Revell 1/150 USS United States

Modeling Subjects Ships
1

Picked up this kit for cheap on the web, thinking it would be a good tuneup to get back into plastic sailing ships. I have a 1/96 Alabama/Kearsarge, a 1/110 Pyro Harriet Lane and a 1/150 Heller three-decker that I want to do eventually, but figured I would try something a little smaller and cheaper first in case I screw it up (I know this goes against Jtilley’s “small ship, big-scale” suggestion for newbies).

Questions:

  1. I understand the Old Waggon had a roundhouse/poop that is missing on the kit… any way to replicate this?

  2. Those plastic shrouds/ratlines are nasty… how do you rig better ones in a scale this small?

  3. What diameter of rigging line would work in this scale? I’m not impressed with the thread that came with the kit.

  4. Any suggestions on black hull paint that is dark enough to look correct but still light enough to show weathering effects (washes, dry-brushing)?

  5. Is it worth replanking a model this size with actual wood strips? If not, what’s your best technique for making the plastic deck look like wood?

Thanks to jtilley and all you plastic sailing ship guys – I’ve already learned a great deal from reading the sailing ship posts on this forum.

2

Hi,
According to the history books, USS United States, a 1576-ton sailing frigate, was built at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as one of the first warships of the new United States Navy. Commissioned in July 1797, she cruised vigorously during the 1798-1800 Quasi-War with France, taking several prizes. United States was again active in the 1812-13, this time against the British, and captured the Royal Navy frigate Macedonian on 25 October 1812.

Following the War of 1812, United States was employed in the western Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the eastern Pacific and off Africa. She was laid up at the Norfolk Navy Yard in 1849 and was captured by the Confederates when they seized that facility in April 1861. Placed in Southern service as CSS United States, she was used as a receiving ship but was sunk when the Confederates abandoned Norfolk in May 1862. Though subsequently salvaged by the U.S. Navy, she was not worth repairing and was broken up following the Civil War.

One of her Capt. I can’t remember which one (Calling Prof. TiIley) decided to bring his wife allong on the deployment, so he had the shipyard add a raised poop area and fit it out with living apt/area so his wife would be cozy. The extra weight over the stern post not only warpped the hull (hogged the keel) but created additional drag and slowed down the frigate when try to sail. I don’t remember when they removed that crap.

Here is what I can offer on the questions you asked;

1.) To duplicate it, add a flat section with sone deck detail to stern area from about the 4 gun from the stern.

2.) Use a loom-a-line or Heller ratline jig.

3.) Contact Model-Expo they have an excellent supply of rigging. In the 1/150th scale something the size of heavy thread and fine upolstry(sp) line should work.

4.) Use Floquil Railroad Steam Power Black, it’s a water base, but covers GREAT.

5.) That depends on the detail YOU want to have? Is worth it? The thinness of the wood will be the problem. You can follow the methods used in Les Wilkins Building Plastic Ship Models. If you don’t have a copy I can copy the section for you.

Jake

3

Also here is a link on the United States from an earlier BB discussion.

http://www.finescale.com/fsm/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8910

4

Thanks Jake –

I would appreciate it if you would send me the info from the Wilkins book. I have wanted a copy of this book for some time but could never find it at a decent price. I checked all the usual suspects (Alibris, Bookfinder, AbeBooks, etc.) and only found one for $55 at Amazon and $39 on another site… is the book good enough to make it worth buying at those kinds of prices?

I guess now that I think about it, I have the ratline jig from the Heller kit I have, so perhaps I’ll try that. I’ll try the steam power black too. Does anybody know whether the raised poop was there when the United States took the Macedonian?

5

Email me your address to

jbgroby@cox.net

6

We had a good discussion of the old Revell 1/196 Constitution kit in the Forum a couple of months ago. I’ve moved it to the first page; it should appear just below this one. If rayers’s United States kit is indeed a reissue of that one, the comments in that thread - regarding the big, solid hatch on the spar deck, for instance - presumably are applicable.

I’m not sure this is the kit rayers has, though. I just checked the Revell Germany website. There’s a “1/150” U.S.S. United States on it all right - and it’s described as having a one-piece hull. There’s no photograph of the kit - just a reproduction of the box art. And the dimensions (assuming my conversion from the metric system is reasonably accurate) don’t check out for 1/150. They’re way too small.

I wonder if this kit is the old Constitution that Monogram issued back in the late seventies. That’s the only one I can recall that had a one-piece hull. It was promoted as being the ultimate in simplicity, at a time when the plastic ship model industry was just about dead. I seem to recall that the yards were molded integrally with the masts, as well. Monogram did a Cutty Sark in a similarly-sized box at the same time, with similar simplifications.

