Landlubber Mike

Beautiful work Alan.  It's funny, I got a book on styrene modeling the other day and was thinking that it might be a good material for SIBs.  Then today I catch up on everything I've missed the past few months and your Black Pearl uses it, and uses it very nicely.   Thanks for sharing all the tips with us.

In progress...

My new project is in progress...

Results of 2021

Yes I did;it came to approx 72 hours for my rendition of the Golden Hind in 2013.

Here's my final result, Charlotte Rhodes.  I kept an informal log of how much time I spent and what I spent it on. Came out about 54 hours, with 10 spent on the hull, 8 on launching and finishing it in the bottle, 6 on the deck furnishings, 6 on the stand, 5.5 on the mast and spars etc.  I actually thought it would have been more like 80 or 90 hours.  Did anyone else ever track their hours?

I just learned the sad news. Terry Lynn Butler passed away on January 2nd.  I don't have any more details than that but I'm saddened by the news.  She was the information collector, editor and printer of the Bottled Shipwright for many years and worked hard to bring us the quarterly magazine.  She was also a great mentor.  She often answered a lot of my questions as I was getting started in ship in bottle building.  I'm very sad to hear she passed away. As many of you may have known her too I thought I'd share the news. 

   

Hey Daniel, that's the kit I started with to get into the hobby (I might have a log on here).  It works into a nice kit, but be very careful about the masts and the bowsprit - they are so thin, the bowsprit broke on me a couple of times.  I would consider replacing at least the masts with brass/wood rods - they will be more stable, and be more three dimensional.  Good luck!

Happy international ships in bottles day 4th October.

Very cool - welcome!

Continuation
Artur

OK!
I now have a ship in a bottle!
Because of the height issue, I removed my clay sea, just soaked it in water, and it eventually came away. The epoxy that held the clay in place took 10 days of soaking it acetone.
Cutting the bottom of the hull off is an option if it it done before bulwarks and rigging go on, doing it afterwards I think it would be a bit of a pain! 
Likewise, trimming the top of the masts.
I really should not have to do either.
So I glued the ship directly to the glass, and then poured in the ocean.
All I have to do now is make a base for it, and she can go onto the shelf.
Cheers
Mick
 

A friend of mine have me this kit and told me make it however I like just bring it back when it's done. So I'm going to kit bash this a bit. At first glance its simple enough. The box is way bigger than the parts inside.  I suspect the bigger box is to protect the bottle. 


So far so good. The laser precuts makes cutting out the pieces super easy.  I sugest using the keel as a guide when gluing the hull together. The instructions don't say that so I had mine mostly glued before I realised it was a tiny bit off. Sanding should fix it but the keel guide would be helpful. I do like how it's coming together in general. I'm curious about the brass fittings. I've heard others had trouble with them but we'll see. 

 

Fixed the bowsprit in place ,complete with dolphin striker and bobstays  and then threaded the jib ropes through the bowsprit using the cotton loops that I had made earlier (first picture).Glued the jib sails in place and after everything was dry cut off any excess threads and she's done! Turks head knot on the end of the bottle completes the look. Had to photograph her in the last little bit of snow that was left remaining in May!⛄

Many thanks, Bruce!
One more photo - 

 

A friend asked me to make a SIB of a boat that is owned by one of their friends. The boat is a Colvic Watson 28 ft as shown in Figs 1 and 2.

Figure 1: The drawings

Figure 2: the actual boat
I had a few other photos to work from as well. I drew up some plans, shown in figure 3.

Figure 3: Working plans
The hull block was made and shaping started, shown in Figs 4 & 5

Figure 4: Hull block

Figure 5: Shaping Started

Figure 6: Basic outline.
The hull is split just off centre to port and has an upper, mid (from styrene) and a lower. The aim is to give sharp horizontal paint lines for the boot topping,

Figure 7: Cabin made, under-coated and the planking.
I made the planking from watercolour paper, printed on the PC with different weights of line thickness and shade. I used watercolour paint to try different shades of ‘wood’ colour, then picked the one that looked best at this scale.

