Tintin - the Boats (Relaunch)

[strobez]

Ok... so... whatever. I lost the previous Tintin boats thread to the mists of mystery. The show must go on!

But first, let's start with a question that only the knowledgeable and slightly off-kilter kitbashers here could possibly answer.

So, as many of you would at least suspect, a 1/72 Tintin collection such as the one I'm slowly amassing will never be considered complete without a crown jewel of the Unicorn.  However, since the chances of me actually spending the time (or having the skill/patience required) to actually learn the ins and outs of "high society" model ship building, I've got a kitbashers level plan - take the 1/100 Soleil Royal kit from Heller and turn it into the 1/72 Unicorn (ish).

After some internet research, I've discovered that a 1/75 scale model of the Unicorn is about 74cm... so using the wizardry of my pocket calculator, I surmise that a 1/72 scale Unicorn would be 77cm.  As luck would have it... that seems to be the exact size of the 1/100 scale Heller kit:



Even though the Unicorn is based on the Soleil Royal, she's smaller and got a lot less guns, so it will still be a large bit of tricky surgery to do the deed.

However, in the meantime, I'm considering tackling the oh, much smaller Pirate ship of Red Rackham.



Since this is a totally fictional kit... we can take some liberties, but I'm looking for a ship kit that could be bashed into a reasonable facsimile.  So far, the best I've come up with is the Revell 1/110 scale HMS Bounty



At 37.2cm it's about the right size... it's about the right shape... it's about the right price... and I can actually find a box off the shelf.  So it seems to fit my four main criteria for buying for a project.  But since I know next to nothing about ships... I'm putting this out there to the collective to see if I get any dire warnings, or better ideas.

[zenrat]

Looks like it would work.
Especially if you build it with sails furled like you did the dhow.

[Gondor]

Good to see this thread getting underway again..... 

Gondor

[Rheged]

Suggestion:  When you get to the stage of fixing standing and running rigging, don't try to do more than 20 minutes (maximum) at a stretch.

  Aeons ago ,I think in 1962, I built a Cutty Sark................I can't remember which producer it was, but it was an odd scale and had a green hull and beige decks and masts.......and tried to do far too much thread-work rigging in one sitting.   It's worse than trying to fit the bracing wires etc on a WW1 biplane.

[zenrat]

Thanks Rheged.  I'll bear that in mind when I get to rigging the Sea Witch.

[strobez]

I'm still debating this one. The length throws me a bit - the 770mm of the Soleil Royal would be from the tip of the bowsprit right? Not just the hull itself. Right?

I saw some shots of the sprues of the Bounty, and the length of the Hull is about 28-29cm. So I'm trying to get some measurements of the hull of the Soleil - but all the unboxing reviews just go "WOW SHE'S BIG".  If the length 77cm is the actual total length, then the Bounty at 37cm is probably about right... it just seems small for some reason.

[PR19_Kit]

Conventional boat length measurements are on the waterline, but who can tell what the kit manufacturer means.

[strobez]

See... who knows that other than Kit?

I posted the same question (more or less) on Scalemates and one thing I hadn't really considered was, regardless of my modifications and protestations of scale, the subtle unchanged details will agree much more between a 1/100 and a 1/110 scale kit. Moving up to a Airfix 1/87 will break that illusion. So, I think that gives me enough peace of mind to take a plunge.

I was a bit nervous, because the last time I just looked at a length description posted on a box and said "yeah, good enough", I was instantly disappointed as soon as I opened the box.  Of course that story worked out well in the end, because I swapped the Tupelov for a treasure out of Kit's mythic loft.

[PR19_Kit]

because I swapped the Tupelov for a treasure out of Kit's mythic loft.