IgorSky

All,
I came across this ship a number of years ago at the Scottish Maritime Museum.It was on a slip high and dry, roofed over and in pretty poor condition. There was a lot of politics involved, Google for the full story, but it was eventually barged to Australia for restoration. The current website is under updating. (http://cityofadelaide.org.au/), but I pulled this off a couple of years ago. It keeps younger kids busy on a rainy afternoon.
 
Alan
 
City_of_Adelaide_Patterm_and_Instructions.pdf

Well... real life got in my way big time however I am now off on vacation for a week. I immediately went into the man cave and started back at it. The first picture shows the wooden seas hollowed out and working on installing two small piece's of styrofoam as filler next to where the rudder section goes. I had to do this as I needed the adequate clearance to get the hull at the right depth.
 

 
Next two shots show where I carved down the stern so I could gauge how deep to go when carving. I also wanted to show some rudder detail
 

 

 
The next two photo's show me working the modeling paste. I can't say enough about Artist's Loft Acrylic Acedemic Level 1 modeling paste. This stuff works well, gives adequate time to sculpt, dries really hard, and it even drills. The stuff is awesome!
 

 

 
One thing that makes this technique tricky is... I have to eventually cut apart all four pieces to get them into the bottle. The intention is to model as much as possible outside of the bottle, paint it up, and finish the touch ups in the bottle. I will take Dave's advice and go to WallMart and purchase some mini magnets. The ones I bought are too big.
 
More to come ... Jeff
 
 

Thanks, I use a similar method, but the horizontal insert is made from brass shim at the level of the knuckle.  That enables me to carve the slope down to it without losing the sharpness.    Attached is a good view of a typical steel counter, showing the complex shape.
I still cannot imagine how Jeff is going to make five masts, sails and rigging fold down and go in the bottle.     It is something I would never even attempt.    I am particulary interested in this build because I am one of the few who prefers the big iron and steel square-riggers to the ever-popular tea clippers or Napoleonic warships.
Bob
 

I always find the hulls much more difficult and time-consuming than the rigging, but I don't have to make the rigging fold down, so that is a huge problem that I don't have to contend with.   Here are two shots of my Preussen.     One is low angle, showing the shape of the counter stern - it took me ages to develop a good method of making counters.    The other image is complete, and all ready for the sea.
Bob
 

Greetings All,
 
I usually make my mast hoops from thin, brown paper, the sort of really thin paper greetings cards are usually put in when you purchase them. I cut a 1"-1.5" wide strip about two inches long. I then find a drill bit of the proper diameter for the inside of my mast hoops. I wrap the paper tightly around the drill bit shank, then open it up/unwrap it until there is just a single wrap around the shank. Not easy, but it can be done. I then use a piece of wire to apply cyano glue to the paper beyond that first wrap, and wrap that stretch to the first wrap, then repeat the process until I have the proper thickness for my mast hoops. I then saturate the entire outside of the paper with cyano glue, remove it from the drill shank and coat as much of the inside of the tube as I can, from each end.
 
I then normally make up a wooden dowel that just fits into the paper tube, sometimes I twist the drill bit through to clean up any glue blobs from the earlier step. I sue a single-edged razor blade and a rotating motion to cut off thin slices of the paper tube, forming my mast hoops. I started out cutting right on the drill shank, but it wrecked the blade too often, using a hard wood allows the blade to cut cleanly through the paper, without damaging the blade. Only downside is that as that portion of the dowel gets cut up by cutting hoops, it can no longer be used to repeat the process.
 
As each hoop comes off I check for proper thickness, and make sure that both the outer and inner layers of paper are well glued. If I start to detect separation inside, I repeat the inside gluing as often as needed as I work down the length of the paper tube.
 
Oddly enough, I could only find a single photo taken of my process, early one using the drill shank to cut on.
 