 
Figure 9: Top-coated
The lower hull sections were painted separately, royal blue for the boot topping and red oxide for below the waterline.

Figure 8: Sea started.
The sea was made from plasticine, with a description of the SIB and makers name label under it.
 

Figure 10: Starting the woodwork and masts.
I used a red hardwood veneer for the woodwork, Small pieces were reinforced with thin CA glue before cutting and sanding to shape. Once attached to the SIB I used diluted clear acrylic varnish on them.
The masts were made from brass tube and rods. This SIB had the luxury of actually having a large hinge at the foot of the mainmast. The main and mizzen sails are of the modern variety that are slotted into rails on the mast and are furled on a rotating assembly on the boom. The foresail is furled around a rotating steel forestay. Cutting the slots in the tubing was ‘fun’. I used a small photo-etched saw from http://www.radubstore.com. Took a while but it worked,

Figure 11: Main mast

Figure 12: Most of the woodwork fitted

Figure 13: Masts and sails
I used some type of translucent parchment that my wife gave me for the sails. Stitching was simulated using a black pencil, and they were coloured with watercolour, This allowed them to retain the translucent effect, They were a bit waxy, and I had a bit of trouble getting them to stay stuck in the slots on the masts. They held a good shape though.

Figure 14: Rigging Underway
I used a silver coloured thread for the rigging to simulate the stainless steel on the real boat. The railings were made from brass rod and painted chrome.

Figure 15: Almost done. Windows ‘fitted’
I used DIY water slide decals for the windows and name. This is the first time I’ve tried this and have been pleased with the result. A pack of 5 A4 sheets of decal material cost about £5 and I’ve used half of on sheet. First I printed a couple of different sizes and colours on paper for trialing next to the SIB for size and effect. Then printed out 3 sets of the chosen ones on my ink jet, to allow for slip ups. When dry, a couple of light coats of clear acrylic varnish was sprayed over them. Once dry, the decals are cut out, placed in a saucer of warm water and when they float off of the backing are applied using a wet paintbrush and very gentle use of tweezers, left to dry then varnished over to seal and protect them. They went on very nicely first attempt.

Figure 16: Ready for bottling

Figure 17: In the bottle.
By special request, the lighthouse is an attempt at Walney Island Lighthouse at the north end of Morecambe Bay where the owner sails to sometimes.
Regards to all
Alan
 
 
 

Here are some photos of the second James Miller model. It is housed in a 9" diameter clock that was made to look like a pocket watch case. The case is actually cast bronze, quite heavy.
 

First off, I'd like to thank you guys of the forum and most of all Daniel Siemens, for all the wonderful knowledge,help and encouragement I've had the pleasure to receive during the undertaking of this build. My hope with this piece meal presentation is that some other novices out there can benefit fro m my particular experience in some way. So here we go.
In almost every way this build incorporates techniques and processes I've never tried before and only became aware of through the pages of this forum and discussions with Daniel. Along the way I had to contrive some methods to get things done, some of which I'll share here. As I was going along I also found myself tearing things down and starting over again and again because I did something that wasn't going to work and had to fix that, testing my patients all the while. After a two month period of time working most every day on it, I came up with a, I think, pretty decent generic brigantine that I basically modeled after this silhouette.
I had never built a SIB model with more than one square sail on it before so I've been itching for years now to get to that place where I could confidently build square riggers. For the most part, the majority of the dozen or so SIBs I built years ago were schooners or sloops of one kind or another.
MY FIRST CLAY SEA MATERIAL:
I decided earl on after looking at some of the seas in pictures on this forum that I was going to use clay for my sea instead of what I had been using which was blue RTV silicone. Here's a picture of what my seas use to look like.

