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Thanks, John! Really looking forward to your talk in Manitowoc this year! I think I've solved the problem: file size. When I reduced the size, everything went fine. Dan

Hi All, Interesting conversation. I have found that tapering the peg and using an air escape hole (usually has a thread glued to the end of the peg to assist in getting the peg to locate in the hole passing through it) helps considerably. The other thing I do is reduce the length of the peg just before putting in the bottle, its fine when building it when constant assembly/dissassembly may be required, but once in and glued up I don't think the full peg length is required. Once the hull pieces are in and located together, I place a small drop of thin CA glue on the hull joint in several places. It wicks in and is enough to give a good join. Best Alan

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Just got back from the Wisconsin Maritime Museum's 2022 Model Ships & Boats Contest and Show. As usually, it was a wonderful time with lots of great modelers, models and discussions. I want to publicly thank John Fox. We had a chance to talk and he gave me some great ideas -- and motivation -- for my next ship in a bottle. AND he gave me two Dimple Pinch bottles! That was really generous and I will definitely make use of those in the future. Thanks, John! Dan

Hi All, Further to the above discussion on adhesives, I have been experimenting with an adhesive called Paraloid B72. I first saw this used on a Youtube Video of conservators at the British Museum doing some work on artefacts. A bit of research provided the following: Paraloid B72 is a glass-clear, non-yellowing, soluble plastic. It is a conservation grade adhesive and lacquer. The joint can be undone by the use of a drop of Acetone. Supplied as beads, it is dissolved in Acetone to produce the required consistency:- In 50ml Acetone; 5gm makes 10% lacquer 10gm makes 20% lacquer 25gm makes 50% adhesive In use, I got a couple of laboratory flasks with ground glass stoppers to mix in. I use pure Acetone from the Pharmacist, not nail varnish remover that has other ‘stuff’ in it. I have two mixes, the 10% and 50% and use the 10% for fixing knots, stiffening thread, etc. The 50% mix I use for gluing up other stuff. It does not set straight away, so you get a bit of work time. So far, I’ve been quite pleased with it. Like most glues, the pieces have to be set aside to dry. There have been a couple of failures, probably my fault somehow. The flasks need topping up with acetone now and again due to evaporation, so I marked the full mix level with indelible marker, only to find Acetone dissolved it if I spilt any on it, so a slight scratch with a sharpening stone does the job now. The big advantage I’ve found, is that unlike CA glue, it does not stick to me. Time will tell if I keep on using it. Best Alan

Donald Campbell’s Bluebird K7, on Coniston water,January 1967.

Good idea, Alan! Please keep us informed about your experiments.

Hi all, Here is a question that I've been mulling over. What sort of glue or approach is best when gluing sections of hull together in the bottle, when the hulls are aligned by dowels in one piece that fit into holes in the other. I ask this, because I had two problems. The first was when I used dilute white glue, but this expanded the hole or post or both, so that the fit was very tight, and I was very lucky to get the two hull pieces together. The second problem was when I used 5-min epoxy, which I thought would not absorb into the wood, but then I think a touch of it got out of the holes, and between the two hull pieces, leaving a small permanent gap between my hull peices. I like a ship in the bottle, because the optical distortion of the glass is pretty forgiving for the odd imperfections, but what sort of glue do people usually use? Best wishes, Andy

I use bamboo pins.

I have had the issue with white glue swelling the wood making things fit too tight compared to when it was dry. I have used metal wire instead of wood pegs or I would sometimes taper the end of the peg making it easier to start in the hole with the rest of the peg very slightly scraped a little narrower to allow for the swelling. This probably does the same thing as the grove John was talking about. Jesse

I use white glue as well but haven’t really had any problems with it except that the hulls have to be joined together pretty quickly. I have never used epoxy to join them, that sounds a bit scary! To avoid expansion of the holes or dowels (cocktail sticks?) you could try using metal dowels cut from metal coat hangers. They are a slightly larger diameter than cocktail sticks but not greatly so. I’ve used them a couple of times and they work okay. onni

