A lot of writing can be found on the web about scale comparison, please let me assist you through my personal opinion.
All vehicles, planes, boats etc. have a strict size, if you wish to make a scaled down model of them you just divide the original size by the scale size you wish to make it in.
As an example lets take a German “kings tiger” tank, it has a fixt length of 10,286m (including the gun pointing forward), scaling it down to 1/144 would mean dividing 10,286m by 144. The result is 0,0714m witch means the actual model of a “kings tiger” need to be exactly 7,14 cm to meet the 1/144 scale.
This simple calculation enables us to put the right scale on nearly every model we encounter because it goes in two ways, you can measure every model, seek out the size of the actual vehicle and divide it by the size of the model and you have the scale. Let’s take our “kings tiger” once more, say you have a model of it witch is exactly 16,59cm in length, gun barrel included.
We know a “tiger tank” is 10,286m in length, so we take 1028,6cm and divide it by 16,59cm. The result is 62 so our scale is exactly 1/62.
Another story needs to be told when we speak of figurines, the simple reason for a different approach on this subject is that we all come in fluctuating sizes.
Let’s take a man with a height of 172,8cm, if we want to scale him down to 1/144 just divide 172,8 by 144. The result is 12mm.I believe to have made my point here, if you take 172,8cm as an average size for a man, you need to have them exactly 12mm to meet the 1/144 scale.
A figurine of 13mm in 1/144 scale would be a man of 187,2cm in actual size witch is also perfectly possible.
Now let’s take a small peak at the same persons but in the N-scale, also known as 1/160.
A man of 172,8cm height in 1/160 is 10,8mm.
A man of 187,2cm height is 1/160 is 11,7mm.
I believe the only variable on this subject that has any meaning is a different average size of people throughout history.
My personal conclusion is that 12mm resembles 1/144 and 10mm should be considered as 1/160.
All the figurines I have sculptured in 1/144 so far are approximately 12mm, exceptions will be noted.
Again, the scale we use for waregaming figurines needs to be clarified in my opinion, especially if we speak of 10 or 12 mm scale. Figurines that are actually 12mm high very often get classified under 10mm scale, obviously this is subject to some confusion.
A few reviews on 10mm figurines can be found on the web and the difference in size between different companies. Due to this confusion I have classified my figurines under 10-12mm(or 1/144), below you can see a few pictures of the actual size of our figurines.
I hope this article has shed some light on the different size categories our miniatures are referred to.
