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After a couple months break it is time to start the next project! This time I’m going for a galleon which I’m expecting to have some unique challenges over the schooner I made last. This will be my first try at a square rig and the neck of my chosen bottle is smaller than my last build so hopefully I won’t be biting off more than I can chew. For this build I’ll be taking inspiration from the art on the label of a bottle of Kraken Rum and this wonderful model I saw on Instagram by iniciacionmodelismonaval I started as before with estimating the inner diameters of the bottle and sketching out a plan that should fit. next I rough cut the hull shape on a piece of walnut. This wood is actually scrap cut offs from the bottle stand of my last build. I faired the hull roughly with a dremel and various sanding and grinding bits and then did a final smooth with 220 grit sandpaper. On my last build I used wire to make some railings on the deck but didn’t think it would look very good at this scale and it was also very time consuming. This time I went for a recessed deck and carved out gunwales. I did this with linoleum carving tools as I still don’t own a good chisel set. With the hull looking pretty good I shifted my attention to spars, masts, and the bowsprit. To achieve a nice taper on the round dowels, I clamped the dowel in the chuck of the dremel and then gently held fine sandpaper against it as it spun. This effectively creates a very tiny lathe. I made up the spar for the sprit sail and did a little bit of tiny dremel carving to make a bit of a figurehead. then finally I put some tea on and dropped some cotton scraps in to dye them an off-white/brown colour in preparation for sails later on. In my last build I used paper for the sails but when I put it through the neck of the bottle they got some ugly creases in them so I think using the cloth will be better. That’s all I’ve got for now. Next I’ll finish up the masts and get them installed before rigging and sails.

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In progress...

Hello all, I’ve been very busy with work but I got back to working on the galleon a little more. Next up I install the masts using the same simple wire hinge method I used on my first build. I like this method because it’s easy and with the cheap bottles I’m using, the glass clarity is such that you can hardly see the hinge anyway once it’s in the bottle. I used super glue to glue the hinges into the deck and when I did so I made quite a mess of glue by mistake. It didn’t look very good in patches so I instead just put an even coat of glue on all of the deck surfaces to hide my error. It ends up not looking bad, it comes out with a semi gloss finish and just looks like I gave the deck an oil finish. Next I rigged up all the lines. This was a bit tricky in planning because my last ship had only 2 masts and I wasn’t following someone else’s plan this time but I think it worked out. All the masts can be raised by pulling on the strings with only minor poking with a stick. I also added some wood strips to cover the string ends. On my first ship I left them bare even though it didn’t look that good because I was working within a fraction of a millimetre of the ship being too wide for the bottle. This time that is not the case so I made it look a little more complete. Next I cut up my sail cloth and glued it on to the spars. I think the one for the aft mast is okay but I will probably try to take the sails off the main masts and put some on that are a little smaller. These ones just aren’t quite the right shape. I actually went out and bought a smaller bottle before doing this because I thought this tiny ship would be a bit lost in the 750ml bottle I had originally chosen. A quick transfer of the contents into my large bottle and some time under a fan to dry it out and the bottle was ready for resin. I poured the resin in the same manner as I did last time but it was much less daunting this time seeing as I had done it once before. The long tube and funnel prevents the resin from making a mess in the neck of the bottle. That’s it for now! Next time I’ll probably fix those sails and get ready to set it in the bottle. Cheers!

Second SIB completed. Similar design to the first just much smaller. Lots of lessons learned on the first build and now more on this one. Loving the time spent learning and can’t wait to try a square rigger

Hello and thanks for accepting me to your group. I recently completed my first SIB after years of wanting to try and now I’m hooked. Loved looking through the posts here and already learned so much, a bit to late for this project but planning the second one now

S.S.Salama Launched 1874, sunk 1898 and raised 1971/2.