I read everything I could find on the forum that addressed sea material, which is quite a lot actually. With some further input from you guys, I finally decided to go with a PLASTALINA type clay made by VAN AKEN. After working with the stuff throughout the course of this adventure I've decided that I love it. I made a really nice sea for my ship. I also found out that it melted easily over my stove burner to fuse well to the bottom and sides of the bottle.
An incidental discovery with this material was that if you expose the top surface of this clay once it's in the bottle under the close light of two 100 watt shaded trouble lights, the glass will heat up and after a while the surface of the clay takes on a satin like wet look which I think is SWEET. I can't tell you how long that process took for sure or how hot the glass got. I do know that it became apparent to me that the sea was getting shinny around the time I had been working inside the bottle on the rigging for about a couple of hours.
About the 100 watt trouble lights. I like to work with as much light as close as possible to whatever I'm working on. In this scenario I had a light on the right side and a light on the left side about four inches away from the bottle. I'll certainly be utilizing this characteristic that this clay exhibits when heated from above on my next build, too.
HOW I MIXED MY SEA COLOR:
I made a sampling chart of the five different clay colors that I purchased to come up with the color I chose for this ships sea. I've put all the combinations of clay that I mixed on a stick and numbered them 1 through 11. To this I've attached a print out of the picture of their proportions before mixing for future reference. I'm sure I will want to use a range of sea color possibilities in the future. I know that there are far more combinations I could have mixed but for now these 11 will suffice.

SIZING THINGS UP:
I've always liked the Pinch bottle 5th and the way a ship looks in it. It's kinda dreamy looking to me and so I chose it for this build. Besides I had one on hand I've been dragging around for eons. LOL.
I basically scaled up a drawing of the ship from the silhouette I found on line. I made a hull blank and put it inside the bottle, held that drawing up to the glass to get a good idea of how much of the bottle would fill up with ship.


Although I didn't know it at the time that I did my sizing process, Daniel has a much more accurate way to do it in his tutorial on, "How to build a Bermuda sloop (for beginners)", which you can find on this forum under the menu selection called, Build Logs. Check it out! A great deal of what I have come to do on this build of mine is a direct reflection of the things I've learned from his tutorial. Anyway somewhere in the beginning of his tutorial he shows how he makes a paper cutout of the ship and puts that cutout inside the bottle. Wish I knew how to put a link to his tutorial right here but I don't so you'll have to look it up. It's a treasure trove of technique and process for sure.
THREAD BLOCKS:
Yet another first for me is this thing called a thread block. There's a nice video on Daniel's tutorial by a guy named John Fox III, that shows how to make them. I had never known about them before and how useful they are especially in doing the running rigging for square sails. I made some the way John shows in the video and also came up with another way to put them on the end of my yards which was easier for me. I was also introduced to the Cow Hitch that is used on the center of the yard to attach it to the mast allowing the yard to pivot around. Between these two concepts, it dawned on me how I would be able to rotate the sails out of the way to get them through the neck of the bottle and because the running rigging freely passes through both thread block on the ends of the yard I would be able to set the tack of the sails once everything was inside the bottle.Pretty neat.
Basically I made my thread blocks for the yards by holding a piece of wire in my vice. I secured the yard to the wire with a piece of masking tape being mindful of the correct orientation of where the Cow Hitch was and where the blocks needed to be. I made a mark on the wire where I wanted the block located from the end of the yard. That way I could duplicate the same location on the other side. When one thread block was done I slid it off the wire, flipped the yard 180 then put it back on the wire and tied the other one.

PAPER SAILS AND SPANKER:
Okay for the first time I'm using paper sails too. In the past all my builds had cloth sails because I had always had a problem with kinking paper going down the neck. Fabric was much more compliant for me. Another thing that I gleaned from Daniels, process was that the spanker sail has to come way away from the mast in order to get through the neck and unscathed. In my case I made a yolk crutch to wrap around the mast for the end of the boom out of a piece of brass wire. I drilled a hole through the mast at the spot where the boom would be nesting. Then I made two wire blocks and tied them to the boom.The running rigging for the spanker sail's sheeting goes through them and the hole then forward all the way out of the bottle.This configuration worked out perfectly for me as the gaff was able to move way out of the way along with the boom when the time came. So no kinked spanker.


