tazam0827

Can't wait to see it complete!

I find it amazing that your builds are so efficient. That's the same time it takes me to make a crude ship in bottle with a fraction of the detail and finish as your models. Well done!

Your jigs are a work of art in and of themselves. Thanks for sharing!

Wow, that is fantastic work. The precision, the attention to detail, the beauty, are all amazing. And at such a small scale! I could look at those for hours. Just a rough guess, how many hours would you put into an average model? 200, 500, 1000 hours?

Alas tis true, it's been slow on here, myself included. Perhaps other forums (Facebook etc) syphons off some activity. As to the waning interest in "model boats", as think as the older generation that was exposed to the golden days of ocean liners and ocean warfare leaves us, the younger generation is only really exposed to the big cruise ships and container ships, which aren't that romantic.

And here we are, just need to finish off the bottle and build a stand! With every build I learn something. I still need to be neater with my glue work and find a way to make my spars more graceful, but I like the way the sea came out (I melted the plasticine this time instead of just pushing it in) and the smoke adds an exciting element to this one.

After laying is aside for most of last year, I picked it up again and am making good progress. After I stepped the mast I realized I made the ship about 4mm too tall for bottle I'd chosen. Luckily I had a few extra Scotch bottle paying around and the Aberlour bottle was just the right size ☺️. With any luck I'll be done in a few days.

Amazing work, as usual!

Thank you, very helpful. I had been on the site before but had not noticed the plans at the bottom. Most appreciated!

Hi Everyone, My next build is going to be the USS Adams, described as a "screw gunboat and the lead ship of the Adams class, a single screw, wooden-hull, bark-rigged steamer." My great great grandfather was a marine serving aboard the Adams from 1892 - 1894. He also served aboard two of her sister ships, the USS Enterprise and the USS Pensacola from 1890 - 1892. I was wondering if I could ask the help of some of the more knowledgeable modelers on this site. I've been able to scale the ship from the profile picture included here and other descriptions about her length, beam and draft. But I haven't been able to find out a lot more about her configuration. The other pictures I've included here are the USS Enterprise, so I'm using these to approximate the Adams. Some of my questions are as follows (and it's fine with me if you take a guess, I'm not a 100% stickler for historical accuracy) The armaments are listed as 1 X 11 inch (280mm) gun, 4 X 9 inch (230mm) guns, 1 X 60 pounder Parrott rifle. I assume the 4 X 9inch guns are similar to the 4 guns on the carriages fore and aft of the main mast. 1) Do you think the Parrott rifle and the 11 inch guns are pivot guns similar to the one pictured? 2) Where do you think they would be mounted? Considering the the ship has an open gun deck, would they fire them up and over the gunwales, or would they have to be on the forecastle and the quarter deck? 3) How far would the forecastle and the quarter deck extend? Should I assume the mizzen mast is on the quarterdeck and the fore mast is on the forecastle? It looks like the forecastle extends almost up to the smoke stack. 4) It appears that the helm is on the main deck, in front of the quarter deck? 4) Have any tips on modeling convincing smoke from a smokestack that will hold up over time? 5) I've searched the web, but does anyone have any clues as to where I might find more details about the layout of the ship, or this class of ship? If you have any opinions to share, I thank you in advance.

I love this! Thanks, I was having trouble with the same thing. I tried sewing the sails to the gaffs or the forward stays using a needle but the eye of the needle tore too big of a hole so I had to put the holes further from the edge of the sail and further apart. Didn't look great. Yours look like the perfect solution! Exquisite detail. And Alan, may I ask, what is the edging and reefing lines you have on your sail? Is that glued-on thread, and if so, how do you get it so straight and precise to the edge of the sails?

My second ship I definitely over-reached and tried the same thing as you, detaching the masts and assembling in the bottle. I ended up with a rat's nest that would never be untangled. Not willing to give up on the hundred hours I'd invested, after taking a few months off, I took a hammer to the bottle, rescued the ship, refit her using wire hinges on the masts, found a slightly bigger bottle, and successfully re-launched her. I hope you don't give up on SIBs permanently! Good luck!

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?

Charlotte Rhodes, adapted from a plan in "Modeling Ships in Bottles" by Jack Needham.

It occurred to me that I never finished this build log. Didn't want to leave you all hanging. I'm sure you were on the edge of your seat! I wasn't super happy with the results. But in the interest of sharing our disappointments as well as our triumphs, here it is. I should have spent more time smoothing the hull after I made some design changes, The proportion of the masts wasn't quite right and I think I should have included the topsails. Also, if you're going to make your ship heel, make sure it heels towards the front of the bottle. Otherwise it hides a lot of the deck features and makes it less interesting. On the plus side, I like the way the lighthouse on the bluff looks, and I finally figured out a Turk's Head knot!