Bernard Kelly

Greetings All,
            Work on the second hull continued with the start of a first layer of planking. This time I used well saturated cardboard that was thinner than that used on the first hull. These planks were stiffer, but also much more brittle. I also changed things up a little by using a white card stock, also saturated with thinned poly varnish, to delineate the waterline. The following photos show this work in progress. One thing to note is that this time I did not fill in the bow and stern areas with solid card stock, not sure if it was a good idea or not, it make planking much more difficult.

 
            One thing I am trying to accomplish with these experiments in card modeling is to see how far one can go with only cardboard and paper. I expect at some point I won't be able to take it all the way, but the only way to really find out is to experiment.
            While working on the planking for the second hull I would take breaks from that work to try out a method to make spars for the models. I used a variety of different sized aluminum and brass tubing, as well as a long miniature drill bit in my efforts. I wrapped very thin paper around the largest tube in my selection, carefully rolling the paper between my thumbs and forefingers on both hands around until the paper was tightly wrapped. I then let up slightly, removed the larger tube and inserted the next smaller tube and continued. I repeated this process until I had a tube that was slightly larger on the outside than the desired finished mast. While holding the paper tightly to the last tube/bit I applied CA glue to the point where paper ended, working from one end of the tube. I then slid the paper tube nearly off the tube, and saturated the entire outside of the tube with the CA glue.
            I then removed the paper tube from the brass/aluminum tube or drill bit, and used a thin sliver of bamboo to seal and harden the inside of the entire tube by dipping the sliver of bamboo into the thinned varnish and letting it drip from the tip of the sliver into the open end of the paper tube. I repeated this three of four times on each end, then pushed the bamboo sliver in and out to clear any excess varnish. I wanted the inside of the paper tube completely sealed, but also completely cleared so that the metal tube/bit could be reinserted. At this point I put the metal tube/bit back into the paper tube and sanded the outside of the tube to attempt to get the desired taper. After sanding a bit I would reach a point where the CA glue had not saturated and the paper would start to fray a bit. I would then add more CA glue to the outside of the paper tube, and continue again with the sanding. I repeated this process until I had the desired spar shape.
            Though the photos included below only show the finished mast parts for one model, I made many more tubes. I had to make up tubes that would be thick enough to be stiff at whatever desired size I needed, but that meant cutting many pieces of paper and gluing them up to determine the length of paper that worked best, i.e. not too much paper to make the tube walls too thick, but enough to make the tube as stiff as possible.
            The next portion of the work was making up layered solid pieces of card stock, to add to the tops of the mast tubes. These layered pieces were made to be as thick as the tops of the paper tubes, masts in these cases. These pieces are designed to make up the mast doubling areas. The layered pieces were then measured so that they were about twice as long as the mast top area, then one portion was cut and sanded into a solid, round stem. This stem portion would be inserted into the paper tube top end. Then they were sanded and cut into the proper side and shape for the mast tops.

 
            Work on the masts continued with making and adding the cheeks. I first made a template by gluing a cutout from the plans onto a single layer of card stock. I used that to trace the shapes onto a thicker layer of card stock, and cut them out. I glued them to the masts, then sanded a taper into the cheeks, thinner at the bottom to full thickness at the top.
            While doing this work I also glued the card decks onto the hull. I did glue a card stock beam to the underside of the stern edge of the forecastle deck. The holes for the masts were then cut out of the decks.  I also glued pieces of thinner white card stock to the insides of the bulwarks. I used thin paper pushed tightly to the deck and bulwarks to get the curved shape needed, then transferred that to the final card stock. The following photos show the work on mast cheeks and first hull with decks.

 
Anchor's A Weigh!
John Fox III

I carved up an inflatable buoy to use as a race marker.

I decided to change the color scheme so it looks a bit more realistic that these two would be racing. I cut the sails out of silkspan and taped them off, airbrushed some color on them.




I decided to make battens by glueing some 40 gauge magnet wire onto silkspan strips corresponding with the color of the stripe, then glueing that on the sails.




