Onni

Welcome aboard bsmith. I sometimes buy bottles from charity shops.I think you call them thrift stores in the states. Quite often you can pick up a nice specimen for a few bucks. Other than that I get them from friends or else bottle banks. Resources, well first delve into this site for some great tips; perhaps invest in a ships in bottles book and then set about deciding what ship or boat you really want to make. Get drawings from books or the net and size them to fit your bottle. The internal size of your bottle will determine the scale of the model .A lot of tools can be home made

I always had trouble with the keel twisting out of shape after the bulkheads were glued in place so probably I should of made a jig out of wood or metal for the keel to sit in and keep it straight. Great work by the way, you need a lot of patience with card/paper models.

The paper that you talk about is just masking tape to protect what I had already spray painted on Gypsy Moth.

Have you considered maybe to have the catarmaran sailing at the base of a different bottle with the bottle being upright ,if you understand what I mean. Then you would not have any troubles with the mast height or that it will touch the glass while heeling over. Check out my Gypsy Moth in build logs.

Yes I did;it came to approx 72 hours for my rendition of the Golden Hind in 2013.

Medway Queen,heroine of Dunkirk (1940) where she rescued 7000 allied troops from the beaches. Here she is in post war livery. Now a museum paddle ship in Gillingham,Kent,England.

Hi Moab, The sails are made from a man's white handkerchief stained slightly with tea/coffee then when dried I wrap it around a clean paint roller wrapped in grease proof paper before I brush it over with a diluted wood glue which when dry gives a slight curve to form the sail. The sea/ocean is simply plasticine painted with acrylic paints and modelled to resemble the sea( at least that's the idea!)

Welcome Bosun Moon. A ship of a foot in length or more would have to be scratch built; that's if you could find a bottle of that size to place it in. In any event,scratch built is the way to go,you can make any ship you want to,learn the ropes as you progress and the satisfaction that it is all your own work .

I have also made these paper and card hulls for many years using similar items as John but download ship plans/drawings from the internet and then resize them through Photoshop to a scale that I need for a particular bottle. I don't do this for every model as it is very time consuming and rather tedious but its just to give an idea of what the shape of a hull should look like. In the photo l-r Mayflower,PT109,Black Pearl.

I see that you have done a bit more detail work on the octopus stand;it looks fantastic! Mayflower doesn't look too bad either (looks great). Well done.

Looking good. Impressive height for the masts. Nice work!

Flipper 650DC made for a client.

Funnel goes in and then the main mast. Decided to leave off 'Daisy' and the cow shed as I thought the deck could look a bit too cluttered.( It's possible that I can add them later if I want to.) Main mast in place with no problems and then set in the foremast. The bowsprit gave me a few problems as the glue didn't set on the first attempt because the mounting hole inside is made up of a plastic and wood wafer construction, so in the end I used an epoxy glue to fix it firmly. Finally completed GB after several months work but unfortunately I didn't notice that the top flying jig rigging had tan

I can understand your reluctance to fit it into that nice bottle that came with the kit. I think you've made the right decision to set it in putty in the wooden case. Should look great!

All the hull parts fitted through the bottle neck relativity easily but I had tremendous trouble to lift the front end of the starboard top piece over the front lug to secure it (Second photo). It actually took me about an hour before it snuggly slipped in place (Third photo).Luckily I had already designed these pieces to fit together without being glued otherwise it would of been a disaster had they had glue on them. As you can probably see some of the fragile photo etched railings received some damage in my struggles but they are pretty easy to repair. I then put in the engine room and then