Rayers - does yours have a one-piece hull?

Regarding the United States herself - my impression is that she had the “round house” (i.e., raised quarterdeck) from the beginning, because she was intended to serve as the flagship of the embryonic U.S. Navy and to carry a supernumerary commodore in addition to the ship’s captain. I may be mistaken, but I believe that’s what Howard I. Chapelle, in his History of the American Sailing Navy, says. In his plans for the class Chapelle added the raised quarterdeck in dotted lines, with a note that the feature was “reconstructed” (i.e., it didn’t appear on the original drawing he was tracing). Chapelle’s book is pretty old now (1949), and I normally like to check his statements before asserting that they’re absolutely correct. But I’m not aware of any other researcher’s having taken much interest in the United States. That’s a shame, really. She was an important ship, and had an interesting career.

If Chapelle and I are right, a model of the United States without the raised quarterdeck wouldn’t be accurate. There seem to be a couple of options. One -build the raised quarterdeck. (Evergreen scribed styrene sheet would be a good material for the deck planking. The trickiest part would be figuring out what to do about the transom and its associated carvings.) Two - scrape the name off the transom and call the model either Constitution or President. If the painting on the Revell Germany website is to be believed, the figurehead in the kit is a simple generic billet head. The Constitution and President had figureheads of that style during the War of 1812.

Regarding the “shrouds and ratlines” - “nasty” is a good word for what’s in the kit. My good friend Jake and I seem to have a cordial disagreement about the best way to solve the problem; read what both of us have to say about it and take your pick (or ignore both of us). In my opinion Heller-type jigs are a waste of time and effort - and almost everybody I’ve heard from who’s bought a “loom-a-line” has thrown it away. In that earlier post about the old Revell Constitution kit I described two ways to make ratlines out of thread - both of which methods will look far, far better than any system that involves gluing the threads across the shrouds. On this particular kit I’d probably use the “shove-the-ratline-through-the-shroud-with-a-needle” method.

On 1/150 (or 1/196) scale rigging ratlines is tricky, no matter how you do it. They should, in theory, be about 1/16" apart. If you space them wider than that - say, anything less than 1/8" - most people probably won’t notice. But, as another Forum participant commented once, the best solution on such a small scale may be simply to leave the ratlines off. If the shrouds are rigged nicely the model won’t look bad. Ludicrously out-of-scale ratlines will do more harm than good.

In that earlier thread you’ll also find some comments about rigging line. The bottom line is - the more variety the better. A ship model rigged with four or five different diameters of line will look far more realistic than one rigged with two. Two golden rules about rigging: If in doubt about color, err on the dark side. If in doubt about size, err on the small side.

Hope this helps a little. Good luck.

7

Good day Professor ! I hope you won’t get bored from revitalizing that good old thread [:)]

I finally gathered enough confidence to take German Revell’s “1/150” USS United States. To start with, this kit is neither the United States nor 1/150. But also, it is not a virtual reissue of the nice old 1/196 Constitution. Apparently, they united the two halves of the hull to mold a new single piece hull; issued a new set of guns molded on two narrow strips of plastic which represent parts of the gun deck; united the spars with masts, thus created one piece masts, a new “fiddle head” bow, without Andrew Jackson figurehead, and a new transom. Interesting but hilarious marketing ploy as you so aptly call [:)] In my trip to London this February, I bought a reprint of a super-duper old book: “The Frigate Constitution and Other Historic Ships” by F. Alexander Magoun (originally printed in 1927). I assume both the book and its author are very famous to ship modelling community in the States. When I compared Revell’s kit with the plans of Constitution from the book (these are noted to be the official plans for her 1927 restoration), I found that they overlap to the last detail. Thus, quite ironically, what German Revell sells as the United States is actually the Constitution after its first restoration as a museum ship.

8

Kapudan’s observations confirm my suspicions: this is the old Monogram Constitution. I never bought it, but I remember taking a look at the contents of the box in the hobby shop where I was working at the time. It struck me as an ingeniously-designed product that would produce something that, from a fair distance, would look reasonably like a model of a sailing ship. But I don’t think it was ever intended for serious scale ship modelers.

9

I recently got suckered persuaded to buy this kit. It is definitely based on the 1:196 Constitution, but is considerably smaller. Maybe 1:250 scale, but nowhere close to 1:150.