 

Models like the Sicily take only a few hours to buid.    Ones like the one pictured  take a little longer.    For anyone into Facebook, I have a group:
Merchant Ships in Miniature - Link https://www.facebook.com/groups/1841532386133008
Over 4,000 members, and very active, with both sail and steam, but merchant ships only -  Closed group, but one can apply to join.   Many techniques are supplied by members almost on a daily basis-

Hello BrewerPaul
I rarerly come here these days, because I am totally lacking in patience for things like ships in bottles, but do quite a lot of miniature work. As far as I know, there are no kits for miniatures, and this is about all that you will find written on the subject.
https://payhip.com/b/T98k
Scroll down a bit after it opens to read the synopsis. Then, if you wish to purchase a download, a button for Paypal or cards is provided for £1.49.
Here is a Utube presentation of the build. This is as simple as they get, and very few hand tools are needed, especially if you use balsa wood.
https://youtu.be/j5ESlw72qHY
You will find some more of my builds here on Bottled Shipbuilder.
https://www.bottledshipbuilder.com/topic/444-small-topsail-schooner/
These models do not cost much to build, but they do require a bit of practice., but acceptable results are normally obtained on the first attempt as long as you can dismiss the thought "I could never do that!"
There are no knots at all in the rigging, and special methods make it relatively simple.
I have given up on most forums, but felt that you were quite keen to start miniatures.

Yes this is very sad news. I had the privilege to get to know Terry through email response/correspondence. She passed the baton on to myself for editing the ShipWright magazine etc.
She will be missed. For this years edition I will try and put together a special remembrance edition in her honor.
Jeff AKA Chasseur

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 Jesse I trust your Christmas was good. Happy New Year to you and yours! Let’s hope and Pray 2021 is a better year.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas season and/or however you recognize the Holiday season!
Jesse

Ahoy Mick!
I feel Your pain. I spent my 2020 wrecking a clipper in a bottle 3 times. One for the record book for sure! 
Once again; taking time away, contemplating my next. 
Maybe for you, attempt #2 will be the one to celebrate!
Maybe for me, attempt  #4 will be the one. 
Cheers, mate!

 

Greetings Mikey,
Had that happen a few times in all the models I have built. My solution was to break the bottle, carefully, remove the model, then fix it all up. I would then buy or build a small case for the finished model. Not the ship in bottle I intended, but it saved all that work and still made for a nice model presentation.
Anchor's A Weigh!
John Fox III

Oh no, thats not good to hear, i really feel for you after all that hard work! I actually only rig seperate parts and then do all the assembly inside the bottle with lots of made up poky pushy and pully tools, mabe now its in you could try a different approach to finish it, have, a rest and a think and go back to it in a while, i think you will be pleasantly surprised at what you can achieve! 

Hi All,
After the debacle of getting all the lines tangled inside the bottle, I was able to remove the mizzen mast without damage.
 However, by that stage, I had lines caught around anything in the bottle that could trap a piece of string, from the yards on the sprite, to the flagpole at the transom, including the cannons, gunnels, ships wheel, anything on deck! 
So I spent a month trying to straighten things out, I made up pokey tools, hooky tools, pushy and pully tools,  all to no avail!
The boat hull is still firmly glued inside the bottle!
Then  little bits and pieces started to break off, (yards on the sprit, Ships wheel, etc) , so ultimately, I have decided to give the whole project a miss.
Maybe my ambition exceeded my talents, these are the things in life that we have to learn!
It was an enjoyable 12 months, though!
Moab, the sails are made from some very light-weight sail material, I think it is kevlar (mylar?) reinforced plastic (?) stuff.
Stay safe, and enjoy your builds.
Cheers
Mick
 
 
 

Hi-- thanks for adding me.
I've been building all kinds of things for over 60 years; model planes, plastic model ships, musical instruments*, etc. I'm currently building a 1/64 Baltimore Clipper from the Pride of Baltimore II kit. I'm building it as a more generic Baltimore Clipper, leaving off all of the modern stuff like propellors,radar etc. The real Pride has a LOT of stuff on deck that would not have been on a real period ship. Much of that is for safety,which is terrific for the real ship but it makes for a much more cluttered deck than a real working Baltimore Clipper would have. I'm not a stickler for total historical accuracy, so I'll add or detract deck furniture as I see fit.
I've been working on the ship's boat and am finding that I like working on a really small boat, which is what lead me to look for small scale ship models for the future. I don't know if I'd try to stuff any in bottles, but a collection of small ships of various ages would be a lot of fun.
Know of any small scale sailing ship models? Thanks! Paul,Frederick MD
*I currently make Irish penny whistles in hardwoods and polymers. If you care to look, check out busmanwhistles.com

Greetings Omni,
Yes, twisting of the keel is a problem with any bulkhead type of model. I had previously made one in styrene plastic, but there I made the bottom of the keel, center piece, deeper than needed, and used a wooden board with a slot to keep it all straight. Patience, as I often tell people who comment on my models in person, is something you need when you are doing something you don't like, I LOVE what I do so time doesn't matter.
Anchor's A Weigh!
John

