AMERICA

[Bruce Foxworthy]

The reason I'm making my sails like this again is because in the past it's worked out well for me. For whatever reason the sails will pretty much retain their shape after the trauma of getting folded and jammed down the bottles neck. Another reason I'm doing it is because some thirty years ago I made this two masted schooner that is pretty much configured like the America, and it didn't turn out too bad. Anyway I'm plugging along.

[DSiemens]

It is painful to do things twice but it almost always comes out better the second and third time.  Good catch on the creases.  It would have been more frustrating to get it bottled with the creases and have to either tear the whole ship out to fix it or keep it as is but not enjoy it as much because of the creases.  

[Bruce Foxworthy]

Hi All:

Today I worked at making my sea inside the bottle and placing the hull into it. Putting the white caps around the hulls perimeter as well. Most importantly I placed the main mast into it's hole to see if it was going to crash the top of the bottles glass. It's pretty close. Fingers crossed here with the final execution, but I think I'll be alright..

You can also see in these pics that I still have to heat the bottom of the bottles glass to melt the clay and fuse it with the form of the bottle down there. I don't like bubbles and bumps down there. I like it to look uniformed and solid.Plus it seems to make the sea material anchor it's self.

I also have, in these pics, a cork that I will be using and it has yet to be fitted to the taper of the bottles neck. I'll be doing that in the near future using my mini lathe, sandpaper , razor knife or whatever.

I'm still having a hell of a time getting my sails and their masts and gaffs and booms working together but I'm determined to resolve these issues. Patients and time. That's what it is. Simple, right?

I'm sailing on, putzing and such.

Regards Bruce.

[James w rogers]

Looking great Bruce, that sea looks amazing! 

[DSiemens]

Close is good. Like filling the frame of a photo.  Its going to look great. 

[Bruce Foxworthy]

Well I'm making progress even though it's not much, I'm getting there little by little.

[DSiemens]

I think she's looking really good.

[Bruce Foxworthy]

Thanks so much Daniel. That means a lot to me. I'm so worried that this little guy won't make it down the hole and stand up OK. I think this is the last build I'll publish as I'm going along with it. Cause who knows what will happen in the making of it. Especially because I am such a novice at all the rigging and such. Anyway thanks again. I'll keep pushing forward and hopefully their will be a nice conclusion.

Best regards Bruce

[DSiemens]

I think you should keep posting on going build logs.  Part of the fun and challenge of this hobby is mistake recovery. That isnt always shown in build logs that are done after completion. I think its important for others to see that mistakes can be made and fixed a long the way.  Also I want every one to feel comfortable asking how to recover from mistakes.  Its a major part of learning this hobby.  That said its also true the trash can is one of the most important tools and it is hard to share mistakes for the whole world to see. Do what is best for you.  

[Bruce Foxworthy]

Daniel:

Boy that was a sobering statement you put forward there for me, and I hope others as well will follow your drift and idea that we all make mistakes,( some of them dosieys), and we all can benefit from the resolutions we find to help us move on in the making of our ship in a bottle.

Thanks Daniel. I appreciate your input very much. That said, I will continue to show my progress on America, as I go along. Good ,bad, or ugly.

Regards Bruce

[Jeff B]

Bruce, granted mine are more folk  style,(It's good for a man to know his limitations), they often get squirrelly on me when I'm putting them in and I mess them up. I'll snag a line, cut a line on accident, snap a mast by too much tension, get sea on a sail or boom, the list goes on. 

I've pulled 2/3 of mine out,  thus breaking them. Of course I've rebuilt them, vowing to not do that again, and be more careful. Sharing the bad allows experienced members to offer advice to help us next time. 

Alan showed me a launching tool. You showed me a way to hide my bow lines with the keel loop. Dan showed us to cut out a keel blank from the ocean b4 we go in. We learn from our mistakes by sharing them. 

 

As Dan said, don't be ashamed to share a mishap. We can offer our sympathy too.

Edited January 10, 2020 by Jeff B

[Bruce Foxworthy]

Thanks Jeff:

I get that.

And it's nice to know that.

