Dave Fellingham

A steam locomotive and tender would look wonderful in a bottle. Perhaps something like these? The replica of Jupiter (Central Pacific Railroad #60) at the Golden Spike National Historic Site. Jupiter was one of two locomotives at the Golden Spike Ceremony held at the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad near Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869. Mallard holder of the World Speed Record for Steam Locomotives of 125.88 set in 1938. Just a couple of locomotives that caught my attention in a Google search for steam locomotives. I look forward to seeing what you come up with. Dave

I also guestimated and eyeball measured bottle inside diameters for several years until I had to extract a partially erected model that was a bit too tall for the bottle. I still remember the re-work that had to be done and my vow to "Never do that again." I use a strip of paper folded lengthwise taped to a rod, wire or dowel, trimmed until it just clears the bottle ID. Bottle ID gauge. The paper folds for insertion in the bottle. And opens out in use (sometimes with a bit of help). I then extract and measure the gauge and use that measurement for the rest of the layout of the model. I subtract the planned depth of my sea and the amount of clearance I want between the mastheads and the bottle and use that final dimension to size a beam-end photo or drawing of the vessel I want to build. After printing that image, it also goes into the bottle to verify that my visual image matches up with the reality, mostly to check for length in the bottle. Juan Sebastian Elcano standing in for her sister Esmeralda to check length and overall visual of the project. I've seen a number of devices to measure bottle IDs but I'm a big believer in the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle and haven't felt a need to make something more complex when I can make one of these in a few seconds. Also, my tools have a tendency to get sucked into a black hole to reappear some time later when no longer needed. Don't forget to measure the ID of the bottle's neck and not just at the mouth. I've had that one bite me more than once.

After looking over the miniature bottles and such at the Etsy site I posted above, I made a purchase. Mini Erlenmeyer flask made from borosilicate glass - about 2 inch / 50 mm tall, 1.25 inch / 32 mm diameter. I have acquired more than enough bottles without having a specific project in mind for any of them, but I had to have this, just in case. Dave

Some of us have sort of hijacked a build log with a discussion of bottles so I decided to re-start the discussion as its own topic. I was looking at boiling flasks and came across this photo. I'm sure the micro-miniaturist in all of us will be intrigued by it. 3/4 inch / 19 mm diameter, 1 1/4 inch / 32 mm tall boiling flask. I found this on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/61977606/miniature-boiling-flask-hand-blown-glass This seller specializes in miniature glassware and I suspect he can custom blow whatever miniature pieces we might want. This piece sold for about US$ 38 based on his price for a same sized Erlenmeyer flask. I found all his miniature work in glass delightful. As miniaturists ourselves I suspect we have a greater than average appreciation for miniature work in any medium. Dave

I somewhat disagree in that it's a shame to not display one's work - at any skill level - to its best advantage. I find spherical containers particularly difficult to photograph because no matter where I position the lighting I get reflected glare from both the inner and outer surfaces of the glass. I've used inner surface light reflections to highlight details in close-ups with good effect. The haze is fairly obvious once it's pointed out. I like the display base for the light bulb, it's attractive and interesting without being a distraction from the subject.

I bought several sets of cheap Chinese files from small to minuscule in size that are useful as wood rasps but not much else and one set of Nicholson small needle files that are for use on metal only. Wood particles attract moisture and moisture causes rust. I also have a set of four diamond bead reamers that come in handy from time to time. They're better trained than the craft stick sanders. Dave

Craft sticks and dowels in several sizes work well as backers for sandpaper. I always have several with different grits and widths or diameters scattered on the bench and make what I need when I can't find it right away - I sometimes even remember to label the stick with the grit (200, 400, 600, etc). I try to keep them in a cup on my bench but they keep jumping out when I'm not looking.

I had good luck with just using the cutting edge of a box cutter to scrape off the baked-on "Pyrex" label from the reagent bottle I mentioned. It took some time and repeated scrapings but it did not damage the glass. I am unable to find any trace of that label. I had considered sanding but rejected it over concerns that the abrasive was hard enough to scratch the glass. One drawback to reagent bottles is that they usually have ground necks and matching ground glass stoppers, both of which add to the cost. The glass stopper does look good however. I also looked into boiling flasks (basically a sphere with a necked opening) and was rather excited by the possibilities they offer. They are available in a wide range of sizes with a variety of neck diameters and lengths, some short enough to use in a neck down display to hide the neck and opening. Versions with flat bottoms are also available. They can even be had with 2 or 3 parallel necks but I don't see any point to using one of these for an SiB. Another possibility I've seen to good effect are Erlenmeyer flasks (round cone-shape with a short neck). I think these are awesome neck up with modern single-mast Bermuda rigs that have an overall triangular profile, and also work very well with other single mast vessels. A triangle inside a similarly proportioned triangle has good eye appeal. Other than on one current project, I don't use what I call "commercial" glass - single-use throw-away glass containers - on my projects. I want my work seen at its best without wavy, nonuniform thickness, pebbly surfaced glass distorting or obscuring it. I used a custom hand-blown sphere with just a hole on my most recent. It was expensive, but worth every penny. I am unable to distinguish between close-up detail photos taken before and after bottling except for reflections in the glass. I was so pleased with the glass that I gave the glass blower a by-line on my name plates for this project. The only defects I found were 2 or 3 smaller-than-pinhead sized bubbles that are almost unavoidable in hand-blown glass. It's taking me a while to realize that I'm not limited to the bottles I find - I can have one made if the project calls for it.