I've seen some of the modelers who scratch build from styrene use right angled metal blocks and magnets to hold the styrene sheet in place while the glue sets. It would probably work with card as well. Similarly, when I used to build balsa wood planes and boats years ago, pins hammered into the building board were used to keep things aligned until the glue set.
Merry Christmas to all and wishing you a better New Year than the one we've had.
Alan 

Greetings All,
            Before continuing with this build article I would like to review some of what I've learned, and how it affects the work as it progresses. First of all I have learned that I need to soak/saturate the card stock from packaging much better. Originally I only used multiple painted coats of thinned poly varnish to do this work. I was only saturating the uncolored side, which is in effect sealed off by the printing. I have since learned to sand the colored side of the card stock, using 320 grit sandpaper and a small wood block, to roughen up the surface and remove as much of the sealed surface as possible. The second thing I've learned is to use a small plastic tray, in my case the base of a plastic container used locally to hold bakery goods, to literally soak the stock for at least five minutes. This worked much better at hardening and saturating the card stock. It makes it slightly more difficult to cut out parts, but keeps the fraying from unsaturated inner parts of the stock down to a minimum.
            Although not evident from the photos shown thus far, the hull does have some places where the top of the bulwarks are not symmetrical side-to-side. One side has a slight bulge and the other a bit too much tumblehome inwards. I believe this is due to the fact that I did not cut the slots for the individual pieces well enough, in some places the bulkheads were not perfectly 90 degrees from the keel piece. I didn't realize the problems this would cause later. I figured that although the center keel piece was forced out of alignment at the deck level, once the tops of the bulkhead pieces were glued to the spacer piece it would straighten out. I was wrong, the top of the center keel piece was pushed sideways slightly in places, but I could not see this until the hull was planked and cut from the spacer piece so I could view that area.
            As a lot of the work involved soaking or gluing, and then waiting for up to 24 hours to continue work, I decided to see if I could improve on the hull by starting over completely. Remember, this whole things is an experiment to see what is possible and what can go wrong and how to improve things with card/paper modeling. I am still working with the original hull,  as experimenting with it will help improve things overall.
            I redesigned the bulkheads and added some additional pieces to make what I believe will be a stronger and better hull. The following images show this new design.

            Like the previous plan drawings my CAD program exports rather poor images, I have all these drawings as PDF drawings if anyone is interested. The major changes to these plans are the additional longitudinal stiffeners and the open areas on most bulkheads at deck level. I am hoping that it makes cutting down to deck level much easier and more accurate. I also extended the bulkheads on each side right at the top of the bulwarks line, to make planking in that area much more accurate.
            I did make up the parts for the new hull, using the above mentioned soaking technique to the card stock this time. While the results were much better overall, it was a bit more difficult to cut the thoroughly saturated stock not to mention a lot more slot cuts were needed. The following images show some of the work on cutting out and gluing together that different parts. Each was made twice, and then each pair glued together to make up the final pieces.
 

            After the pieces were glued together to make up the hull parts, I dry fit each piece to all the pieces it would interact with in the final hull form. I made sure each piece fit easily and the pieces remained square to each other. It took a lot of time, and if a piece fit tight enough but slightly off square I would slightly enlarge the slot so that it would be square. Slightly over sized slots turned out not to be a problem, as there are so many pieces that fit together it did straighten it all out.
            The installation of the longitudinal pieces did require them to be installed on all the bulkheads that they interacted with at one time. And, due to the limited open areas above the deck level, they had to be put in place at 90 degrees to their final position. They were then slid into place and rotated to fit into their respective slots. A bit fiddly to do, but it worked out quite well due to the dry fitting and trimming of all the slots.
            The hull parts were put together in sub-assemblies, which were then added to the center keel piece. The larger center section had to be added first, then the stern and bow areas added. The following photos show this work.

            All the joints were then glued with white glue. This hull form was very stable. This time I glued the spacer print directly to a 3/8" maple board, and glued the tops of the bulkheads to that. Unlike the first hull, this time all the bulkheads lined up perfectly on the spacer print, with no adjustments needed. The following photo shows the final results of this process.

More to follow.
Anchor's A Weigh!
John Fox III

Trial and error on my "deck" or trampoline. I first tried to paint some silk-span black and make the deck from it but it would tear and I couldn't make the line look consistent where it laces together.


After noodling around for a couple days, I scrapped that idea and went with cardboard. It is more stiff and able to handle the thread being pulled taught.

Had to take a couple days off to set up a hockey rink in our backyard  as there appeared to be a long cold snap coming, only for Mother Nature to warm things just enough to make the neighborhood kids wait until Christmas to play. Only included this since it inspired a possible "ice boat" in a bottle at some point.