 
Anchor's A Weigh!
John Fox III
Ladysmith, WI

Hi Gwyl,
I have tried two ideas. On older and smaller models I tied a rolling hitch along the mast with the hitch line making a seam along the aft side of the mast, where the sail would join it and, to some degree, cover it. More recently, and for larger models, I've lightly hammered copper wire to flatten it a little, wound it around an armature of appropriate diameter and cut the hoops out of the coil with small nail scissors. Here are photos of both ideas, both of models of the fishing schooner Ingomar. I wonder if my "advanced" idea is really much of an improvement. The first model is 25 years old, with a plumber's putty sea, and the larger, 5 liter model is about 10 years ago

Hello my name is Lextin Hayes I am from southern California. Some of you may recognize me from MSW and/or the Ship in Bottle Builders group on Facebook. Here are some pictures of my models, I will try to get some logs up for them as soon as possible.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Lextin.

As the small details were concluded I lost interest in taking photographs for a while.  These were mostly intended to keep the gentleman who requested the model up to date.  There is also no doubt there were a number of “ugly duckling” days in here that did not inspire taking pictures.
 
 

 
When at last all the fussy small stuff is done everything can be painted as it will appear and the rigging can begin.  Gaffs and booms are attached to the masts which are held in proper place by the stays and lines that will support the staysails.  In this shot the lower shrouds are all in and most of the running rigging is at least tied in.  Just about the only things to still be added are the fore peak halyards,  ratlines, topmast shrouds and sheets.
 

 
Finally come the sails.  That foretopsail is rarely set, but there were enough pictures of it to decide it was fair to include it.  The flags are painted by hand and xerographically reduced to correct size.  The second schooner will just have to wait her turn. 
 

 

 
The bottling went fine, or at least so I remember.  The stand is mahogany, of a design inspired by a similar one by Gil Charbonneau, of Edgecomb, Maine.  The project took 164 hours, but it will take finishing off the second lady to really know how long each schooner will take.
 

Thanks Gwyl,
 
Actually, the model is done but I stopped the log there because I was unsure how much I could post in a single run.
The photos were taken mostly to keep the gentleman who asked me to build this schooner up to date on progress, so they may not have an even flow like a build log.  Resuming...
 
The main cabin trunk is planked like the decks and outer trim – stem, transom, bowsprit – are added to the hulls.  By the way, planks are about .0025" wide, a little over scale. With woodwork done, all the surfaces to be painted are given a few thin coats of acrylic gesso and sanded in between coats.  When the gesso is sufficiently built up and dry, hull planks are scribed into the hull sides with a sharp pin.  Thin strips of paper glued to the sides represent the chain plates.  Other deck features, such as the windlass, rudder box and companionway get started.
 

 

 
The sooner the bottle is prepared the better, to allow sufficient time for the putty to firm.  In this case, it’s a 2 liter lab bottle.  These models are about 4” high and 6” long.  Specifically, the scale is 24’ = 1”. 
 

 
The masts and spars go quickly compared with all the more involved, and in this case, unusual pieces of deck furniture.  Each vessel has four skylights, bitts and a number of lockers.  As well as the life preserver pods on her cabin roof, she always carries a motor launch for connecting with the shore.  Each model also has a surprisingly large number of eyebolts on the hull and in the spars for rigging.
 

 
 
 
 
 

Nice work Bob.  
 
I model a few static ships on occasion.  This one is in for a repair.
 

 
I also do a little rubber powered airplanes.
 

 
I have been asked to create some miniature furniture in 1/6 scale.  I am still considering if I will do this or not.

One more of my old models

3D-models
 

 

 

One of my old hobbies - Old Russian wooden architecture

One more of my old models

IgorSky, Very nicely done.  Quite the variety of models.  Your display case is very beautiful.
 
Gwyl

Decided to do a little experiment to see how difficult it really is to do some of the more complex items in the mining bottles. For the first experiment I tried a version of the wheel in the Buchinger bottle. The bottle used for the experiment is 5 inches / 127 mm, outside diameter, with a neck ID of 1.060 inches / 27 mm. The wheel is six spoked, 4 inches / 102 mm OD, made in three segments.
 

Components for the wheel ready to go into the bottle.
I dug up a digital stop-watch to time their assembly inside the bottle.
Time starts after I move the camera and tripod aside and put the bottle on the
work bench. Time stops when the wheel is assembled and hanging by a thread.
 