I'm using an almost identical bottle made by Pyrex in my insanity ice racing yacht. They are pricey being made from borosilicate glass (and autoclaveable) and are called reagent bottles. They can be found individually on the web in the 1 and 2 liter sizes and at considerable savings for all sizes over the manufacturer's pricing for the same product. Lab glass is far superior in wall thickness uniformity and glass clarity than any of the single use throw-away commercial bottles. Stay away from the cheap Chinese copies of many kinds of lab glass that are made with ordinary glass (and not autoclaveable) and no better than commercial glass.

Jeff: Good eye. Individual vessels from the plate were used by Bjorn Landstrom in his books The Ship and Sailing Ships, which were both important sources for my early work. It was later that I found where those little black and white waterline drawings, that were about the right size and sufficiently detailed to use as SiB plans, came from. Chapman's book is quite possibly the most important work in the development of more efficient hull forms. Part of the book is devoted to his use of the mathematics (calculus) invented by Newton to prove its application in hydrodynamics. Prior to Chapman, efficient hull forms were found by trial and error guided by the experience of the shipbuilers; after publication of his work calculus could be used to direct those trials and reduce the errors. The same math, with refinements by other naval architects since, is still used today in hull design. That may partially explain why this book is still in print more than 245 years later. Dave

I'm also drawn to topsail schooners. Perhaps it's the radical rake that makes them look like they're doing 20 knots even when they're only just making enough way to steer. Perhaps it's the place held in history by these vessels as privateers, pirates and slave traders from the Revolution through the Mexican-American War. They were the mainstays of the US Revenue Cutter Service, which was the closest thing the US had to a Navy at the start of the Quasi-War with France, and remained important to this forerunner of the US Coast Guard well into the post-Civil War period. Most likely I like them because they are uniquely American. Early in my ship bottling I came across the book Architectura Navalis Mercatoria by Fredrik Henrik af Chapman (1768) and one plate which provided me with SiB plans for several years of building. In those pre-internet days research was very time consuming, so rather than building a named historical vessel I gravitated towards building types using this plate and drawings from other sources. BTW, this book is still in print and available as a large format paperback for US$16.95 from the usual sources. It's fascinating for the awesome wood-cut prints of hull-lines but has little use for masting and rigging. Masts and spars are rarely shown on older ship drawings because these were done by standardized formulas that used waterline length and beam to determine, for example, the height above the deck for the lower mainmast and its diameter. Plate from Chapman I used to build several "type" models. I found these drawings useful for many years of building SiBs. These drawings are all to the same scale. Notice the scale that relates the Spanish, English and French foot to each other. I added the legend which was on a different page in the book. A 10.4MB version (my scan from the book) is available for the asking, just PM me with your e-mail address.

Alex: I posted my method for making deadeyes here: http://www.bottledshipbuilder.com/index.php?/topic/5-deadeyes/#entry237 Dave

The tales of the Voyages of Discovery still leave me dumbfounded. Magellan's attempted circumnavigation comes to mind in which one of his five vessels with 18 men on board returned to Spain. About 240 men, including Magellan, died in the attempt.

Perhaps you have an extra zero here. 24' = 1" scale is the same as 1:288 scale. 288 X .0025 = 0.72 inches. Surely, the real deck planks are not that narrow. 288 X .025 = 7.2 inches makes more sense and the planks look to be about .025" on the model. I'm sure it's just a typo. I don't dare try building two at a time. I'm afraid I'd get caught in a feedback loop of sorts going back and forth between the two trying to make them the same. I think my OCD would run amok. I do enough re-work as it is. I like your work very much.

John: I spent my entire working life building things out of steel or other metals and not once did I build something that I did not have a good mental picture of what it would look like when my part was completed. Usually I got this image from the construction or fabrication drawings. I can't even comprehend building something blind.

