The four mast steel bark Archibald Russell was built in 1905 in Greenock by Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Co., and was one of the last of her type to be built on the Clyde. Built for general trade, she was 291 feet long and had a beam of 43 feet and displaced 2385 tons. She was owned by John Hardie & Son of Glasgow. After years of carrying a variety of bulk cargoes around the world, she was sold to Captain Erikson who operated a fleet of sailing ships, primarily in the grain trade from Australia. Eventually she was broken up in 1949.
This ship was unremarkable in design or history, but exceptional as a well -documented and handsome example of her type. Underhill created a very detailed set of plans, including one sail plan with yards lowered and another with sails set. Bjorn Landstrom added a careful drawing of her hull and deck furniture as well as a color sail plan in his popular 1961 book, The Ship. Clive Monk followed Underhill and added her plan to those in the appendix of his 1954 Windjammer Modelling. Best of all, Edward Bowness made the main subject of his thorough 1955 Four Masted Barque. The second edition included information on a number of similar barks, but it grew out of a detailed guide to building an accurate model of the Archibald Russell. She has come down to us as the leading example of this kind of ship near the end of the sailing ship era.
She is also well suited to ship in bottle building. Her long shape and complex lofty rig are well suited to a typical wine or whisky bottle, filling the space handsomely. In the early days of the craft it is easy to imagine many of the craftsmen, though perhaps not knowing Archibald Russell specifically, were certainly familiar with a ship or ships just like her.
My own model started sometime in the mid-1990s, as a project for one of the ship in bottle classes I was offering those days. It was clearly intended for advanced students and I was not entirely surprised when I got no takers. The plans are my own drawings, taken from the plans in Bowness’ book, and made back in the days when I still believed this extra step was essential for accuracy and developing a familiarity with the ship. Now I am more skeptical about errors possible in this work, especially from careless draftsmanship. But in this case I felt my plans were accurate enough, and the templates were made from copies of these.
The model itself starts as a pine core, and bass wood is an excellent alternative. I’ve heard cedar is also good, and I look forward to trying it. The lower hull is hollowed out for the rigging lines, done with some fine chisels and smoothed with files. Although having invested in many fine files over the years, I often return to the files from an inexpensive keyhole set purchased over 30 years ago.
For larger scale models I would normally plank the deck with thin strips of wood, but at this scale, approx. 61’ = 1”, there is little point. The bulwarks are added on and eventually I learned working with multiple strips of wood for these makes it easier to effectively get the right sheer. A thin strip is glued horizontally inside the bulwarks to serve as a rigging railing for the shrouds, backstays and sheets. Made of pine, this strip went in very neatly but was later to cause me much woe.
As an experiment I went over the outside of the hull with thin strips of paper to represent the hull plating. I liked the results and this did make painting the hull easier, especially the lines along the hull sides. The painting was still time consuming, taking a number of times going back over the strakes and false gun ports to get it as neat as it should be. There are some fine masking tapes out there, particularly the green “frog tape”, but so far I’ve only gotten little results using them at this scale.
The deck furniture is varied and involved. There are three houses on the main deck and another, the chart house of the poop. The poop and fo’c’sle are joined by a catwalk that runs over the main deck houses. The hatches have peaked covers. All houses and hatches have brown “booting” around their bases, which was represented by this strips of paper painted the correct color. All portholes are simply simulated by pin holes in the wood.
As often before, I lose interest in photography until the rigging starts, although there are a number of things that must be done before it can begin. The railings need to be added to the poop and fo’c’sle. They are made up of nicrome wire, 0.008” for the stanchions and 0.004” for the railings. The former are set into holes at the edges of the decks and the latter superglued to them as they are bet around the stanchions. This is not the best method, I’m sure, but it is the best I’ve managed so far. I’ve tired various jigs to create these railings off the hull but have had two ongoing problems; keeping the tension on the wire even as it is applied to the jig and finding an adhesive that can be depended on. Perhaps those with more experience in this technique can enlighten me.
There is also a light railing along the catwalk but I did not seriously consider attempting this. Even the finest materials I have would still be too large for this feature and it would be a considerable challenge to make it without the results looking out of proportion. Furthermore, this railing would be so light a delicate it would probably not survive the rigors of rigging the model, let alone the bottling. Even the more robust fo’c’sle and poop railings took enough of a beating through the completion of the model as to make me wonder whether I shouldn’t have figured out a way to add them later in the process.