Incidentally, the travelers you see in my pictures are "Mini Swing Line Stapler", staples. I've used them on almost every ship I've made for that purpose. Sometimes I put a radius on them. On this build I also used four of them to attach my rat lines and back stays onto. Ironically, using the staples this way would later save my ass , as you will shortly come to see.
LESSON LEARNED
These pictures show a couple of things. The first thing that is evident, (to you old salts anyway), is that my ratlines and back stays are too far forward of the center line of the mast to ever lay down flat. When the time came to fold down the masts and I discovered that they wouldn't lay down I almost had a heart attack. Disaster! At one time I must have known about the importance of these elements locations relative to the pivot point of the mast because all my builds were successful in the past in this regard. But over the years I just totally forgot about it. Anyway, after a while of total dismay and a whiny conversation with Daniel, it came to me that I could remove the staples that the ratlines and back stays were attached to and relocate them back and up. That solved the problem and is an example of one of the tear downs I was speaking about in the beginning of this discourse. I wasn't able to get those lines as tight as they were and that's a huge disappointment. Another thing that the pictures show is the way I chose to step the masts. In the past I always used the wire hing method but this time I decided to use clock bearings. These bearings are put in old clocks when the original bearings are worn oval over time. It just so happens that I also restore antique clocks for a hobby too and have these bearings on hand.The one side of the bearing has a counter sink on it to hold oil for a gears pinion shaft. that counter sink was mounted up so the mast with a rounded bottom nested in the countersink just fine. In the future I'm just going to drill a divot on my deck to do this . it's a lot less work.

SECURING THE SHIP IN THE BOTTLE:
I put a trough in the middle of my sea material and found some of that white 5 minute epoxy at Home depot that Daniel had spoken about somewhere on the forum. Can't remember where but anyway it worked out great. There was a little bit of it that oozed up around the hull but I covered that up with white clay to look like the wake of a ship moving through the water.
 

 SETTING MY SAILS TACK INSIDE THE BOTTLE:
I'm sure that there is some way to avoid what I had to do to come to the point of sail I wanted for my ship but as yet I don't know that. Basically I made my sea to reflect a reaching tack which meant that everything had to be adjusted from how it was built outside the bottle for that tack inside the bottle. For the boom and gaff of the spanker sail I used a piece of wood to lean against the top end of the gaff which held it there while the CA glue dried. I pushed the boom out with a wire tool and tightened the sheeting of the sail from outside the bottle. At this point I glued the yolk and sheeting line off with CA. Then I went in with a razor on a wire and cut the sheeting line off at the front of the mast where it came out of the hole.

ADJUSTING THE YARDS:
To pull the yards over for the reach tack I made a slip knot lasso and used that to grab the outside end of the yard arm and pull it forward careful all the while that the running rigging was moving through the thread blocks on either side of the yard arm without hanging up. Worked like a charm. I then went in and touched the Cow Hitch at the mast with some CA glue to set it. I waited a minute before I let go of the tension on the lasso I was using to hold the yards position.To be doubly sure the sail would stay put I removed the lasso and touched the outside thread block where the running rigging touched it with the CA glue. The only problem with this process aside from being tedious is that it is difficult to get all the yards on both masts to have the same degree of angle when it's all said and done. There's got to be a better way to do this, I mean to have the tack of all the sails predetermined before it goes in the bottle? Perhaps some of you guys can pipe in on this issue?
One other thing that I learned about CA glue is it will for sure fog up the inside of your bottle if you use a lot of glue like I did inside. So best, if you can turn the bottle up to let the off gasses from the glue escape better. Even so be prepared to spend hours inside with Windex and a piece of cloth scrubbing the glass clean again. Big Pain In The Ass. Better yet plan the build to use a minimal amount of glue inside.


