Bernard Kelly

IJN Yamashiro, 1941, 1/1800 Scale   The upper hull was 3D printed, lower hull scratch built from styrene. Various PE parts such as searchlights, cram hooks, searchlight platform structures, railings, awning supports, etc. Rigging is ShelfOddity wire, the Aichi E13A floatplane was scratch built from stainless steel.                                

The end of construction.
Artur

Hi, I joined the forum last January to get hints about putting a ship in a bottle. I have plans of the Duyfken, a little ship who sailed to Australia with Dutch explorers in the early 1600. I visited the replica a few years before and had that project in my head since. I am quite happy with it, although it's far from being at the level of some of the masterpieces I have seen on this forum. I do a bit of small wood carving and I decided to carve the Duyfken out of a piece of boxwood. It has been a long learning road with many challenges, the masts, the rigging, the planking, the painting, the sails and the sea which I made out of fimo, until I had a go at launching it yesterday. Cheers!

Ahoy all!
Just thought I'd share a few Work-In-Progress shots my latest project, a SIB model of the Britannic, the "forgotten sister" of the famed RMS Titanic, and the third and final member of the Olympic-class, which were built by Harland and Wolff of Northern Ireland at the behest of the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company AKA the White Star Line, in response to Cunard's twin giants Lusitania and Mauretania. 
The Britannic was originally intended to be the ultimate expression of what the Olympic-class ships were supposed to be, thoroughly re-engineered to benefit from the Titanic tragedy, having been modified to have a double hull along the length of the boiler and engine room compartments, and her watertight bulkheads having been significanly raised (one or two going up to the very top of the ship), meaning she could stay afloat with the first six compartments fully flooded, compared to Titanic's design of only four (five ended up being breached by the iceberg. These improvements, along with plenty of lifeboats and new giant gantry davits to lower them, being able to swing over to the opposite side of the ship if necessary, prompted shipbuilding magazines of the time to label her "The most perfect specimen of man's creative power as is possible to conceive".
Alas, Britannic was fated never to carry a paying passenger, for she was requisitioned by the Royal Navy and completed as a hospital ship for service ferrying wounded and sick military personnel back to Britain during the Gallipoli Campaign of WW1. Britannic was subsequently lost on November 21st, 1916, the now-accepted cause being that she struck a mine laid by the German U-73, with the loss of 30 lives, having sunk in 55 minutes. 
 
As for the model, as I've stated elsewhere on the forums, I like to make SIB's that are unusual, and that I favor steam and motor ships as these are relatively under-represented as compared to SIB's of sailing vessels. As I've already made Titanic and her tender Nomadic, it seemed only natural to start "rounding out the family" by making a SIB of the Britannic too.
These photos represent the current state of the model, being approximately 70% complete, with the hull and superstructure mostly finished. All that's left to do is apply the final detail parts such as hatches, cargo cranes,  the anchors and anchor chains, the crow's nest, rudder, flags, etc., then it'll be time to rig the ship's masts and Marconi aerials with thread, then to do the painting and apply the smoke for the funnels before the final dismantling and re-assembly inside the bottle.
I'll be posting up further photos and commentary as the work progresses, please feel free to comment or constructively critique as you see fit.
 
Cheers,
Brendan O.

I won the gold medal in qualifying for the European Championship in Bulgaria.
Pozdrawiam Artur

I present a video of mounting Western River in the bottle.
Artur

Well.  Gotta rework some things.  The bundle of masts and spars made the ship to big for the bottle.  I'm thinking of taking the fore mast off and reworking it similar to Igors method.  It'll be a hybrid with two folding masts and one separate.  Which is less work than redoing all of the rigging.  

More rigging done.
 
 

Got tired of ratings working on the running rigging.  



This will be the first time I've rigged to the stay line.  We'll see if it works.  

The way the clip sits I can close the box with out taking the ship out.  All of the rigging is done in the box.  She doesn't have to come out until she's ready to bottle.  

A few more photos.  

A little more work done.  Got the lanterns on the stern and a little more rigging.  
 

 
 

Making some progress.  I redid the figure head.  This time I used paper. Not as easy to tell what it is but at least it's much more proportionate.  I still need to get some other paint to fix the flesh tone though.  Right now it looks like she's sunburned.  

 
I also built up the main mast and added the cat heads.  I need to get the anchors on.  

 

 

Next small update

Excellent work Igor!

Thank you Jeff!

I have now made the 14 small cargo winches.   It took about three hours, spread over three days to do this.   They look a bit rough close-up, but on the model, they look fine.    I now need to make two large winches, two warping winches and the anchor windlass.   Not very difficult, but a bit tedious making all those small parts, and then assembling and painting them.   In the image above, I have not yet fitted the winches.
Bob

Moving along slowly, but surely.   18 winches made and fitted, two more warping winches to make and fit, and then onto more deck details - lifeboats, ventilators, ladders, rails, samson posts, mast, derricks, rigging, names, anchors, mooring bits, navigation lights.
Bob
 

Nearly finished now, but I am getting quite tired of it.  It has been dragging on since November - far too long!  
Bob
 

Very Impressive.  Especially those detailed shrouds and rat lines. I'm going to copy your technique.

Very handsome bark, good to see someone's finally getting around to bottling her.  Looks like a great start.
 

Great work on both models.

Wow!!!!!!!!! I really like this one Bob!
Jesse

The masts and spars vary in thickness depending on the model, but as they are made of metal, I can make then a lot thinner than wooden ones.    Real sailing ships would not even stand up if their masts were too thick.    A mast with a diameter of 2 feet at the deck level would only be 1/16th of an inch in a 32 feet to 1 inch scale model (1:384).     I have no idea where Dave is.
Bob