Bottleneck Treasures

Hi Igor, You deserve so much more praise for this magnificent build. A beautiful job well done.

Congratulations Daniel. Please take photos

Daniel the bottle was hand made in Poland. I use only European glass now for all my SIB's. The quality and clarity is far superior to glass made here in the United States. I find all my bottles at Marshall's Homegoods excellent prices too. All of the glass is from Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, Italy and France.

With the build process complete I have dis-assembled Thermopylae and doing a preliminary fit of her inside the bottle before I add the transparent ocean to the bottle February 17, 2017 Thermopylae and her newly poured ocean inside the bottle.

A friend of mine who is a glassblower sent me 60 miniature bottles.

At any given time I have multiple projects going. I like to balance my work by working on a miniature and a larger vessel at the same time. At present I am preparing to dis-assemble a replica of Thermopylae in order to bottle her. I do not hinge any of my masts all are pegged through the deck. Thermopylae measures nine and a half inches from stern to bowsprit. She has over 300 copper plates on her hull and is scratch built using basswood, mahogany, birch and walnut. She is the largest ship I have built to date. I still have to do a bit of detail work on her deck. I am also building a miniature replica of the Schooner Ernestina - Morrissey. Ernestina was the last sailing ship in regular service to bring immigrants to The United States from the Cape Verde Islands. She is the official vessel of Massachusetts and is part of the New Bedford Whaling National Historic Park. A $375,000 challenge grant has put the completion of a projects to restore her. The $6.3 million restoration effort was recently announced.

At what point does one define miniature? Somewhere along the scale the word miniature transforms to lilliputian or itty-bitty. Most of the " tiny " ships I build in bottles measure 2.5mm at the bottleneck, a few in bottles which measure 1.0mm or .039 of an inch.

That would be the talented Heather Gabriel Rogers from Switzerland. She has been building ships in bottles for years. Check out her amazing talent on her website. S & G Ships in Bottles

Daniel, As for being able to post photos to the site I am still unable to do so. I understand you have a limited capacity for photos. Why not limit the amount of photos per project?

Building ships in bottles is a rare and unique art form,. It is unique and more importantly as shipwrights we who create this art have significant rare skills needed to bottle a vessel " under glass." We are fewer in number worldwide so why minimize or generalize the art form as General Ship Modeling? Allot of parameters need to be considered ie, the bottleneck dimensions, the volume inside the bottle etc. We are limited to the size of the bottle the vessel is going in. Unlike ships that are on static display these parameters need not be considered, just saying. Perhaps a separate discussion is warranted

In the past adding images to create a gallery was easy to do. I have had no issues and no difficulty in doing so. In recent days I have made numerous attempts to create a new gallery with recent work I have completed. Sadly I cannot add images with what I have learned is due to a lowering of file size acceptance. A procedure which should be so easy to accomplish is now a harrowing task.

Congratulations Daniel