Regards Bruce

[exwafoo]

I broke a mast putting a SIB ketch in the bottle before Christmas. It was a very tight fit,  (bad planning) and I got away with it off the SIB as a trial,  but once rigged, it broke. Back out, repaired, mast shortened a bit, and I'm getting ready for the next try. There will be a build log shortly.  Its all learning. Basically I just found another way not to do it.

best

Alan

[John Fox III]

Greetings,

Here's my take on this topic. 1.] Nothing is impossible, until I've tried every method I can think of and failed, 2.] Anything I've done once I can do again, if necessary. Thus, I sometimes take weeks and 3 or 4 tries before I find a method that works for me in making or assembling any of my models. And, if I break something while working on a model I know I can repeat building it since I did it the first time. I do experiment a lot while building, always searching for a better way, or a way that looks more realistic, so the above is constantly in my mind as I work through a project. That is one reason I do not write build logs for many of my models, they'd be almost never ending! <Grin>

Anchor's A Weigh!

John Fox III

[Bruce Foxworthy]

John Fox 111:

I get that about experimenting. Seems like I'm doing that a lot myself as my builds go along. I just found a way to simulate little blocks on my rigging by just tying a piece of black thread around the ends of the sheets and it looks pretty cool. On this build too, I decided to try using polystyrene on a few things .. Totally new material for me to be working with. But little by little I'm getting used to it's applications and limitations. 

At this point I have concluded that I need to be building ships that are five or so inches long. This little America, has been a real challenge for me because of it's tiny size. I literally made my anchors out of pieces of black thread. I don't want to build this small again. Fortunately I just found a glass artist that can blow me the bottles I need for these bigger ships I want to build. What a lucky break.

An interesting side note is that I have a magnifying head set with four interchangeable lenses of increasing power that I'm wearing all the time on this build. I recently found myself in a situation of being stared at when at our local Kroger's supermarket store while shopping for dinner stuff. I forgot that the dam thing was on my head. HE HE!! Which by the way was comically compounded by the fact that I also went to the store wearing my slippers. Hysterical!!  My youngest smart ass son, soon to be Dr. Foxworthy tells me that I am suffering from," Old Man Syndrome," and the only cure for me is to keep doing what I'm doing. Isn't that a hoot?

Thanks for your input on my project. I appreciate it especially from the point of view that your work is so magnificent in my eyes and I hope to measure up to your prowess one of these days.

Best regards Bruce

[John Fox III]

Greetings Bruce,

Love the story about the grocery store visit! I am fortunate, or not depending on your viewpoint, in that I have nearly miraculous near sightedness and need no lenses to work on my models. IN fact, I just had cataract surgery, and made sure the new lens kept me nearsighted, so I can continue to work the way I always have. I actually am so near sighted that I work without my glasses, take them off and put them down somewhere. There have been times when I had to call my wife to help me, as I could not find my glasses later when I needed them! <Grin>

As to building larger, I have been doing the same lately, but for me it just means more experimenting to get tinier details in the larger model. Should really take some pics of my new work, a sandbagger at 1:96 scale, but it is a huge experiment in itself. I actually started the build by making a "plug" of the hull shape, and covered it with paper mache type layers of tissue paper soaked in thinned white glue. I've made most of my ship's boats that way, even have a video online at Vimeo about that method. However, this hull is many times larger, at about 4" long. I planked the paper hull while still on the plug, with maple veneer sanded down to .005" thick, as I don't think removing the paper hull from the plug would have worked otherwise.

Your America is nicely detailed for it's size, you are on your way to the level of craziness that will someday beat my own! <Grin>

Anchor's A Weigh!

John Fox III

[JesseLee]

17 hours ago, John Fox III said:

I always have. I actually am so near sighted that I work without my glasses, take them off and put them down somewhere. There have been times when I had to call my wife to help me, as I could not find my glasses later when I needed them! <Grin>

Me too John!

[DSiemens]

I used to have that super power too.  I was near sighted from 2nd grade and wore glasses and contacts most my life.  Building Sibs I'd push my glasses down and look over them.  I could see anything up close with no trouble at all.  Last year I got Lasik and lost my super power.  Now I'm using magnifiers like the rest of the "normal" people.     

