Hey there everyone. I'm very new to the forum and am looking forward to learning a lot from everyone. I have a general question. I am planning on building a WWII Diorama based somewhere in the Pacific. I have just built Tamiya's Jeep and their Universal Carrier. Both of them are great kits and were very easy builds. Now I also have several old Bandai kits in my stash. There seems to be a fairly noticable difference in the scales. Tamiya seems smaller than the Bandai kits. Tamiya also seems smaller in scale than Monogram/Revell aircraft models, Accurate Miniature aircraft models. For that matter Verlinden 1/48 scale figures seem larger than Tamiya. Which is more accurate?

Quite a few of the early Tamiya kits were actually 1/50 scale and were subsequently re-issued marked as "1/48". It's only noticeable when they're right beside correctly a scaled model of the same subject. Anything released by Tamiya since the mid 1990s will be both very accurate, and also very good. Kits first released in the late '60s and early '70s can sometimes be neither.

Oh that Metric system. One to fifty. Lunacy!

What really boils me is we have logical imperial scales... 1/6 (2"), 1/24 (half), 1/32 (three eigths), 1/48 (quarter), 1/72 (sixth... that one's awkward) , 1/144 (twelfth is too...) Where is 1/35 coming from?? It's nonsense! It's not even nonsense because then it would be metric! It's totally detached from any system of counting.

Maybe it's just my carpentry mind but I do get annoyed at that.

Thanks. Not too sure how old either of the Tamiya kits were. The Jeep is the one that comes with the US Soldiers and the Universal Carrier is the one that comes in the Beaufighter. (yet to be built) They are quite obvious 1/50. Never thought of that. Besides my current project (the Bandai Half Track) they are painfully small. Perhaps two different Diorams. Ah well, life goes on.

Those are both fairly recent kits so I'm rather surprised that they're underscale. Actually, according to this thread it's the Bandai kit which is overscale. Such are the trials and tribulations of attempting to mix kits from different companies.

Well isn't that just a pain in the butt. You would think that 1/4 scale is 1/4 scale no matter who was doing it. Well the Half Track is still a nice kit even though it's a simple one. Do you know if the Bandai Shermans are close to being in scale? I'm a Snowbird from Canada and having things mailed here in the US is WAY cheaper than having them mailed to Canada so I have a Bandai Sherman and a couple of their jeeps to build. When I get back to the Frozen North I have a Gas-O-Line 1/48 DUKW to build. Something a little more challenging.

Well apparently the Bandai people mistook a dimension and made it too wide. If you're brave enough, the solution is to cut a 1/4" section out of the centreline from bumper to bumper. I'm not much into targets^Warmour, so I don't know whether the Sherman also has the same problem. Your best bet is to ask the good folks in the Armorama forum; if they don't know it, it's not worth knowing.