discussion A question of scale

[Guest]

I really do have too much time on my hands..

Why/how/who decided on the common scale formats? I mean, the obvious scales would be decimal - 1/10, 1/20, 1/30 etc, but we have 144, 72 (ok there's a relationship there) but then it's 48, 24, 12 and 6. So where did 1/35th come from for armour, and why are larger scale aircraft 1/32nd? I'm building a 1/25th Tiger - why 1/25th? Next up in size is 1/16th (ok that links to 1/32nd, which is an aircraft scale so no help there).

The thing is, if I build a 1/32nd scale aircraft and want to put a dio together with some military vehicles, I'm rather restricted for choice.

Over to the wisdom of the collective

 

[spanner570]

Welcome to the friendly forum Johnc. You can use 1/35 scale with 1/32, Folks would be hard pushed to tell.........Just!!

Ron

 

[Gern]

Hi John,

I think I have part of your answer.

Lots of scales are based on the Imperial system of measurement where 1 foot = 12 inches.

This means that 1:72 is the same as 1 inch = 6 feet - so a figure would be 1 inch tall.

1:144 is exactly half of this.

1:48 gives 1 inch = 4 feet

And the old ship scale of 1:600 gives 1 inch = 50 feet.

I can't help you with the metrioc(?) scales of 1:35, 1:32 and even more oddly 1:700 for ships.

Gern

 

[Guest]

Hi John,

I think the early scales came from railway modelling where 'O' guage is equivalent to 1/48 & 'OO' guage is 1/76, and these were the popular scales in USA & Canada for instance. 1/72 was used here from the '30's perhaps because it's 1 inch to 6 feet-an easy way of thinking of scale in imperial measurements! The 1/32 scale was used in armour & figures by Airfix in the '60's & '70's as I'm sure I remember seeing a few kits around but I think the rise of the popularity of military modelling in the Far East, especially motorised tanks where more space was needed, led to the use of 1/35 scale.

It seems that the requirements of the manufacturer is what drives scales, not the end-user! That's why we also have 1/25 & 1/16 maybe?

Patrick

 

[Guest]

Thats answered that question I had!