Hello, everyone. I'm just starting my Ships in Bottles journey. I've built quite a few ship models over the years and decided to give this a try. I was organizing some books one day and my son saw this one. "You should make one of those," he said. And I said, "I think I might." I started with Victorine, which is the first model in the book (Ships in Bottles by Guy De Marco). I made the hull based on the plans in the book. The plans aren't symmetrical athwartships, which I didn't discover until I'd finished making it, so off I went to find some proper plans. Once I'd done that I found the actual vessel had much less sheer and a wider beam than the plans in the book, so I corrected those things and built the model. Along the way, I built a cradle for the bottle, an erecting trestle and a bunch of lances. The ship's in the bottle now and I need to add the resin sea and the silicone waves, build a display cradle and plunk a nameplate on it. I'd post pictures, but I seem to be having trouble uploading them... I'm glad I found this forum and look forward to seeing all the impressive models here. Dan

Greetings Dan, Can't help you with fake water/sea, never use that in any of my modeling efforts. I prefer to model the full hull, detailed model, and nothing else besides some sort of stand for the model inside the bottle or light bulb. Good luck with your efforts in that direction! Anchor's A Weigh! John Fox III

That's the plan, John! I've been working over the past week or so to figure out the "sea." I wanted to use an epoxy resin for the base, then silicone for the waves. I haven't been able to make resin that looks good. The first 0.5 oz batch I made was really dark. I used acrylic paint as a colorant. So, last night, I got some actual acrylic resin tinting agent and tried that. Looks alright this morning, but it's still not set up completely, so we'll see. I'm starting to think just using the silicone might be the right way to go. There's really not much room for the sea in the bottle, so I can probably just add small amounts of tinted caulk and then paint the whitecaps on the waves. Once that's done, I'll need to make a more attractive cradle. I bought a nice piece of mahogany a while back that will look really good. Dan

Greetings Dan, Not sure what your problem with photos is, but when I first tried I had problems too. I normally store my photo files as .tiff files, as they are uncompressed. That did not work for me when trying to upload, so I changed the file type to .jpeg/.jpg, and reduced the size to 1048x764, then it worked fine for me. Welcome aboard! Have fun looking around! Anchor's A Weigh! John Fox III

Greetings All, Here are a few pics of my work on 1813 US brig Niagara. Scale is 1:200. She has a solid carved hull, planked with maple veneer. Apple wood stem and stern post, as well as keel. The cap rail is maple veneer, 3 layers. Grating is maple veneer. Anchor's A Weigh! John Fox III

Greetings Dan, You are more than welcome! Glad you found the presentation and our talk useful and inspirational! I was happy to share the pinch bottles with someone, since I knew I would not use them. Good luck with your next project, looking forward to seeing what it is and how it develops. Anchor's A Weigh! John Fox III

Greetings Andrew, One thing to consider when gluing the pegs into holes is that air is trapped below the peg. One thing I do is score or cut a groove in the peg, so that as it's pushed into the hole air can escape through the groove. I've used both types of glues, and have had similar problems in the past when attaching upper to lower hull parts. The grooves help, but are not the perfect solution. Although much more difficult to do, one could place small blocks on the lower hull, just inside the edge of the hollowed out area on the underside of the upper hull, assuming one hollows out the area to run rigging lines through. Those blocks could align the upper hull as it's lowered so small pegs could be used to alleviate the air being trapped. I have never tried this, but just might if/when I build another bottle or light bulb model. Anchor's A Weigh! John Fox III

Hi Dan, Thats a nice looking ship. Everything looks nice and crisp, and I like the detail on the foresail. Let us know if you find a good clear resin and way to color it. I used a resin I had around from a canoe repair, but it started off sort of brown, and the result was not great. I'm not sure where to get the clear stuff. Andy

Welcome Dan! Hopefully some our tech-savy members can help you work out the photo issue, would like to see them. Jesse

Welcome aboard Dan! Onni

I made a bit of a mess of it myself. The blurry photos make the water look better than it actually is. I used some fiberglass epoxy resin that I had left over from a canoe repair, and it was a sort of brown color to start with, so the color was not what I was looking for. I rigged up a funnel with a straw, and it was really slow-flowing. And then I mucked about a lot putting silicone on top of that, but it was hard to get a realistic wake and waves. Nothing like some really masterful water I've seen on some builds.