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The last instalment of the galleon build is here! I started by taking off the sails and replacing them with smaller ones. I think this makes the whole ship look a lot less messy. I still think I made the mainsail a little too small but by this point I didn’t want to take it off and put it back on again so I left it in a state of “good enough”. Next I folded up the masts and did a couple test fits to experiment with the best way to hold it while it went into the bottle. I ended up using the same long bent coat hanger forceps I used for the last ship. They aren’t very good and are quite difficult to grip with but it got the job done. It was a bit tricky to get the sails to stand up this time and required lots of poking and prodding with a long hook. I also kept getting the strings tangled in the neck of the bottle and forgetting which line ran to which masts. To solve this problem I tied different coloured strings to the end of each. Green was for the foremost mast, yellow was the main mast, and red was the aft mast, this helped me keep all the loose ends straight. I put some glue on the end of a rod and reached in to put a small dab on the bowsprit in each place where a line went through to hold it all in place once I cut the lines. While I waited for that to dry, I put together a little display stand. In this photo you can also see my multicoloured string ends I mentioned earlier. I also put a coat of tung oil on the wood which gives it a much darker look that matches the ship better. I’m not sure why the ship and the stand were such a different colour because the wood for both was cut from the same plank. Once the glue had finished drying it was a simple act of taping a craft knife blade to the end of a stick, reaching in and, cutting the lines off. This was actually kind of tricky because the sprit sail was a little in the way. So that’s the galleon all finished! It was a bit more tricky than the schooner I made before but I think it still turned out quite nice. I look forward to hearing what you all think of it! Next on my list I want to do a junk rig or a Viking ship, not sure which I’ll do first.

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Here are a few pictures of my first two SIB from the early 1960s… Howard Lamey

Hello, have been active in the maritime sector for over 40 years, retired for a while, and have discovered this nice hobby. While looking for a ships plan I found this page "by accident". I will post some of my handmade SIB's. As a Belgian I combine my shipbuilding with tasting a nice (monks) beer from time to time 😉

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SS Great Western.

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Hey Daniel, Thanks for keeping us in the loop about the changes happening behind the scenes. It's great to see your dedication to the community and your efforts to ensure that our forum continues to grow smoothly. It's unfortunate that the current website host's pricing took a significant jump due to that one-day spike in traffic. But I'm glad to hear that you've found an alternative hosting service with better pricing and more features. The fact that they offer more space, fewer restrictions on photos, and a significantly higher monthly visitor limit is really promising. It sounds like a move that will benefit the forum in the long run. Change can be a bit nerve-wracking, especially when it comes to migrating a website. However, your due diligence in selecting a hosting service with good reviews and your proactive approach to making sure there shouldn't be any changes to the forum during the transfer are both very reassuring. Let's hope for a smooth transition over the next few days. If there are any minor hiccups, I'm sure we'll all understand, given the circumstances. Thanks for your hard work in keeping this forum alive and thriving. The community here is wonderful, and your commitment to maintaining it for years to come is truly appreciated. Looking forward to seeing the forum continue to flourish under the new hosting service. Best of luck with the transfer, and thanks again for the update! Warm regards, Eva Lyra

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Hi! I've made a stopper in traffic a few times. There are several different ways.