SUMMING UP:
There are a whole lot of more topics I could have touched on in this discourse but If I go on about it, it's kinda like someone saying , I could write a book. So I'm leaving it here. I sure learned a great deal during this build doing things for the first time was daunting in some respects but I survived the fray.
I'd also like to say that it sure is nice to have a place like this to share our projects with other like minded nut cases because let's face it no average person on the planet has a clue about the work we do creating these little engineering marvels. There is so much to learn in this wonderful medium and I'm excited about the future builds I'm dreaming of already.
Great to have my feet wet again. Thanks for reading mate. Best regards Bruce.
 
 

And finally, Jack took his place on the mast.

Here's the final product.

Finally bending on sail. The furled courses are tissue paper painted a color close to the other sails. The Spanker  is attached only at the point of the gaff jaws to the Mast, the bottom of the sail can flop away from the deck and be drawn in tight later inside the bottle via the sheet and tack. It feels great to be bending the sails on, I’m excited again.

In that video, Volodymyr just talks about his collection
One more video by Volodimer (It shows here how to make sails out of garlic skins) - 
 

I've always thought ship in bottle building was like painting a picture but in a bottle. I saw thos video on Facebook and it totally blrw my mind with the use of perspective.  Most of the ships in bottles are pretty regular but check out the ships in the up right bottles.  I've never seen anything like them.
 
 
 

Twenty seven years ago there was a Sunday feature article about my SIB's in The Detroit News, our local newspaper. Lots of closeup pictures and such. Within a week of it being published I get a phone call out of nowhere from an old lady asking me if I would be interested in having her husbands sea chest which had unfinished and broken SIBs in it. I asked her what kind of ships and she said mostly clipper ships she thought. Of course I jumped on it and went over to meet her in a near by town. When I got to her home she showed me three or four (can't remember), SIBs her late husband had made. They were All Clippers and in a diorama setting. One had a lighthouse another had a village like scene or maybe it was a port. They were pretty nice. She told me they were all made at sea. We talked for a while and this is what I scribbled down while we were talking.
Her husband, Anders Christian Henriksen was born in 1904 and was the son of Nils Henriksen both natives of Denmark. Nils taught Anders the art of building ships in bottles. Anders started sailing in 1918 at the age of 14 yrs. old on a Danish training ship called The Joseph Conrad. Anders became a US citizen in the early 1940's. His father Nils sailed on square riggers most of his life. I'm pretty sure Mrs. Henriksen told me that Anders, was a ships carpenter and last worked sailing square riggers on the Great Lakes before he retired. So he too, like his father spent most of his life at sea.
I googled the Joseph Conrad the other day and found out it still exists and is part of the Mystic Seaport museum here in the states. Go figure. 
I spend a lot of time reading and learning things from this forum. It just so happened that this past weekend I read back to back two threads about rigging clippers and about evaluating ages of SIBs. Anyway It dawned on me that I still had this guys stuff and maybe this was the time to look through it again. I have always wanted to build clippers and I thought one day I'll figure out how Anders did his and build one. 

This is a picture of Anders and I'm guessing he's in his early 20's here. So still a citizen of Denmark. Maybe someone might know what the numbers mean? Passport? Crew ID?
 

This is a small wooden box from his sea chest that had all the ships in it. There is a ton of tangled up lines in here that I'm going to take the time and unsnarl to see what I got.
 

As far as I can tell this is the only identifiable ship in the bunch. It's the Thomas W. Lawson. The only seven masted schooner ever built. Maiden voyage 1902, sank in 1907.
This model doesn't seem to be damaged at all so my guess is he had maybe broken a string or two when he was trying to raise it in the bottle.
More to come tomorrow. This gets really interesting.  Stay tuned.