Among the other things necessary to get done before starting rigging is, of course, making the masts and spars. At first I was going to use hinged “Hinkley” masts because I was afraid masts without hinges would not come back up among all the deck furniture. Unhappy with how my hinges were turning out, I decided to chance unhinged masts, and that turned out to be just fine. As usual, all masts, spars, tops and booms are of bamboo. Again as a concession to the scale, I did not attempt the topgallant spreaders. I find it is easier to rig in topmast and topgallant shrouds before starting any rigging to the hull.
All rigging was a combination of fine thread and fly tying silk. The lower shrouds and stays are of the thread and the upper rigging is all fly tying silk. All running rigging is a light brown fly tying silk. It seems simplest to start from the foremast and head aft. Lines rigged in separately, of brown fly tying silk, are rigged in below the stays to support the staysails, and I usually tie these in first to help keep the mast in place and because these would usually be rigged in below the shrouds.
Next come the lower shrouds themselves. The thread for these is always waxed. After years of doing this I finally realized the line used to rig the lower fore shrouds can be run after through the hollow underneath the hull to become the main shrouds, and on the become the mizzen and finally jigger shrouds. Similarly, the fore back stays, of black fly tying silk, can become the main, mizzen and finally jigger backstays. Therefore, all standing rigging running abaft the masts can be rigged in using just two lines, one of thread and the other of fly tying silk, making it much easier to make adjustments as needed. One of the difficulties arising from this is having to spend an extended period working with exceptionally long lines.
Beading needles are an enormous help in this work with one major exception. I found these needles in three sizes, #s 10, 12 and 13. As most folks know, the higher the number, the finer the needle. In spite of being told a number of times these needles will pass through a hole drilled by a #80 drill, experimenting with these needles I found the hole for a #13 had to be drilled by a drill at least as big as a number #78. Both #s 10 and 12 needed holes at least as large as a #74 (!). Unfortunately my delicate railing inside bulwarks could not take much of the punishment of being drilled by bits this large. I had to repair sections of it a number of times. A further complication is the thinness of the #13 needle eye. Only with great difficulty can any line larger fly tying silk be threaded through this eye, and if you do succeed, that eye with the doubled thread will require a hole larger than the #78 to get through it. So much of the threading of these shrouds and backstays was done without the benefit of these needles and took a good amount of time and patience. Having to do this again, I would try to build a sturdier inboard railing.
There is also a braided beading needle which is an alternative. My testing found it needed a hole drilled by a #76 drill.
Once the standing rigging is all in I usually added in all fore and aft sails. These are easier to set before the braces go it. All staysails have sheets which are threaded through holes in the rail inside the bulwarks but are not secured until near the end of the entire rigging process. This is because the positions of all the masts shift and I was reluctant to commit a stays’l sheet until I felt more certain all was where it should be.
This is the beginning of a time consuming and subtle process as the lifts and braces get tied in. Ships like this bark look best if all the mast rake alike and there is a clear uniformity throughout the rig. The braces have slightly more leverage between the masts than the shrouds, backstays and stays so they tend to draw the masts together. This is what I think of as a “corset” effect and can easily wind up with a fore mast raking conspicuously too far aft and a jigger raking too far forward. To try to maintain control and adjust as needed, I glued the braces on the lee side of the yards and only tied them on the weather side, leaving them free to be loosened or tightened. It also left them free to slip off the end of the yard from time to time, It took a number of days of carefully retying to finally get the balance I was after. This is why the nearly completed model is a chaos of loose ends for so long.
I have often wondered just how much my 2 yard-of-ale-glass models may be worth, I know that they are the only ones ever done and an appeal by the Bottleship mag did not produce any contenders also an article in a newspaper failed to find any more as I am nearing 80 I am thinking of selling some of my work and intend to leave some to my local museum.
I have often wondered just how much my 2 yard-of-ale-glass models may be worth, I know that they are the only ones ever done and an appeal by the Bottleship mag did not produce any contenders also an article in a newspaper failed to find any more as I am nearing 80 I am thinking of selling some of my work and intend to leave some to my local museum.
I agree, very nicely done Igor!!! Putting an unattached mast/sails/rigging in a bottle/bulb is probably the most difficult sib work, and you pulled it off perfectly!
Bernard Kelly reacted to Alex Bellinger in Archibald Russell
Bernard Kelly got a reaction from JesseLee in Yacht Pen Duick in bottle. Scale 1/300
Bernard Kelly got a reaction from Onni in Yacht Pen Duick in bottle. Scale 1/300