[Bruce Foxworthy]

So just the other day I put my bottle on the stove on the warm burner (electric stove), to melt the clay air bubbles away from the sides and bottom of the bottle. Then Like a dummy I got distracted and went to Walmart to pick up a few things. By the time I realized that I screwed up and then got home, I found my sea material all melted into a liquid. No big deal I figured. I'll just put the bottle in it's already made stand and wait for it to cool. Then start making my waves and the cavity for the hull to sit in all over again.

I had decided to try an experiment and make a wave making tool using two different sized ball bearings soldered onto the ends of a piece of wire. I've been fiddling around with that tool and it seems to have some promise. Practice and time will tell. Good thing for me that I hadn't yet rigged my ship cause I need to get the hull by itself in the bottle to make it's cavity. Anyway here's a picture of what I started with this tool I made.

Before this set back I was about to rig my ship cause she's already to go for that.

Ya win some you loose some. Lesson learned. Never leave your bottle when it's on the stove. LOL

[DSiemens]

I do that sort of thing all the time. I'm sure I drive my wife nuts.  One thing to watch for with plastaline, if it heats to long is it starts to separate and you get a greenish white film at the top.  It's never to bad and not anything you can't mx in but it happens.  The worst I ever had it was when I put the whole bottle in the oven and not just on the burner.  I'm only seeing small hints of it on yours so your probably fine.  Love the wave tool idea.  I need to make me one of those. 

[Bruce Foxworthy]

Daniel:

I spent the last three days on the waves and the hull cavity. The largest amount of that time was washing away the clay that got on the bottles side. Acetone and cotton cloth. I still am going to go over all the glass again with some Windex before I put her in. 

This is the same Plasticine that you recommended to me and it literally melted to a liquid. The color seems to be fine though. Right now I'm in the midst of rigging her up. Hopefully she'll be bottled before the weekend is over.

Regards B.

[Bruce Foxworthy]

Okay guys I've been making some progress this weekend and with any luck I'll have her bottled soon. I thought I'd show you some techniques That I have been using that I don't normally see on the forum. Take this for what it's worth. These are Basically with respect to how I handle the rigging of my ships before they go in the bottle. I've done this same process on quite a few of the ships I have already built in the past and everything worked out okay. As you can see in this photo I have my model stuck down on a piece of the same clay that I use for making my seas for inside of the bottle. It's very sticky stuff.

[Bruce Foxworthy]

There comes a point when I'm rigging that I move the model to a little pillar of cement that a friend gave me and I start working from there cause it's up in the air and I can see it better and pay attention to my lines. Not only that but as you will see in the next pictures I can use the clay as clamps to hold my lines fast while I glue them off. Notice that I have already put the main lines to go out of the bottle and eventually erect my ship on a card of thin cardboard and then taped it to the cement colum

.

[Bruce Foxworthy]

Whats so cool about using the clay as a clamping mechanism, to me anyway, is that I can adjust the strings to be where they should be as I go along before I glue them off. On top of that, another benefit of using the clay is that it coats the thread a little bit which makes the hairs in the thread stand down. Of course as a result of this interaction with the clay, you can also run your fingers or a tooth pick over the thread to help make this benefit even more effective, but it gets the job done. It will still glue down with supper glue, no problem. I'm not sure I'm making myself clear here but this utilization of the clay as a construction platform method for rigging is a handy tool for me with my ships so far. Who knows what future builds will require?  How many times have I needed ten fingers and someone else to help me glue something off. Using the clay as clamps has virtually eliminated that predicament.

I Hope this dissertation helps some one out there. But also keep in mind that there are a million six ways to manage your rigging in this hobby. I just thought I'd bring my particular bent into the fray.

Here's a picture of how I touch the thread with super glue after it has been clamped down in the clay for tension, using my glue loaded needle.. This  just gets the string to stick there.The next picture is of my applying a half hitch to that same line before I glue it off again and then cut the lead line off.

Hope that all this makes sense to you guys. Tomorrow I'm going to try and stick her in the bottle. Fingers crossed.

[James w rogers]

Great tips! Definitely going to try some out, thanks.

boats looking really good, I like it a lot, looking forward to see it in. Also just noticed your tool with the crocodile clip on the end, genius! Think I’m gonna have to steal that idea and make one myself! Of course, with your permission! Just in case you’ve got a patent pending?😂