not be encouraged.

Whereas, I suspect, there are plenty of diorama builders who welcome them because now they finally have aircraft kits that aren’t 10% too big for the figures, vehicles, etc. they want to pose around them. I still don't get why that recent section of Japanese aircraft carrier is in 1:35 rather than 1:32, though. You’d think they would sell far more of them to 1:32 scale aircraft modellers than to 1:35 scale AFV modellers who also build the odd aircraft.

That said, there are also 1:32 scale figure and vehicle kits, mostly from Airfix and Monogram, which competed with Tamiya’s 1:35 scale kits in the 1970s but lost out to them largely because the 1:32 ranges were never going to be as big as 1:35 was rapidly becoming. Modern AFV modellers generally don’t touch them for much the same reasons as 1:32 scale aircraft modellers don’t want 1:35 scale planes. Well, that, and they’re all ancient kits that were OK to good in the 1970s, but by today’s standards are about one level above toys.

[Sprue42]

Or why not use 5mm or 10mm which would be far more logical.

The model railway scale and gauge subject is an entirely different can of worms that does not need to be opened here or we might be here until Christmas discussing it :smiling3:

[Steve-the-Duck]

Well you’ve left out 2, 3, 6, 12, 18, 40, 45, 75, and 100mm for a start……and I’m very sure there are others out there…..LOL

75 and 100, of course. Well, I never said my list was complete!

[Tim Marlow]

75 and 100, of course. Well, I never said my list was complete!

I know……we’ve left out the flat figure scales for example…..I think there is probably a figure made somewhere for almost every millimetre we can name

[Steve-the-Duck]

I know……we’ve left out the flat figure scales for example…..I think there is probably a figure made somewhere for almost every millimetre we can name

And now, with 3D printing, you can make stuff any size you like, so long as the parts fit. I've a clutch of 1/8 figures that are different heights in mil, because the characters depicted are different heights

In a previous 'what scale is..?' thread I mentioned a Dragon set of Commonwealth Infantry at Monte Cassino which had British/Polish heads, Sikh heads, and heads for the tallest set of Ghurkas ever
So, the figures on the Kaga deck with the 1/35 'Val', are they, comparitively short?

Just a thought...

[David Lovell]

You'll all be glad to hear I'm not getting involved in this all that I'd love to build one of them but they don't do in my scale stuff get out of the tyre tread marks lifes to short ,there told you I wouldn't get involved. Dave