The detail on the deck is much improved: the main hatch has molded grating over the open areas versus the large blank areas of the 1:196 kit and the skylight over the captain’s cabin is more accurate. But the molded combings of the the hatches and the companionways are way too high (about 2’ in scale). The deck is actually molded with some crown (although again, probably too much scale-wise). The training gear of the carronades is molded into the deck, but would be about impossible to paint without the aid of an electron microscope. The transom piece is the modern/restored Constitution with the window covers molded in the closed position and some half-hearted ingraving that implies fourth and fifth gallery windows.

The one-piece hull also means that they had to forego all the molded detail inside the bulwalks - pin rails, planking, etc.

As Prof. Tilley mentioned, it has the yards molded to the masts in the raised positions. Either you use the vaccuum-formed sails, or are faced with a lot of work to re-work the masts with the yards lowered.

Nothing about this kit even suggests Revell made any effort to model the United States: it’s just a smaller, simplified, “quick build” version of the 1:196 Constitution. Quite frankly, I don’t know if I’m even going to make the effort to build it.

It’s really a shame they didn’t just spend the effort to update/improve the molds of the 1:196 kit.

Mark

10

I have had both the Constititution and the United States kits. The ONLY difference between the two is the box art, and the nameplate. That is it. Fun little kits to put together and practice rigging on but do not count on them for accuracy.

Scott

11

Good day,

I share your argument that the kit is a bit simplistic, but I think you judged it rather harshly overall [:)] I compared kit’s components with the detailed plans in Magoun’s book and I did not find any inconsistency or inaccuracy. The model is 40 cm from transom to the tip of jibboom when completed: same length with another classic from Revell, the 1/220 HMS Victory. Thus I think the scale is right at 1/196. The hull is correctly shaped, even the deck is not flat ! Plank and copper sheating detail is quite nice considering the small scale. Instead of supplying the modeler with those horrible stub cannons as often practiced by most styrene producers (even Imai !), Revell’s designers too the pain to produce proper full cannons with part of the gundeck below them. No small feat at this scale ! The one piece masts and spars are a major fault but otherwise, I consider it as quite a fair little model of Constitution.

12

The Magoun book is an old (very old) classic. As Kapudan implies, it’s been supplanted in most serious modelers’ libraries by more up-to-date works. The validity of the plans in it, however, varies considerably. Magoun’s version of the Mayflower is pretty awful, but his Bluenose and Flying Cloud drawings appear to be reasonably sound (if basic and simplified). I think he based his drawing of the Constitution on the set of plans that the Navy published in the 1920s, after the major restoration that Kapudan referred to. The Navy sold those plans for many years to any modeler who was interested in them; they were, for example, available in the gift shop that used to be on board the ship. I suspect those drawings were the basis for the little Monogram (now Revell Germany) kit. That would explain why it looks so much like the ship did in the 1920s.

13

Maybe I’ve been too hard on this kit and am used to the current super duper scaled 1/700 kits of today. As compared to what Airfix, Life-Like, Aurora, and others were putting out at the time, this kit does have some really good qualities to detail on it.

The Cuttysark is a masterpiece for its size if you go the extra and add portholes, doors, and paneling details to the deckhouses.

Scott

14

Some quick photos of my WIP 1:196 Constitution alongside the alleged 1:150 United States with the one-piece hull:

15

RedCorvette’s photos seem to answer a question that I’d been wondering about since this thread started: how can a hull with tumble-home be made in one piece in a rigid mold?

This class of frigate, like most other large warships of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, featured tumble-home. In simple terms, their spar decks were considerably less broad than their main decks. The theory was that this arrangement lowered the ship’s center of gravity, thereby making her more stable. (Brian Lavery notes that the concept was false - but it persisted for a long time.)

I can’t tell for sure from the pictures, but it looks to me like Monogram altered the shape of the hull to omit the tumble-home. The ancient Revell kit, on the other hand, reproduces the ship’s lines pretty accurately - as does the later, 1/96-scale Revell kit. (The big problem with that kit’s hull is that the “planking” is far too thin. There’s no way the thickness of those moldings could accommodate the ship’s frames and two layers of planking. Revell confronted an insurmountable obstacle there; if the hull halves had been given the scale thickness, the styrene would have suffered from awful sink marks and other signs of shrinkage.)

From the standpoint of serious scale modeling, the wildly inaccurate cross-sections of the one-piece hull pretty much rule the old Monogram “1/150” kit out of contention. That’s sort of a shame; in many other respects it looks like a carefully-designed product. But, as we established earlier in this thread, it was never intended for experienced modelers.

