1/25 to 1:1 conversion question

[noname]

Thanks for that Jim. Looks like I was pretty close. It could be that the chair is good but just appears off. Sometimes I think you have to bs a bit to make things look right in smaller scales.

I had even wondered before if the Woody was off on scale. I know someone here once placed a few different manufacturers 57 Chevy bodies together and they were all different.

My idea was to put some chairs (along with other cargo) on the roof of the Woody. I can honestly tell you that when I sit the chair on the roof of my Woody it looks like a dinky little thing. But maybe that is true to life. Maybe it will look better along with other stuff piled on the roof.

Thanks to everyone who gave their thoughts. It seems that the 1mm=1inch does work in scratchbuilding for the most part.

[Art Anderson]

To convert MM to inches multiply by .03937.

True enough. However, for most scratchbuilding which is done by hand, .00063" is a micrometer measurement. Unless one is using a lathe or mill with the capability of one ten-thousandth of an inch accuracy (tolerance), it's rather a moot point--very few people have the capability of maintaining such a close tolerance with hand tools commonly used in model building. Even model aircraft engines use the lubricating oil to enable piston and cylinder to maintain the compression necessary for them to run and develop their full power.

This fact alone makes it far more reasonable, IMO, to use the rounded off decimal .040" and imm interchangeably, certainly for most small detailing of 1/25 scale models, where any discrepancy between metric and English in all likelihood cannot be readily detected by human eyes. Even an article such as the chair in this discussion won't suffer dimensionally enough to be visible to most observers. Commonly available chairs, be they home furnishings or office/school/commercial furniture, come in a variety of seating heights and overall height, granted that seating heights fall within a rather narrow range for adult seating (unless the seat height is adjustable). Along the same lines, while machining tolerances in a car are quite standardized, some things, such as the outside diameter of tires, even the ride height of any vehicle truly is a bit approximate:

The outside diameter of a tire is greatly affected by air pressure, and even the OEM tire may be of a slightly different overall diameter than replacement tires. Coil and leaf springs, even torsion bars, lose their ability to retain OEM ride height over time as well. Additionally, scale model tires don't have the ability to "squish" under the weight of a model car, so they can wind up looking over-inflated. With some cars out of the 50's (the era of highly sculptured styling began there), a number of trim items do not match the underlying sheet metal shapes onto which they are attached: For example, many '59 Chevy taillight bezels are as much as a quarter inch smaller around the outside than the corresponding sheet metal to which they are affixed, all around the bezel, but this is never reproduced in a model kit that I have ever seen. Chevrolet (and other GM marques as well) used poverty hubcaps that are fully 11.5 inches in diameter, in order to snap on over the stamped "nubs" in the wheel center discs, but model companies have tended to make these smaller in diameter, for easy parts fit, locating as they do in the center section over the lug nuts.

Even bumpers often did not mount exactly to tolerance back then, so much depended on accurate forming of the brackets, even accurate attachment on the assembly line. Sheet metal stamping was actually rather inexact back then as well, in the days before CAD/CAM and robotic assembly of body shells. Ever looked at the joint between a front fender and the inner fender panels in the engine bay from those years of cars? Lots of shims were used when bolting on the outer sheet metal. Even body panels which were welded together were rather loose in tolerance as well, discrepancies of as much as a quarter inch were not at all uncommon.

So, given the rather inaccurate assembly of real cars particularly in years gone by, and the wide variations in other common consumer items of years gone by (even today), perfect scale accuracy is almost impossible to achieve--but in the end, the model needs to "look right"--I call that giving the illusion of "real".

Art

[Junkman]

The chair looks perfectly fine to me. We all seem to forget what bulky behemoths those 40s Detroit potatoes were. That Ford Woody would hold its own against many modern minivans.

[diymirage]

If you think that chair looks small now just wait till that woodie has wheels under it

just for kicks and giggles you should post a picture of it next to a riceburner

[noname]

Thanks guys. Ya I think it boils down to what looks right alot of the time. Just for fun here is a picture of a chair I made that has dimensions slightly larger than the 1:1 chair (with a different back). Funny thing is, the smaller chair looks better in this pic than the above one. Go figure. Maybe because it is a little more close up?

Anyway, I think they both work for this scale. They just look like different sized chairs. What do you think?

[1930fordpickup]

They look good to me. Not all chairs are the same anyway.

[zenrat]

NIce chairs.

Do not make the common mistake of assuming that the kit has scale fidelity. Manufacturers will "adjust" dimensions for various reasons. Some times something as basic as so that it fits in their standard box.

My golden rule of model building is "if it looks right it is right". This particularly applies to scratchbuilding.

[Art Anderson]

NIce chairs.

Do not make the common mistake of assuming that the kit has scale fidelity. Manufacturers will "adjust" dimensions for various reasons. Some times something as basic as so that it fits in their standard box.

My golden rule of model building is "if it looks right it is right". This particularly applies to scratchbuilding.

Fred,

What you say was certainly true with JoHan kits of the era 1959-at least 1962 (or for that matter, nearly every promotional model-based current year Cadillac 3in1 and snap kits they produced) could be off-scale or out-of-proportion. That was due to the real automaker--mostly General Motors--demanding that all their promotional model cars fit in the same size box. While a promotional model of an Oldsmobile (JoHan made most of the Oldsmobile promo's ever done back then, with the exception of the '65 Delta 88), and certainly any AMT or MPC Chevrolet, Pontiac, or Buick full-sized car subject would fit those boxes, Cadillac promotionals would not. While GM full-sized cars were all exactly the same overall width (certainly true 195-60) a Cadillac was considerably longer than say, a Chevy Impala. So, JoHan took care of that problem for 1959 &1960 by shortening the front clip, and the trunk, but made the "greenhouse" exactly the right length.

Of course, it pays to slap some calipers on a model car body, compare those numbers with stateded overall length and wheelbase. Chances are, if the model is the correct scale overall length, and correct wheelbase in scale, most if not all body details will be correct.

Art

[noname]

Thanks for your input guys.