Assembled wheel hanging by a thread. I was surprised at how quick the assembly
went. I photo-shopped the stop watch showing the elapsed time into this photo.
 
Although I have made spoked wheels to go into a bottle - they were small enough to pass through the neck whole - I have never assembled one inside a bottle and had no idea how to do it. While digitally sketching the wheel, I had an idea, sketched it out and saw it would work, at least in theory.
 

I think the technique is self-explanatory.

It's primarily a supplier of navigation charts. Seems like a service that could survive for over 175 years.
 
One angle you might look at is that Price might have been a successful ship captain who saved enough money to buy a sound vessel nearing the end of its useful life and made a go as an owner/operator similar to what a lot of truck drivers do. I have read enough ship and ship's captain biographies to know it wasn't un-heard of. If so you may find it hard to find anything on the company.
 
I can't tell much more from the model than it's a three-masted barque with courses, double topsails, topgallants and royals. A black hull doesn't help much for identification. Many full-rigged ships were converted to barques to reduce the manning cost. Dozens of vessels like this were sunk by German subs in WW1.
 
I found a  W Price & Co, Liverpool at 17 Tower Buildings North, Water Street, Liverpool in Lloyd's Register of Shipping, Vol. 2, 1901-2.
 
And the three-masted iron barque of 984 tons, James Gamble, (1875) registered in Workington, Cumbria, UK, was becalmed and ran aground near Tahiti bound for New Zealand from Peru with a cargo of sugar on May 24, 1902, Captain J. Rosie and 18 crew seemingly stranded there. Sessional Papers of Parliament 1902. She may have been named for the James Gamble who co-founded Procter & Gamble in 1837.
 
T Boyden & Co, Liverpool, for W. Price & Co, launched the Primrose Hill, a four masted iron barque of about 2500 tons, in February 1886. She had a fantastic rig with courses, double topsails and topgallants, royals and skysails (seven sails tall!). She was lost with 1 survivor while under tow near Holyhead on Christmas Eve, 1899. Clearly not the barque in the bottle but it tosses my guess of an independent owner/operator out the window.
 

Post card of Primrose Hill of Liverpool at Bristol.
 
Sister four masted barques built by W H Potter & Son, Liverpool, for W Price & Co, Holt Hill (1884) and Marlborough Hill (1885) [do you see a pattern here?] both very similar to Primrose Hill but only 6 sails tall (no skysails) but with one piece lower and top masts. After Holt Hill was wrecked in 1889, W Price & Co built another four mast barque with the same name in 1890. And then there's Bidston Hill a four masted ship built by T Boyden & Co in 1886 converted to a barque in 1893-4.
 

Both of these photos shows a black (or other very dark color) hull with a narrow white stripe and white bulwark cap rail.
 
Glenholm (1896) a three masted ship sunk by a German sub in 1915. The sub U27 surfaced and allowed the crew to escape before sinking her with the deck gun. On Aug. 19, 1915, less than three months later, U-27 was sunk by the Q-ship HMS Baralong. And there's Liverpool, launched in 1882 and lost in 1883.
 

Liverpool
 
It appears that James Gamble (1875) is the only candidate so far for the barque in the bottle. Wikimedia Commons has almost 1300 files of photos for Three Masted Ships but I don't feel inclined to go through them one by one looking for barques owned by W Price & Co. Few of those photos have even that much detail associated with them. There were several other ships with "Hill" in the name owned by a Glasgow shipping company in that same period and that's as far as I got with that list.
 
Dave

And last but not least, the going away pictures.


 
 
 
 
Lextin.

Ok,  it is time to start this build.  I have finally chosen the bottle for the Cat 30.  It was a toss up between a bottle and a light bulb.  The bulb won out.
 


 
I will need to cut the neck of the bottle.  I will use the technique that John Fox III mentioned in this post.  John's techneque
 
I will post pictures of the process and progress.
 
Gwyl

Usually, I try to prepare my sails as near to the end of building as possible to prevent damage to them. Sometimes it's more practical to attach sails to yards, booms and gaffs when working on a mast assembly off the vessel. Staysails are usually near the last to go on before the model goes in the bottle but sometimes this rule gets bent with the lowest staysails between the masts.
 