16

On the subject of Constitution kits, if you are looking for a kit of this ship which is a bit larger and more detailed than the old 1/196 one, but are put off by the cost, size or complexity of the big 1/96 Constitution - Revell’s 1/150ish kit from the “Quick Build” series isn’t bad at all. It has a number of simplifications, such as most of the gun deck ports being closed up, and the gun carriages moulded integrally with the deck (they’re surprisingly detailed, however, despite this) but IMHO is very good overall. I’d say it was excellent if it weren’t for the fact that the 1/96 Constitution is so much better. Though from the “Quick Build” series it is still a very complex and detailed kit, other than the lower gun decks it has as many parts as the Heller 1/150 kits. Not sure about accuracy of hull lines, but I’d assume the hull and deck parts are pantographed either down from the 1/96 or up from the 1/196 kit (it has a two-piece hull) which are both quite accurate. Certainly it shouldn’t have the tumblehome problems of the Monogram kit. This kit has been reissued quite a few times recently, most recently by Revell Germany last year, and is not too hard to find or expensive. The scale is described as 1/110 by most retailers, but it is actually about 1/150 (they probably measured the hull length of the kit against the total length of the real ship; the 1/196 kit has the same problem, being boxed as “1/146”)

17

Greetings !

I carefully examined redcorvette’s nice photos and then took the hull of United States(sic.) and looked to it at 90 degree angles both from on top, from transom and from bow. Maybe I don’t know how to look (or just my eyesight is bad [:)]) but I can swear that the tumblehome is done on the Monogram kit. I can clearly see the open gunports at around a 45 degree angle when I look from the top and I can observe how the hull is blown like glass of wine at amidships when I look right through the bow. I think the difference in scale between the two kits and the angles at which the photos are taken cause a trompe d’oeil, that’s why it gets difficult to fully observe details of the smaller kit. (I tought German Revell’s kit was a new version from the old 1/196 model but through Professor’s posts, I realized that it’s a different kit in a different scale from Monogram . Right ?)

18

The one-piece hull kit in my photos was boxed as the Revell Germany 1:150 United States. If it was actually 1:150 scale, then the it should be about 30% longer than the 1:196 Constitution sitting beside it - it’s not - it’s definitely smaller. I’m guessing about 1:220 or so.

Here’s some more photos that might help with the hull questions.

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It looks like the clever folks at Monogram did manage to work a little bit of tumble-home into that hull - though not enough for accuracy. I wonder how they did it. Maybe they varied the thickness of the plastic (making it thicker around the waterline), or maybe the “plug” component of the mold was made in some elaborate way that let it be extracted in several pieces from the finished casting. In any case, quite ingenious.

I vaguely remember, when the kit (along with its companion Cutty Sark) was released, reading a review of them in one of the hobby trade journals. (I was working in a hobby shop at the time.) The reviewer clearly was not an experienced ship modeler; he was far more interested in the marketability of such products than their historical accuracy. In this case he expressed his bewilderment that Monogram was making such a big deal out of the one-piece hull idea. The reviewer said he’d never heard any particular complaints from customers about difficulties in gluing hull halves together. I have to confess that I haven’t either - except in cases where the hull halves are warped or don’t fit right (complaints that have never been prominent in Monogram products). What we seem to be talking about here is a period in the history of the American plastic model when the industry was operating in a state of near-desperation. Sales were down, various other forms of leisure-time activity were cutting into the traditional markets, manufacturers (e.g., Aurora and Frog) were going out of business, and the survivors were trying all sorts of ideas to move the kits off the shelves. Those ploys ranged from silly “diorama kits” (two 1/72-scale fighters mounted on a base formed by the inside of the box) to “simplified” kits to simply packaging the kits in oversized boxes (to keep the competition off the shelves in the discount stores). This pair of kits can, perhaps, best be seen as relics of an unpleasant era.

At that time - the late seventies - there was talk among the manufacturers and dealers that the age of the American scale plastic model kit was just about over. In retrospect, they were almost - but not quite - right. Perhaps it’s worth noting that no American manufacturer has produced a genuinely new sailing ship kit since then.

20

I guess the thing that mystifies me from an economic standpoint is why Monogram would invest in completely new tooling in a very similar scale rather than just modifying the existing tool or directly copying it with modifications. After all, the original tooling for the 1:196 kit has been modified since it was first issued: the masts originally were molded as separate pieces and had to be built up, while the current issue has single-piece masts. (I suspect/speculate it might have been at the same time they added the infamous molded ratlines.) Even with the single-piece hull, the part count between the two kits isn’t that much different, especially if you exclude the long guns which are molded as part of the stub gun deck pieces on the new kit. Plus the parts are smaller, in the “simplfied” kit which would seem to make assembly, painting, etc. even more challenging.

I guess the thing that bugs me the most about the United States kit is the gross misrepresentation of the scale. Didn’t they think someone would notice?

Mark