Hi Bobohamer! Yes, I use the fly tying threads too during some last years. But I'm skimping on the ropes out of them with an electric rope machine. I usually use two or three strand ropes of 0.05 to 0.4 mm diameter for rigging

Here we have HMS Tiger, The Most Splendid Cat, arguably the best looking warship the Royal Navy ever built. Launched in 1913, built by John Brown & Co in Scotland, she was assigned to the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron during the First World War. Tiger would go on to fight at the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915 and the Battle of Jutland in 1916. Her official motto was “Quis Eripet Dentes” or “Who Shall Bear my Teeth”. The model is entirely built from boxwood and brass. The sea base is carved jellying wood and painted, and her rigging is mostly nitinol and copper wire. Of course the paint is by ScaleColors, nothing else will do. This model is a bit smaller than my usual scale of 125’ to 1” or 1/1500. Tiger here is around 1/1900 scale. I wanted to see if I could achieve the same fidelity at a magnitude smaller than my usual work. While I am quite pleased with this one, I think I do prefer 1/1500 as my working scale. If you’d like to see more of my work, I have a website with all of the pictures at www.josephlavender.com

So this is how I've made my fabric sail material in the distant past. A million years ago I bought a yard of this pretty sheer striped synthetic blend of fabric. Along with that I bought a yard of sizing material. It kind of looks like gauze and it's actually a kind of glue. I cut out a square piece of the fabric get it soaking wet and iron it till it is dry and wrinkle free. Then I cut a piece of sizing material that's smaller than half the size of the square piece of fabric. Then I fold the other half of the square piece of fabric over on top of the sizing. At this point I iron the two half's together. The sizing melts and bonds them with no bubbling or wrinkles. An important thing to keep in mind when doing this technique is to never let the sizing be outside the fabric. It will stick to the iron and the ironing board and you'll have a horrible mess.

Thanks Daniel: Actually those thread blocks are made of wire. I used the same wire to simulate the anchor chains too. I've had to start over on my boom, gaffs and club because my first suit of sails turned out to be a horrible mess. I tried using a thin coat of PVA on the fabric which looked like it was going to be fine at first but when I folded the sails to see how they would engage the bottles opening they came out again with creases I couldn't massage away. Bummer! So I'm going to go back to the way I use to make my cloth sails and that is to double up the fabric with a piece of sizing material in between then iron the two together. I'll take pictures of this process as I do it and post it in my build log. I haven't seen anyone else on the forum make sails like this. Hopefully they'll work out again for me. I'm going to start putting my sea in the bottle today ,too. I hate doing things twice and sometimes three times but that's how I eventually get there. I just keep chipping away at it. lol. Regards Bruce. By the way Page is a little cutie.😘

Then I needed only to fix the rigging with glue and to cut the ends of the threads, to install the bottle on the stand and to close the cork.

I have two projects in progress. One is of the Chilean Navy School Barquentine Esmeralda in 1/640 scale that I've been working on since October 2012. The model is about 3 1/2 inches X 7 inches (89 mm X 178 mm) and highly detailed. Esmeralda under sail and my most recent photo of the model in progress. Click on the thumbnails for larger images. Details completed or nearing completion but not yet added - and not in the photo - include 3 more boats with davits, 4 inclined ladders from the weather deck to the lower deck, 4 signal guns on the forecastle, 3 hose reels, 18 barrel-like containers in 4 racks for the inflatable life boats, and the flying bridge with radar units on its roof that goes on top of the deck house. I'm working on detailing the 2 rowing boats with floor boards, thwarts, oars, tillers and rudders and the motor launch with similar details including an engine compartment. I have also started a model of Dan Clapp's world championship hard water racing yacht Insanity in 1/90 scale going into a vertical 2 liter reagent bottle. My plans for Insanity. The black concentric circles are the inside diameter of the bottle and the smallest diameter of the opening. With only 9 parts and five lines to rig this should be a quick build but still with the highest quality I can produce. I've gotten no further than fabricating the hull components, mast and boom, primed. I plan to use colored casting epoxy for the water and ice. I plan to pose Insanity like this. I don't intend to reproduce my build log of Esmeralda here, it can be found on Model Ship World, but will post Insanity here soon.

Here are the last images that I have taken of the hull today.