I will be able to put the decks in through the mouth of the bottle and then easily (famous last words) be able to attach to the pontoons.


 

Picked up some bamboo skewers. The difference from regular wooden dowels is amazing, the bamboo is so incredibly strong. Playing with ideas of how to "peg" it together once through the mouth of the bottle.

A piece of thinner cardboard was then soaked in a bath of maple stain, to saturate it completely and evenly with color. I had tried just brushing stain on the board first, but the colorization was too uneven. Lines were then drawn on the board, spaced 1/32" apart, and the thin board templates used to trace the shape of the decks onto the stained board. These were cut out and tested to fit in their places, but not glued down yet. I also traced the outside edges of the main, lower, deck onto a non-lined area of the stained board and cut waterways for the hull. Following photos show some of this work.
The actual cardboard was white, it came in a package of greetings cards.
Anchor's A Weigh!
John Fox III

Greetings All,
            The work on the card and paper clipper model continued with quite a few more sealing and sanding, with small amounts of Bondo. Once I had a decent hull I made up the keel, stem and stern posts out of multiple layers of board.
            After reading more online about card models I learned to saturate the card stock with thinned down poly varnish, in order to make it stiffer and less prone to fraying when sanding. It also made cutting a wee bit harder, but worth the effort as it shapes up nicer when saturated. I did this by using a large art paint brush and applying the thinned varnish, then letting the card stock dry, and repeating the process until no more varnish would soak into the stock.
            The keel and stern/stem posts were made from this saturated card stock. I then used epoxy glue to install these parts. Unfortunately, I had to use painters tape to hold the parts in place while the epoxy cured, this resulted in removing the sealed surface of the hull where the tape was attached. It left fuzzy areas, so more sealing and light sanding was necessary to seal the entire surface of the hull again.
            At this point I used extra prints of four of the bulkheads and the spacer used to glue the bulkhead tops to the board to design and cut out card stock pieces to make up a couple of stands for the hull. The following photos show the results of this work.







More to follow as the work progresses.
Anchor's a Weigh!
John Fox III

Thanks Onni for the idea. I actually contemplated that however for the Asbach bottle I think the base is too skinny and the bottle too tall for that scenario. An apothecary bottle or one as in your Gypsy Moth build would fit much better. I am excited to try the upright method. I love that build you did, very nice. I am curious why in the first picture you have paper around your hull?

I always play around with idea's for bottles and types of ships to go in there. I have seen sectioned hulls and thought about that with the Asbach bottle, you could run it all the way up a mast inside of that one. I have also been playing with ideas how to incorporate some of the ship "in" the bottle and some of it "out" of the bottle. It seems like a recipe for disaster unless you could protect it by making it an integral part of a lamp or table type of thing.

I think I will be O.K. partially because the rigging on these is so simple. I do though, have a tendency to push the limits on trying to "fill" the bottle and/or put in too much detail. The Asbach has a mouth opening of about 26.75mm which should seem sizeable after putting that Mayflower through a 21mm opening. I also took the too big hulls from yesterday and shaved them down to the proper size so that gives me a bit more room now. I must admit I also want to try and make little "molded clay" sailors and see if I can get them realistic looking. Usually the scale of our SIB doesn't allow for people, or at least much detail on them. I am also interested in trying to get a real sensation of "speed" and "motion" as they fly along. ...stay tuned.
 
 

O.K., so I mocked up a paper catamaran on a swivel and there really is just not enough room for the masts at the top of the bottle if they are to be accurate in scale so starting over at square one. Much better at this stage of the game than later.

I used to sail these 16 foot Hobie cats when I was a bit younger, and nostalgia has prompted me to attempt to put a pair of them racing through an Asbach bottle.

I found the bottle on ebay (obviously not yet cleaned up) and I think I have a plan.  To complicate things a bit, the mast will be taller than the inside of the bottle but I want them screaming along heeled over flying one hull as in the picture.

 
 
I watched some you tube videos of Tom Lauria who is a superb model builder and he was using a digital caliper to measure tolerances. I picked one up and it is really quite nice for consistency.

So the stand is complete and the seas installed inside the bottle.

Working on the base. I have one base coat of paint completed.
  I used the pedestal from a piece of furniture I discarded. It's one of the bases off of a couch.
 
 Here is the roughed out part with my patented checkboard finish.
  Here is the area for the name plate. It will be just like the one I built for the Wivern.
 
  Here I am testing the fit in the saddle.
 
  Here is the first coat of flat black. I will use my signature gold drybrush technique on the checkers than varnish once completed.
Stay tuned!
Chass