Converting ship scales to architechs ruler

Mwentling said:
I bought this digital caliper/ruler because you can set a scale and then the ruler will adjust electronically to support it. I especially liked you can tell it to equally divide an area at scale (I was thinking of hull and deck planking ). I came with attachment for caliper, ruller and drawing uses. https://hozodesign.com/products/neoruler-premium-combo. It was a bit pricey though, but it beat doing the math
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Really nifty gizmo! Unfortunately, at about $250, I'll have to wait until TEMU is selling an exact copy for $25. :D
 
Y.T. said:
I do not find useful the mechanical scaling instruments as scale rulers for example. When I have a scaled drawing of a ship , and I want to know what is length of this or that part for my own scaled build I do as follows. Let us say my scaled model to build is 1:90. This means that my model is 90 times smaller than original. First I must know what is a scale of a drawing I have. Let us say it is 1:384. I take a metric ruler and measure the part length in millimeters off this drawing. Let us say it is 12 mm on 1:384 scale drawing. I multiply 12 mm 384 times using my hand calculator. What I get is actual length of this part in millimeters. Then I divide this value by 90 which is my scale of ship I want to build. Result is a length of part for my build in millimeters. In this case 12 times 384 divided by 90 equals 51.2 millimeters. What can be simpler than this?
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When I was a kid, my machine shop teacher would have flunked me for doing that! I suppose one might get away with it for modeling purposes, but rule one in reading plans of any kind is "Do not scale from the drawing." Actually, that message or something to the same effect is often "boilerplate" on many engineering and architectural drawings. Drawings are not accurate. Paper shrinks and stretches depending upon the humidity level and the draftsman's measurements aren't always accurate to begin with. The numerical dimensions on the drawing are what must be used, not the drawn lengths.

If you are working from plans that have been drawn full size, the same rule applies, although on a model, it may not make all that much difference. Remember though, that any error in a repeated dimension is going to be cumulative. It's not that difficult to accumulate as much as a quarter inch of error in a two-foot-long model owing to the width of a printed line.

This bit of information is offered for the benefit of those who may care and in full recognition that other's mileage may vary. :D
 
True, but often model plans or even old ship plans don't have measurements on them or are illegible, and may just have a scalebar. Right?
 
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Bob Cleek said:
Really nifty gizmo! Unfortunately, at about $250, I'll have to wait until TEMU is selling an exact copy for $25. :D
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It was pricey, but the daughters asked me what I wanted for my birthday, since according to them I have everything. They got me the ruler. It seems to work well converting from the drawings to scale to mark the wood, but the dividing feature is cool as hell. I can see getting some use out if it. And if you find the TEMU version, please share!
 
parejf63 said:
Can someone help with this. I have a variety of scale ships, but I am not that familiar with the arcitechs ruler. I just bought one for scratch building.
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For general fittings around your model this ruler is great. It shows four common scales (double sided with US and metric) and to see a close scale for a part you just see which slot it fits in at your chosen scale. I use mine almost every day.
Scale_Lumber_Gauge.jpg

Available here in Australia but not currently available on Amazon etc as far as I can see.
 
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