What font does the US Navy use for the name of the ship painted on the stern?
Bob
Sorry I don’t have an answer for that, but it you can’t find out you can always build the USS John Hancock.
I understand that there’s standards available from floatingdrydock.com. I did a quick look but did not immediately see them.
No doubt it’s changed all the time, and from yard to yard I am also sure.
Ships names I’ve seen are also cut out, although I suppose thats not usually an issue on a model.
A typeface is something like Bodoni, Helvetica, Gill or Univers.
A font is a specific geometry within that face, like 9pt, or 10pt, or Bold.
Today the terms have become confused, with Adobe and Microsoft etc. selling what are really typefaces as “fonts”.
In the era of steam railroads, steam ships and steam beer, type was generally applied by sign painters. While the good ones understood what a face was, they usually had their own painter faces, and used wooden patterns to pounce the general outline onto whatever they were going to paint, then eyeballed it.
If you ever want to watch someone who really knows typography, sit and watch a good stone carver.
Not sure the official, but one modellers use a lot is Amarillo (do a free font search), and there was a set of dry transfer called Longbeach. This is a link to some drawing program files (vector, in Corel, Ilusrator):
http://www.rc-network.de/magazin/artikel_04/art_04-0040/art_04-0040-01.html#1
It’s a German site, but the third one shows US style numbers/letters.