My latest project, IJN Kongō, as she appeared in early 1944, before her final refit, is complete. The model is entirely scratch built from boxwood and brass, with over 2,500 individual photo-etched pieces alone. Construction time l ran to Just under 8 months. She is 1/1500 scale or 125’ to 1”. The case is made from spalted tamarind and Patagonian rosewood finished with tung oil, with a glass cover assembled from copper which was acid etched. The marquetry for the rising sun motif took a few days if work, and I think it compliments the model well. I do enjoy spalted tamarind, it’s probably my favorite wood for a ship’s base because of its visual interest. The name plate is acid etched brass which was enameled. This was quite a complex job in itself and took several days to complete. The hull of Kongō was made from carved boxwood, with the balance of the superstructure made from brass and individual photo-etched brass parts. The funnels are made from aluminum with the correct bulging at the top. To man the ship, there are several hundred crew members on deck. The rigging is nitinol wire, and paint, as always, is ScaleColors exclusively. The ship is depicted as she would have appeared in port in the early months of 1944, before she was refitted with dozens more anti-aircraft emplacements. I chose this fit because it allowed me to model all 3 towers on her turrets, which I thought was more interesting. The model is probably the most complex I’ve built so far, and she was an absolute joy to build. The photo-etched superstructure came out just as I’d planned, and she certainly is striking. Several challenges needed to be overcome, such as the funnels with the bulge at the top. This had to be achieved very carefully because I still wanted to represent all of the interior trunking, so they had to be scale thickness, shaped correctly, and carry this detail. This was probably the single most difficult aspect of the build. She’s finished in ScaleColors Kure grey, with some light weathering. If you’d like to see photos of her being built, I keep everything on my website, www.josephlavender.com.

Hi all! I thought I’d share my latest ship build which is not at all bottled but is entirely nautical in nature, a Revell 1:570 scale RMS Titanic. This was my second ship build and first ship from a plastic kit. I’d have to say the fit and quality of the kit is quite poor compared to my recent plastic modelling kits which have been mostly aircraft. I leave it to the fact that it’s an old tooling kit and the manufacturing techniques of modern kits are simply much better. In any case it was still fun to make and has a nice presence on my shelf.

Dropped by the local trophy shop this afternoon. They’re buried with all the high school graduations and all, but said they’d fit in my brass nameplate. I mocked it up on paper to make sure it would fit. Should look nice. I also made a little gusset for the neck support. That’ll strengthen that butt joint a lot. Dan

Super quick update here. I know the traditional way to display a ship-in-a-bottle is to have a Turk's Head knot on the neck of the bottle, but I haven't tied one of those since I was a Sea Explorer back in the early 80's. I did a little Googling around to relearn and then practices a few times. It turned out looking pretty nice! Four passes, which filled out the neck nicely. Then, yesterday, I designed the base and fabricated all the pieces. It's all mahogany, cut from some leftover wood I had. Routed the edges. Resawed a piece for the piece supporting the neck. (I thought the full thickness of the board was a little too bulky.) I thought this turned out well, too, although I'm concerned about the butt joint on that neck piece. I think I'll make some small reinforcements for it. I got some Varathane wood stain the other day. It's that "super fast drying" variety, which I've never used, but from everything I've seen, it works well. Still debating if I want to use tung oil or polyurethane varnish on it. I'm going over to the trophy shop this afternoon to see if they can make me a name plate for it. Down to the final stretch!

Greetings Dan, Here are a few photos of what I do when making models with more "control" rigging lines that have to be pulled from outside the bottle/light bulb. I've made several of these, each one designed for specific models, so the openings are in the right place to apply glue to the lines once tightened. Simple wire hoops keep the lines contained to the desired angles to make gluing easier. The "head" end has a rubber pad, then a thin wood slab, with rubber underneath. The arrangement keeps tension on the lines as they are tightened, and allows tension release if a mistake is made. There is a brass 90 degree angle with holes drilled to keep lines separated into groups, to make it easier to label lines. Anchor's A Weigh! John Fox III

Finished!

Wow! That makes what I’m doing look like banging rocks together to make fire. Just amazing. Di you run those lines out a hole in the hull? Or just out the bottom of the hull? I finished up tonight. Cut the last lines! Dan

Completed ‘Duguay -Trouin’ 1800. Captured in 1805 and became ‘HMS Implacable. Scuttled 1949.

Greetings All, Have made considerable progress on my 1813 lakes brig model. Cap rail, chain plates, most of the deadeyes and chains, plus most of the deck structures have been added. Much still to do, but getting there. Anchor's A Weigh! John Fox III

Le Dugay-Trouin later HMS Implacable. Still a lot left to do.