"1\1200 - 1250 Pre-Dread Model recommendations" Topic

I'm finding the smaller scales hard work, so who makes 1880 – 1905 era warships in the larger scale ?

Navis. Figure about $30 USD – $50 USD per ship for battleships, $25 USD-50 per cruiser, at least.

Hai, which can be just as pricey and often not as good.

Copy, which are rough copies of other companies' ships.

After that it gets really expensive.

If you want to get bigger, there is Great Endeavor's Ex Houston line at ~1/1000 (so so), there are tons of highly detailed very accurate, very expensive 1/700 resin kits (which is where I live), and Old Glory's very reasonable 1/600s (which is where I vacation).

Check out 1250ships.com

Great Endeavor ships are great. I have over 100 of them and I love them. They are also very reasonably priced. Great Endeavor produces almost any ship that you could want in the period from a wide variety of countries: British, German, Russian, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Chile, Peru, The U.S., France, Italy, Austria, etc.

Kevin

Wartime Journal makes nice pre-dreadnaught ships in various scales up to 1/1500. The scale/size of the models is almost 1/1200 and the cost is one half to one third. of 1/1200.

wtj.com/store

Example of Royal Sovereign:

If you decide on the ships from Great Endeavors, order everything at once. The owner has told me flat out that he's doing nothing to update or replace molds as they wear out, so when the mold dies, the model is gone forever. These are the old Houston's Ironclads 1/1000 scale models, and while delightfully sculpted, no two are exactly the same scale (they vary between roughly 1/850 and 1/1100), so after it's impossible to buy more, it will only be possible to supplement a collection with scratchbuilding. The owner also told me he makes substitutions for parts that can no longer be cast, which is why some of the turrets I got were not quite right, the parts provided for sister ships did not match, and some parts were just missing. Also note that many of the hulls on the models I ordered had serious flash, often right across hull details that made them hard or impossible to clean up nicely.

I highly recommend WTJ's models for the period in the OP. They are clean, precise, flash-free, well-detailed for the scale, very scale-accurate, and very proportionally correct. The owner has told me he plans to eventually remaster all the old 1/3000 models as Rapid Prototype plastic models available in your choice of scales, and while that process is pretty slow, he has been making progress. As noted above, the maximum available scale for most models is 1/1500, but he has released some in 1/1250 and 1/1000, and can probably talked into rescaling more of them (I presume if enough of us express interest ). The down side is that each step up in scale vastly increases the price, so a large model (i.e. a lot of plastic) like Peresviet that sells for $21 USD in 1/1500 will cost around $36 USD in 1/1250. Check out the prices on the WTJ page for 1/1250 and 1/1000 Ships.

You should also check out the Old Glory 1/600 models. The range isn't exhaustive and doesn't seem to be growing anymore, but they can look really nice when painted and rigged nicely, like these. I don't own any because I can't figure out how to game with them without unacceptable scale distortion, but if that doesn't bother you, these would make a lovely collection. Just be forewarned, there have been complaints like this one about unclear and incomplete instructions for putting the kits together.

- Ix

I had forgotten the WTJ ones. I might punt an order.

Tick in the box for WTJ for me too, although I have used them for 1/2400 I am sure they would be great in any scale.

Regards Ken
yarkshiregamer.blogspot.co.uk

In regard to the comments about Great Endeavors Houston ships line. I have purchased many and while I like them I do see the molds deteriorating badly. Some are very poor. Really sad to see a great line die like that. If you must go with a larger scale I would give a thumbs up to the larger WTJ models. Smaller than 1200-1250 yes but much more affordable and a nice size.

I totally forgot: [http://www.redeagleminiatures.co.uk]Red Eagle Miniatures has a large selection of the very early ironclads from Britain and a couple from France. These are the old Triton/Skytrex 1/1250 models. They aren't great quality, but given their size they should be pretty easy to dress up nicely. Most of these are from the 1860s and 1870s, but a lot of them served well into the 1890s (e.g. Devastation and Thunderer).

I am currently starting a project to make a French ironclad-era fleet, for which I bought hundreds of anchors and boats from the GHQ and Langton 1/1200 Napoleonic lines, a bunch of the Extra Lifeboats from WTJ in 1/1500 scale (close enough), and I talked Langton into selling me a bunch of masts from various ACW gunboats and frigates. With nicer masts and baots, added-on anchors, rigging, flags, davits, and smoke, the hulls should look just fine.

- Ix

Been there. One of the great incomplete lines. Some time ago a fellow commissioned me to do French and German ships to go with the Red Eagle Brits. Here are some of the Germans.

all 1/1200, and duplicates of everything.

Wow. I wish I had that kind of skill, time and patience.

I really want the 1870s and 1880s fleets of Britain, France and Italy, but I'm having trouble getting my hands on them. I could stop hunting if I could just build them from scratch like you.

- Ix