I agree with John that a rigging plan is essential. I use a drawing program on my computer and prepare hull, masting and rigging plans at some preliminary scale usually well before I have selected the bottle I'm going to use. It's a simple matter to scale that entire preliminary draft up or down to suit the bottle later and further refine the details. Here are the first two pages of my Ogallala build done before I had selected a bottle. Both of these were later reduced in size to 1/96 scale to fit my selected bottle. I later narrowed the beam and axles to suit my bottle. The drawing program I used allowed the use of layers that can be turned on or off so that I can look at individual groups of components or turn off groups that are in the way to see what I need. The program also allows for multiple pages so I used these two sheets (after I reduced them to the size I needed) to generate three more pages of detail drawings such as patterns for the components used in the hull, which was plank on bulkhead in two pieces (upper and lower hull), and detailed individual spar drawings, etc. I also made some changes and additions as a result of further research when I put my trained spiders to work on the rigging. Rigging plan drawn for Esmeralda, now on the bench. There is one thing I have not seen mentioned in the SiB how-to books I have read that is very important. Lines that run from a higher point or level with its termination on another mast forward (look at lines 9, 10 & 11 in red, the topmast stays, and 7 & 8, the main mast stays) need to be adjustable at one end or the other because the distance between the end points will increase when the masts are hinged back for insertion in the bottle. This is also true with the horizontal mast-to-mast stay at the top of the lower masts, shown in blue. It is now a red line that will be secured at the foremast after the masts are raised in the bottle. This jpeg image of the rigging doesn't reflect this change but the drawings in the drawing program format show the correction. Lines that go down as they go aft can be fixed at both ends. Now look at the fore yard braces in green, they can be fixed at their ends at the opposite ends of each yard and will be free to pass through a hole or eyebolt in the mainmast. Look carefully at the foresail yard braces. This line starts at the bulwark near the main mast, passes freely through a thread block, then freely through the mainmast (hole or eyebolt) and through another thread block near the other end of the yard, then down to the opposite side bulwark. This may seem to be a problem but if you look closer you will see that the distance from the end point at the bulwark to the thread block will shorten greatly as the masts hinge back and allow enough length to pass through the thread block to where it will be needed to compensate for the increase in distance from the thread blocks to the hole in the mainmast. Of course, I will verify this when I rig this line and test that it works as planned long before the vessel goes into the bottle. The topsail yard braces may prove to be a problem, I will find out for sure when I rig and test the foremast. It's much easier to work out these rigging details digitally or on paper than it is with wood and thread. Remember, if a line goes down as it goes forward it needs to be adjustable at one end, if it goes down as it goes aft it can be fixed at both ends, but verify. It's much easier to change an adjustable line into a fixed line than to change a fixed line into one that's adjustable, especially inside the bottle. I hope this helps.

The method I used for the decking is straight from McNarry or McCaffery, I don't recall which, perhaps both. I first made a test pattern on my computer and printed it to check that the width of planks and pattern of butts looked right on the model, in this case 8 inch / 20 cm to scale, (1/16th inch / 1.5 mm actual). Using 1/16th basswood - note that the thickness matches the planned plank width - I glued a piece of black tissue to one side of the piece of wood with lightly diluted pva. When dried I then sliced this wood, paper side up, into about 1/32nd inch / 0.8 mm thick planks. Paper side up helps prevent the knife from following the grain rather than the straight edge - a useful trick to remember. The strips were glued edge to edge with a papered edge against a plain edge to replicate a tarred seam. Bits of black tissue were glued to an end of one of the planks at the butt joints. From top: my printed decking pattern with locations of deck openings and masts. The black object is the remnant of the deck material, papered side up. Below that is the decking in the gluing fixture, ready for gluing to the deck former. The fixture is just two straight edges set to make a square corner on a base. The base in that area was covered with strips of home/office tape to prevent gluing my decking to the fixture. Notice that several butts in the center planks weren't papered or staggered because they will be covered by a deck opening. When this deck was assembled to a little larger than the deck area, I glued it to a deck former of 1/64th plywood and sanded the edges to the former and sanded down the surface of the deck to a uniform thickness. The deck assembly was then glued to the hull. The deck was left unfinished - I liked the color of the plain basswood so did nothing else to it. Most of the tan cordage that you commented on is Gutterman sewing thread I bought at a sewing store. It looks more like rope than the much more common Coats & Clark thread found at department stores like Walmart and Target. Gutterman thread is also much less prone to fuzziness. The belaying pins were cut from .010 or .012 inch (0.25 or 0.3 mm) diameter bug pins, I don't remember which. By the way, I used pegs cut from the same bug pins (these pegs were belaying pin rejects) to reinforce the joints and the attachment points to the deck of the pin rails at the masts. I also pegged the pin rails to the bulwarks. You may notice that the running rigging ties off to belaying pins, so I took these extra steps to ensure that I couldn't pull the pin rails apart with accumulated rigging stresses.

That makes sense and fits the pattern I observed. I hadn't considered the time factor.

I remember reading about two purpose built ocean racing sailboats breaking the 89 day 8 hour New York to San Francisco record around the Horn set by Flying Cloud in 1853, anchor to anchor, or 89 days 4 hours set by Andrew Jackson, pilot to pilot, in 1859-60. All I could think was "So what? Now do it with about 1,500 tons (3 million pounds!) of cargo on board."