Leaderboard

You know google images isnt half bad. Just type in what ever ship name and plans and something Ussually comes up. At our scale images online can work fine. Here's one for the Golden Hind. Ive thought of doing this ship. https://www.google.com/search?q=golden+hind+plans&safe=strict&client=ms-android-verizon&prmd=ismvn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi03eO_htjUAhUCLmMKHY5ZBU0Q_AUICSgB&biw=360&bih=518

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 am new to this and am looking for a place on the web to find plans to carve small ships. I drive truck so I don't have room for books. Any advice would be appreciated.

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!

Hi Jkhorton! I agree with Daniel. There are many sites with drawings on the Internet. But I think that first you can determine the type of ship that you want to build. For example, it could be a schooner, a yacht, a caravel or something else. Then it will be much easier to find the drawings.

Continuation Artur

Hey Al, sorry to hear about the hand. The wife and myself went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie last week and it was a hoot! Cool scene of the Pearl in a SIB. Love the jig and good use of the watch gear for the ships wheel. The polystyrene trim is nice and crisp well done!

The end of construction. Artur

All, Thanks for your interest, kind comments, questions over the SIB and concern over my hand. I was moving a large patio plant tub by tipping it on edge and rolling it like you do with a barrel and got my hand trapped between it and a wall. Bruised,swollen and stiff for a while. The stiffness lasted, making holding small bits hard, but its just the pinky now, not much use for modeling anyway. I've uploaded some more phots, one with a ruler to show size. I basically measured the inside of the bottle and shrunk the plans to suit, so I haven't actually got a scale. I've started the mainmast, but its only loosely put together to show a general make up, no glue as yet other than the styrene top. A trial cannon on deck - it needs to be a bit higher I made up a couple of jigs a few years ago for making Hinckley Hinges. There is a mast drilling jig in ‘Ship Models in Glass’ that allows accurate drilling. I adapted this so an off centre hole could be drilled. The male and female halves of the hinge are started in this. A line of holes are centre drilled in one piece (female) and then the offset is used to drill a line of holes, then the mast is rotated through 180 degrees and another line of holes is drilled producing the male half. The second jig is a piece of square section brass with a screw to hold the work piece and the end formed at 45 degrees. A 0.5 mm wide saw blade is used to clear out the female half with the jig guiding the cut to 45 degrees. The sides of the male half are trimmed down and the mitres cut. A bit of fettling to get the fit, I then used the sanding jig to reduce the thickness to 1.mm. If anyone wants the full article I wrote on this for Bottleship, PM me and I'll send it on. The cabin windows were cut from styrene sheet. I crosshatched a piece of thin clear sheet from a bit of packaging with a sharp blade, coated it with black dry marker, let it dry and then wiped off, leaving the scores black. Coloured the other side yellow, and glued to the window frames. The wheel is a watch cog. More soon Alan

Glue. Go figure...that makes a lot of sense. I have a project that's fallen way down the list of things I'd like to do involving bottling the Gajoa in a bottle I found. The inside is stained by some sort of chemical I can't get off but it looks a lot like frost. It would be fun to put a ship sailing through ice in it. I will keep this glue in mind if ever I get around to that project. It's looking good. It will be very hard to tell how you got it in the bottle once you're done.

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

I'm back to modeling. 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.

This ones about done but I thought I'd share. I'm starting to get into war gaming so I thought if make a fleet. This is my first model for that. As a war gaming model she won't be bottled. Still got to come up with rules but I thought I'd put a fleet together first.

Have you had a look at www.rodlangton.com. I've got some of his 1/1200 ships on the slipway, and jumped straight in and put together HMS Victory. The hulls are white metal, so are the masts. Choice of white metal or PE brass for the sail. There are even PE ratlines and shrouds. There are also a couple of books on painting and assembly which are worth thinking about, especially the rigging section. I'm slowly building the 1/300 brig that I was given as a present, based on a cruzier class. I'll stick up some photos in a couple of days. There are buildings and harbour 'stuff' as well, and I believe there is a book of rules for gaming. The use of metal allows a certain robustness for constant handling, and of course, sib skills can be used to improve things. Alan