On small models, I glue them to the spar or thread with thinned pva (about 1 part water to 2 parts pva) but intend to try very lightly thinned artists acrylic matte varnish for this light gluing task. Reason for this is that pva does not glue to cured pva well while the varnish does to itself. By lightly thinned I mean a moist brush dipped into the varnish and worked until I have the right consistency just a little thinner than the varnish alone. I experimented with the varnish as a glue on the rigging knots on a recent build and liked it - it holds as well as thinned pva, it sticks to itself well and is better than ca which dries brittle and doesn't always wick into the fibers. Ca often dries white where it builds up instead of wicking into the fibers and pva can cure milky, while the varnish always dries clear.
 
On larger models, I sew my sails on. My finest fly tie thread is about .002 inch / 0.05 mm in diameter which works out to be about 3/8 inch / 1 mm at 1/200 scale so I limit the sewing of sails to about 1/250 and larger scales to keep my rope close to scale. Poking holes with a needle point tears the paper usually out to the edge so I drill holes (.010 inch / 0.25 mm) in the sails. Drilling the holes allows them to be closer to the edge without tearing. I space the holes at about 1 scale foot / 30 scale cm and use a light gray fly thread that is somewhat translucent and takes on some of the color of the spar, sail or stay behind it which keeps the stitching subtle. I dip the end of the thread in ca to make it into a needle of sorts to pass it through the hole. I use a spiraling stitch around the spar or stay through each hole. In most cases this is only a simulation of the method used for real but is much easier to do and looks good with scale 3/8 inch or 1/2 inch rope on spars. Because the spiral stitch on staysails is least like the real method, I use fine fly thread on them even at 1/100 scale and larger. 
 

Detail of recent project with scale spiral stitch securing the fore topsail to the yard. The sail is also glued with varnish.
 

Detail of the mainsail boom. I also glued the edge of the sail to the boom after it was stitched in place
 

Jib sail with fine gray fly thread. This sail is glued to the stay so I can twist the stay inside the bottle to make the sail look like it's full of wind.
 
These sails were drawn digitally and printed on both sides of high quality, standard weight copy paper (20 pound).
 
Dave

Although I've seen plenty of good effects with scoring or marking out deck planks, I have always liked actually laying them with good strips of wood and sanding them down.  It is time consuming but not as time consuming as you might think.  Igor just posted pictures of his lifeboat planking this way.
The size is always a problem.  I once read deck planks are usually 4" to 5" wide and 19th Century photos confirm that.  Rarely can we manage stripwood that fine to good effect, so I accept planking I know is too wide.  Here is my latest Constitution, a large model at 29' = 1', so ideally the plank should have been about 1/64, or .00156", but it was actually .0020", closer to 8" on the model.  Dave will be able to express the arithmetic better than I.  Each strip was given a swipe with a brown magic marker along the side to represent the plank seam.  Hope this will be clear enough
 

My first attempt of making sea. I used the tinted epoxy resin, the white acrylic paint and the clear acrylic gel.

For almost any other type of hobbies or modeling that we do, most of us started with some kind of kit, written instructions etc. For ships in bottles, there are some instructions, but very few kits available for the new modeler.  The new modeler must become a scratch builder from the start. I wonder if some beginners might be nervous to start this hobby, with limited abilities and knowledge, when they compare themselves to a modeler who is seasoned.
 
In an effort to help the beginner on their journey to successfully creating their first ship in a bottle,  I would ask those who have some experience to chime in, and hopefully answer a few questions.
 
 
 If you had to do it over again...
 
1.  What ship or style and level of complexity would you choose for your first SIB?
 
2.  What size would you model be? (This leads to the next question)
 
3.  What would be the best choice of bottles and size of bottle for your first build?
 
4.  Would you put sails on it, or leave it bare?
 
5.  Are there other things that you wished you had known, or done different for your first SIB?
 
Gwyl

DS,
 
Nice example for your your class.  Paint bristles... I learn new possibilities each day.
 
Gwyl