Renaming

[Short John Bronze]

To avoid criticism from those who consider kits to be historically inaccurate (Canon that are anachronistic by six months, masts that are 5% too thin, hull shape wrong, sail cloth too thick etc) why not rename a kit built ship when submitting a build log? Eg: RSN (Royal Swiss Navy) Nonesuch, RSN Gandalf. Who then can quibble?

 

[rtwpsom2]

If you are going to spend your life worrying about criticisms, especially criticisms of a kit you have no control over, you would more easily avoid that criticism by not posting it at all. Or you could try to identify what's wrong about a kit and endeavor to make it right. But ultimately, even if you just make it exactly as it was designed to be built, but made it to the utmost best of your abilities, it will be your skill that shines, rather than whatever the kit is lacking. If you are going to polish a turd, make it so g*****n shiny that people will marvel at how you could possibly have polished a turd to that level of shine.

edit: And don't worry about what other people think that much. As David Foster Wallace once said, "You’ll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do."

 

[AllanKP69]

Criticism is not necessarily negative. From the Oxford Learner Dictionary, definition 2, the work or activity of making fair, careful judgements about the good and bad qualities of something. I find that when someone is pointing out an error in my work I do not take it as a personal slight. I assume it is given in the spirit of helping, not belittling me or my project. Our goals are all different but I would bet most of us want to do the best that we can, and happy to find out how to do something better even if it has to wait for the next project.

why not rename a kit built ship when submitting a build log?

A good idea. There were many ships that had sisters lesser known than the name on the box so why not rename it? Three examples:
Instead of building the Enterprise 1774 , name it Siren (1773), Fox (1773), Acteon (1775), Medea (1778), Serpine (1777), Andromeda (1777), Aurora (1777), et al
Instead of the Diana 1794, how about Artois 1794 Apollo (1794), Diamond (1794), Jason (1794), Seahorse (1794)
or instead of Agamemnon, go with Ardent,1764 Nassau 1782 et al

At least for English ships I doubt if every ship of a given class was exactly the same as the others within the class even when the shipyards started with the same design drawings and contracts if built in private yards or drawings and Establishment scantlings if built in His Majesty's shipyards.

Allan

 

[Stuart Little]

To avoid criticism from those who consider kits to be historically inaccurate (Canon that are anachronistic by six months, masts that are 5% too thin, hull shape wrong, sail cloth too thick etc) why not rename a kit built ship when submitting a build log? Eg: RSN (Royal Swiss Navy) Nonesuch, RSN Gandalf. Who then can quibble?

Since when has Switzerland had a royal family? Anyway, it would be RHN (Helvetia), wouldn't it?

Guess who's 'taking the wee-wee?'

 

[Peter Gutterman]

I repeat. "Nobody ever built a monument to a critic."

 

[Thomas]

Who cares??

 

[Jim Fortnam]

This is reminiscent of the re-enactors who demand that your ‘Viking camp’ may only contain items which are accurate reconstructions of objects found in excavations. Suggesting that the skills and knowledge that created a blurfel would undoubtedly also have extended into an improved version, because that is what craftsmen do - they make a slightly better one - merely gets a dumb insistence that it must be like the one in the museum.

Now, we all here know that if we were to build a kit, then start again, we would build on our skill and knowledge and make some minor changes. So it has been for hundreds of years until the age of standards and mass production. So it has been with ships. When shipyards worked only to some general lines and sizes two ‘identical’ ships could be quite different in all manner of detail.

Which means that all manner of trivial differences can be explained by the natural process of evolution.

 

[HughLo]

I renamed my current build, but for a bit of a different reason. It’s OcCre’s Buccaneer and is already not an actual ship. With how much I’ve changed it, I’ve rechristened it “Molino”, named after my condo complex.

 

[AndyA]

To avoid criticism from those who consider kits to be historically inaccurate (Canon that are anachronistic by six months, masts that are 5% too thin, hull shape wrong, sail cloth too thick etc) why not rename a kit built ship when submitting a build log? Eg: RSN (Royal Swiss Navy) Nonesuch, RSN Gandalf. Who then can quibble?

Cap'n Bronze:
It seems to me that a fictional name would not address inaccuracies in a model. However, I agree with your sense that the pursuit of accuracy can be overdone. Many discussions on this forum address model accuracy and the subject deserves our attention and debate. First, there are different types of accuracy. Accurate appearance? Accurate materials? Accurate construction? Second, there is no such thing as 100% accuracy; it is an ideal to be pursued, if one chooses. Scale has an important effect on accuracy; the smaller the scale, the more that physics (scale effects) introduces challenges to accuracy. What is reasonably accurate for a ship-in-the bottle would be highly inaccurate in a model at 1:48 scale. Perhaps most important is the modeler's intent. What is the purpose of the model? And how does the accuracy of the model support that purpose?
Fair winds!