“jtilley” wrote: == The fact that your kit has that T-shaped stand suggests pretty strongly that it’s Revell in origin. (Most of the Airfix sailing ship kits I’ve seen have had cruciform stands.) If you’ll post a picture I can probably tell for sure. If you do have one of the Revell Mayflower kits - either of them - you’re in luck. == Thanks for the offer. Likely I will post some images in the near future (need my own homepage and currently I am in the process of shopping for a ccd camera). However, the following link to ebay (Item number: 6027510793) has the Mayflower which appears to be the same than the one I obtained: http://cgi.ebay.com/Revell-The-Mayflower-Model-Ship-Kit-20-Long-Plastic_W0QQitemZ6027510793QQcategoryZ4248QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem I do not have the Heller kit handy (have got internet access in my office at the university only). But let me emphasize (will have again to look it up at home, but I am not 100 perecent sure on this): there is no T-stand (at the rear side). My “Constitution” from Revell doesn’t have a T-stand either at the rear side. The rear side of my “Constition quick builder kit 22” long" from Revell features the same construct than the forefront of a typical Revell stand. And I am also not sure yet whether the Heller kit has that many blocks on the sprues than the one you can see from the aformentioned posted ebay link. That said everything else seem to be the same. nevertheless it is interesting why the Heller “Mayflower 20"” has such a high price tag $60. The kit does have only 106 parts and is in the same leagure than lets say Heller its “Santa Maria 20"”. Although, “Santa Maria” from Heller costs $25 (currently there is an offer on ebay “buy it now” where one can buy it for $13). The assmbled Heller Mayflower may be find here (copy and paste it into your browser): http://www.old.modelarstwo.org.pl/szkutnicze/zestaw/heller/mayflower/index.html Regards, Katzennahrung
The one in the e-bay photo is a reissue of the old, original Revell Mayflower - the smaller one. (What a wretched illustration on the box. This is why so many people think plastic kits are toys.) It has a “T” stand. The photos are just about good enough to demonstrate what I mean about the original kit’s quality - which is excellent. Take a look at the planking detail.
I’m a little hesitant to identify the one in the Heller box, because I’ve never seen the inside of the Airfix kit. This could conceivably be it - but it certainly looks like the Revell one. The stand is a bit of a curiosity. It isn’t the standard Revell “T” stand - but the nameplate on it seems to be identical to the one in the Revell kit. (Most Revell sailing ships had nicely engraved nameplates, with lugs on the back for screws to mount them to wood baseboards.) It’s conceivable that this is the second, larger Revell kit; the smaller and larger ones, having (I think) been based on the same masters, would be almost impossible to distinguish from each other in photographs.
When yours arrives it shouldn’t be hard to clear up the question. Compare the size of it to your “Quick-Build” Constitution. If it’s pretty clear that the Mayflower would require a box of the same size, you’ve got the second, larger version. If the overall length is somewhere in the neighborhood of 16" - 18", you’ve got the original, smaller one. Either one, as I mentioned earlier, is a fine kit. The smaller one would be more difficult to detail, but either would make a fine basis for a serious scale model.
I haven’t spent much time on e-bay, but it’s clear that the prices on it are utterly irrational. I’ve seen some old, out-of-production models there with unbelievably low prices, and I’ve seen current, readily-available kits sold for more than what the hobby shops charge. That’s one of the reasons I’ve never been keen on doing business with e-bay.
I could read this about Heller too : you may copy my model, but you give me 1000 (or 10000) kits of your copied model. This happened several times between Heller and various manufacturers, was there or not an agreement between the two companies.
Michel
Well, if you still wonder if the Revell model is really 1/146 scale, take a look at this picture :
The new 1/200 scale Mantua model (wood) with the so-called 1/146 scale Revell model:
Michel
Very interesting indeed. I wouldn’t want to pass judgment on the basis of a photo, but it looks to me like both those kits probably are mis-labeled. The Revell one clearly is too small to be on 1/146 scale, and the Mantua one certainly looks like it’s bigger than 1/200. (We established earlier, with fair certainty, that the Revell kit is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/220. If so, and if the Mantua one is on 1/200, the Revell hull ought to be ten percent shorter than the Mantua one. Perspective in photos can be deceptive, but it sure looks to me like the difference in length between the two hulls is greater than that.)
In fairness, we probably should remember that the people who design the kits aren’t the same ones who write the advertisements. But I find myself wondering - not for the first time - how many of the people who work for these manufacturers really understand what the term “scale model” means.
Michael, do you have the 1:180 Victory to lay against the 1/200 Mantua kit?
Celestino,
we are two modelers (Xander898 and myself) busy with HMS Victory models.
Xander898 has the Sergal 1/78 scale model ; the Mantua 1/200 scale model and the 1/146 scale Revell model.
I have the Mantua 1/98 scale model, the life-like 1/400 scale model, and in the next weeks I’ll have the Airfix 1/180 scale model, the Heller 1/100 scale model and the Revell 1/225 scale model.
So, there will be no picture of the Airfix and Mantua models “side by side”, but we’ll give you the length of both hulls (length of the “naked” hull of the 1/200 scale Mantua model is 37 Cm, Sergal 90 Cm. ).
Michel
I received the 1/225 scale Revell model.
The size is around 2/3 the 1/146 model, length of the hull is 21 Cm. So, the scale is between 1/300 and 1/350.
It is a nice little model, well detailed, but no clue to guess the origin of the model. It is not a scaled-down “1/146 scale Revell” model, it is different, with full sails in vac-formed plastic.
