Hello.
In new in ship scale modelism and i bought some big ships that need anchor chain because PE and plastic aint as realistic as i would like. Many of you have a lot of experience, anchor chain can be buy in scale m stores?, or you use chains made for other reasons. Greetings
PS. Now im building 1/350 REVELL EMDEN, TAMIYA BISMARCK AND ICM KONIG.
If that is your model in the picture...-it looks very good!
Main problem with small scale chain is that it is not 'stud-link' chain- |Very few people add the studs--it really is a very dedicated person who does that... ( EJ...! )
The trick is to find chain that has the greatest amount of links per inch.
Model railways suppliers can usually supply 40 links per inch...
On my Roma I used some chain I bought from a Railway model shop.
The link profile should be flatter--but viewed in real life( as opposed to a 19 in PC screen!!!) it looks effective.
In David Griffith's new book, he shows cables braided from copper wire. They are braided just as you would hair, in 3 or 4 strand cables. Looks pretty realistic, so I am going to try it on the SMS Emden that I am currently working on.
Indeed, I added some chocks and Chuck repeated the exercise as well. I also flattened all the links a bit because they normally look too round. Not to the smaller chains it would seem.
WEM produce extremely good studded link chain with their frets of most warships. Indeed the set for Hood in 350 is very nice indeed.
What I did with my Hood was to lightly smoothe the top of the moulded in anchor chain and glue the requisite length of PE studded chain on top of the moulded chain. When painted it looks as good as real studded link chain as it has 3 dimensions.
I am glad to see that my post has created a subject to talk about. Well in the place i live i do not have a store where i can buy a kind of chain in the size needed. Well a friend told me about a technique that might help us in a case that we need a specific kind of chain.
IS AN ARTICLE ABOUT HOW TO MAKE CHAINS. IT IS IN SPANISH BUT HAS GOOD PHOTOS SO YOU DONT NEED TO READ IT TO UNDERSTAND IT.
If you are making a 1/350 battleship, then I reckon you can get away with using real chain without it looking overscale. The finest you will be able to find will probabaly from a model railway supplier, although I also got some from a jeweller that was fairly convincing.
If you are doing something in 1/700, then I don't think there is any readily available chain fine enough to be convincing. If you go onto the main part of this board, you will find a thread on battleship chain with photos of 40 or 42 link per inch chain on the foredeck of an Iowa class battleship. This stands proud of the deck by at least 2 scale feet. Having been on board the Wisconsin last year, I can assure you that the real chains are nowhere near that size. You can step over them easily, and they stand less than 1ft high. On the destroyer HMS Cavalier in Chatham Dockyard, the chains have links that are no more than 6in long.
If you are working in 1/700, beleive me, you'll get a much better visual appearance by dumping the chain (and that goes for photo-etch too) and trying out my braided wire technique, as described in my book. You will be able to get something that imitates chain that is as fine as 70 or 80 links per inch. Please take a look at my models of USS Indianapolis and HMAS Sydney in the gallery of this site.
I hope that is useful.
Kind regards,
David Griffith
"For scientific leadership, give me Scott. For swift and efficient travel give me Amundsen. But when you are in a hopeless situation, when you are seeing no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton."
Hello David.
Well the good part is that i only build 1/350, 1/700 are too small for me. I did not know about your book until you mentioned. It looks great and i am planning to buy it in amazon. I think for the moment will use silver chain, the first model with this will be the italian Pola. Hope to update some photos of the models. Greetings to all. I hope this post help other as myself to improve their skills.
After doing some research on this subject. I found a vendor in the UK that supplies Oval and Stud link chain. They have several different sizes. As for 1/350 the closet I could fine was 18 links per inch but it was not studded. Here is the link, hope this helps
check out the bead/necklace section of your local craft store (Hobby Lobby, Michaels). They usually stock chain with 20 links/inch and larger. This is close to 18" links in 1/350, which is close to actual. $2 gets you 5 ft of chain.
Mark Wagner wrote:check out the bead/necklace section of your local craft store (Hobby Lobby, Michaels). They usually stock chain with 20 links/inch and larger. This is close to 18" links in 1/350, which is close to actual. $2 gets you 5 ft of chain.
i used some cheap necklace chains,worked out well.
�Learn as though you would never be able to master it; Hold it as though you would be in
I hope this will set you in the right direction.I make extensive use of ho scale and ho-n3 plus n scale chains sold for model railroad use.No one has ever criticized my chains !! commodore 4
The German firm of Krikmodelltechnik (www.krik-modell.de) supplies authentic metal anchor chain in a variety of sizes. The size is quoted in millimeters. You might need to use Google Translate. It is perhaps not the easiest website to navigate as it is only in German and the "buttons" are images so Google translate does not recognise them as being text. To find the size you want look for "Produktsuche" and type in "Ankerkette". You will need to use mail order as there are no retail outlets in the United States or Canada. There is a UK retail outlet but they do not stock scale model chain cable. There is also a retail outlet in Mexico but I do not know if they stock this type of chain. I hope this will prove to be the definitive answer to this question for all scales of ship models. Happy modelling.
But you can get the same chains from Cornwall and others, e.g.: http://www.cornwallmodelboats.co.uk/aca ... 65411.html
The image shown is not clear, but it appears that they have true 10 link per inch (LPI) in metal stud link chain... which is still WAY to large for 1:350 models.
A 1:200 BB for example needs about 15 LPI.
I have made what may be the world's smallest true stud link in 3D printed plastic, at 11.5 LPI. It is carried by The Floating Drydock: http://floatingdrydock.com/update.htm >> scroll down...
The largest chain in this image is 7.5 LPI, still smaller than most available metal stud link chains, and is suitable for 1:96 or 1:100 battleships.
to modelwarships.com!