I’ll post pictures of this model soon.
Michel
Michel,
Very interesting! What about the transom and quarter galleries? If they have all three rows of windows, this kit isn’t related to the old Lindberg one - or the one later issued in the Entex box.
If Revell did indeed make its own Victory that was 2/3 the size of the one it already had on the market, the obvious question is: why? But it sounds like that’s becoming a more and more likely explanation.
I posted some pictures to show “what is in the box”.
The pictures are here :
http://www.hmsvictoryscalemodels.be/Revell1225Michelvrtg/index.html
Michel
Looks like it’s not a bad little kit. Quite a few of the major details have been simplified, of course, but it seems to have the general shape of the real thing.
This kit doesn’t look like any Victory kit I’ve ever seen before. It isn’t a reissue of the old Lindberg one; this Revell product has all three rows of windows in the transom and quarter galleries.
I has the general feel of having been copied from the other, slightly larger Revell kit - by somebody who almost, but not quite, knew what he was doing. Take a look at the forecastle timberheads on the hull halves. On the bigger kit they’re shaped right - as tapered wedges. The person who made the master for the smaller kit figured round blobs would be good enough. The “shroud-and-ratline” assemblies are among the sillier ones I’ve ever seen. The way the lower and topmast shrouds are connected to each other is downright irrational.
On the other hand, take a look at the coils of “rope” molded into the upper deck. If I’m not mistaken, those ropes are lying in exactly - or almost exactly - the same places as the ones on the larger Revell kit. That can’t possibly be a coincidence. The designer of this kit was looking at the Revell one.
This is a strange, convoluted story. It would be interesting to know what happened - but I strongly doubt that anybody at Revell would give a straight answer about it. We do, however, now have a definitive straightforward answer to the question with which Michel started this fascinating thread: “Is (was) there just one Revell HMS Victory model kit?” The answer clearly is - yes.
Thank you John.
yesterday I received the old Entex HMS Victory model kit.
You can see pictures here :
http://www.hmsvictoryscalemodels.be/EntexMichelvrtg/index.html
This must be the model you were talking about, the Lindberg one.
But there must be some differences : the sails seem to be different, I’ll be back with another question, this time about the Lindberg HMS Victory.
Michel
Those pictures look familiar. Beware my memory of the Lindberg kit, though; said memory is at least thirty years old. Today I was five minutes late to class because I couldn’t remember where I’d put either my glasses or my car keys.
I vaguely remember buying a Victory in an Entex box, and I’m beginning to think I may have confused the Lindberg and Entex kits. The one in this set of pictures is, in some (not many) respects, a little better than the small Revell one we were discussing the other day. (The Entex one has separate parts for the head rail assemblies; on the Revell one they’re molded integrally with the hull halves.) In most other respects, the Entex one looks pretty awful. The hull halves are downright crude (out-of-scale planking, no copper sheathing, and no gunports). The stern is missing one row of windows (as I thought I remembered the Lindberg version was). And those vac-formed “sails” just may be the most laughably awful ones I’ve ever seen.
The small Revell kit obviously has some sort of family relationship with the larger Revell one. (There’s no other explanation for those coils of rope - which aren’t on the Entex one.) I’m beginning to wonder if the small Revell one is in fact the old Lindberg one, and the Entex one has a completely independent history.
There are, however, some faint hints of a relationship between the Entex kit and the larger Revell one. The parts breakdown is similar (though simplified in the case of the Entex one). Those “sails” look like incompetent copies of the ones that came with the large Revell kit - at least in its original incarnation. The Revell fore and main topsails made a reasonable attempt (when viewed from the front, at least) at looking like they were in the process of being furled or set, with the buntlines making bundles at their feet. The Entex versions give the impression that somebody with no understanding of sails in the Western tradition was trying to copy the Revell ones. The subtle “seam” detail of the Revell ones apparently eluded him completely. Those enormous, 3-dimensional grids are pretty funny.
I don’t trust my memory any farther than I could throw it, but it does seem like if I’d ever seen such a ridiculous set of sails before I’d remember it. I have a faint recollection of buying a kit that contained a sheet of highly flexible white plastic - almost like latex rubber, but not as stretchy - with vague instructions to make sails out of it. I wonder if that might have been an earlier issue of this Entex kit.
Another point: if memory serves (as it frequently doesn’t these days) the flagsheet is a direct copy of the Revell one. I think I remember the pattern of the phony wrinkles in the Revell ensign and jack. (Why in the world did manufacturers ever get the idea of drawing flags with wrinkles in two dimensions? It surely would be easier do draw the flags as rectangles, and any modeler with sufficient manual dexterity to dress himself can put genuine, 3-dimensional wrinkles in a flag in a matter of seconds.) And the “England Expects…” signal flags drawn in hoists, to be fastened to the halyards as groups and separated afterward, are right out of the Revell kit.
It looks to me like this Entex thing is the work of some Japanese manufacturer whose designer had no idea of what the real Victory (or any other Western sailing ship) looked like and whose only source of reference was the Revell kit. My recollection is that the Lindberg one was a little better than this; in asserting that the Lindberg one suffered from the lack of stern windows I may have been in error. But I’m afraid this strange story can’t be sorted out until somebody finds one of the old Lindberg kits - if any still exist.
I think, this could be interesting, a picture from the 1972-1973 Revell catalogue (Dutch edition here), as you can see, the scale of the “1/146” Revell model has become 1/222.
Michel