JerseyCity Frankie

Another step is to remove a little bit of the “water” your ship (or in this case your creature) will displace so that the hull can be bedded in the sea firmly. I make a paper template of the hull or creatures waterline and put it in the bottle over the spot the assemblage is going to sit on and using an improvised tool I scrape out the outline of the ship or creature. I remove the template then excavate some of the clay out. How much clay to remove and how deep you go will be determined by your models draft. This is a slow messy uscientific process. The best tool I found for this bottle for this job was not my fancy articulated arm, it was a bit of stout copper wire wrapped around the end of a dowel. To get the angle I needed on the tool within the bottle, I was able to bend the wire against the inside back of the bottle into positions it could not have held while being inserted through the neck of the bottle. Little tiny bights of clay are removed one greasy little chunk at a time. Finally at the end of the days work I put in a piece of the Kraken to see what it would look like in there. I think I am finally ready to start actually putting things into the bottle.

Another step is to remove a little bit of the “water” your ship (or in this case your creature) will displace so that the hull can be bedded in the sea firmly. I make a paper template of the hull or creatures waterline and put it in the bottle over the spot the assemblage is going to sit on and using an improvised tool I scrape out the outline of the ship or creature. I remove the template then excavate some of the clay out. How much clay to remove and how deep you go will be determined by your models draft. This is a slow messy uscientific process. The best tool I found for this bottle for this job was not my fancy articulated arm, it was a bit of stout copper wire wrapped around the end of a dowel. To get the angle I needed on the tool within the bottle, I was able to bend the wire against the inside back of the bottle into positions it could not have held while being inserted through the neck of the bottle. Little tiny bights of clay are removed one greasy little chunk at a time. Finally at the end of the days work I put in a piece of the Kraken to see what it would look like in there. I think I am finally ready to start actually putting things into the bottle.

Working on the plasticine “sea” some more. I wanted the surface of the water to appear more realistic so I added waves and whitecaps. Waves were achieved by rolling clay “snakes” and laying them in on the surface of the sea diagonally and then slightly mashing them down. The snakes were of a slightly darker color than the base sea. Note that I have tied the bottle down tight to the base it will sit on. I don't want the bottle rolling around since from this point on it often takes two hands to manipulate things.   
 
I made a bunch of shorter and much thinner white clay snakes and laid them in on top of my “waves” and mashed them down. The white clay quickly blends into the sea and looks pretty good for a very small amount of effort.
 
If I were modeling a ship underway and not molested by a monster, I would at this point make the ships bow wave and wake using the same white snake method.

Started lower deck planking...
 
. . . pictures order is a bit messed up again . . .

Another step is to remove a little bit of the “water” your ship (or in this case your creature) will displace so that the hull can be bedded in the sea firmly. I make a paper template of the hull or creatures waterline and put it in the bottle over the spot the assemblage is going to sit on and using an improvised tool I scrape out the outline of the ship or creature. I remove the template then excavate some of the clay out. How much clay to remove and how deep you go will be determined by your models draft. This is a slow messy uscientific process. The best tool I found for this bottle for this job was not my fancy articulated arm, it was a bit of stout copper wire wrapped around the end of a dowel. To get the angle I needed on the tool within the bottle, I was able to bend the wire against the inside back of the bottle into positions it could not have held while being inserted through the neck of the bottle. Little tiny bights of clay are removed one greasy little chunk at a time. Finally at the end of the days work I put in a piece of the Kraken to see what it would look like in there. I think I am finally ready to start actually putting things into the bottle.

Another step is to remove a little bit of the “water” your ship (or in this case your creature) will displace so that the hull can be bedded in the sea firmly. I make a paper template of the hull or creatures waterline and put it in the bottle over the spot the assemblage is going to sit on and using an improvised tool I scrape out the outline of the ship or creature. I remove the template then excavate some of the clay out. How much clay to remove and how deep you go will be determined by your models draft. This is a slow messy uscientific process. The best tool I found for this bottle for this job was not my fancy articulated arm, it was a bit of stout copper wire wrapped around the end of a dowel. To get the angle I needed on the tool within the bottle, I was able to bend the wire against the inside back of the bottle into positions it could not have held while being inserted through the neck of the bottle. Little tiny bights of clay are removed one greasy little chunk at a time. Finally at the end of the days work I put in a piece of the Kraken to see what it would look like in there. I think I am finally ready to start actually putting things into the bottle.

Working on the plasticine “sea” some more. I wanted the surface of the water to appear more realistic so I added waves and whitecaps. Waves were achieved by rolling clay “snakes” and laying them in on the surface of the sea diagonally and then slightly mashing them down. The snakes were of a slightly darker color than the base sea. Note that I have tied the bottle down tight to the base it will sit on. I don't want the bottle rolling around since from this point on it often takes two hands to manipulate things.   
 
I made a bunch of shorter and much thinner white clay snakes and laid them in on top of my “waves” and mashed them down. The white clay quickly blends into the sea and looks pretty good for a very small amount of effort.
 
If I were modeling a ship underway and not molested by a monster, I would at this point make the ships bow wave and wake using the same white snake method.

Working on the plasticine “sea” some more. I wanted the surface of the water to appear more realistic so I added waves and whitecaps. Waves were achieved by rolling clay “snakes” and laying them in on the surface of the sea diagonally and then slightly mashing them down. The snakes were of a slightly darker color than the base sea. Note that I have tied the bottle down tight to the base it will sit on. I don't want the bottle rolling around since from this point on it often takes two hands to manipulate things.   
 
I made a bunch of shorter and much thinner white clay snakes and laid them in on top of my “waves” and mashed them down. The white clay quickly blends into the sea and looks pretty good for a very small amount of effort.
 
If I were modeling a ship underway and not molested by a monster, I would at this point make the ships bow wave and wake using the same white snake method.

Another step is to remove a little bit of the “water” your ship (or in this case your creature) will displace so that the hull can be bedded in the sea firmly. I make a paper template of the hull or creatures waterline and put it in the bottle over the spot the assemblage is going to sit on and using an improvised tool I scrape out the outline of the ship or creature. I remove the template then excavate some of the clay out. How much clay to remove and how deep you go will be determined by your models draft. This is a slow messy uscientific process. The best tool I found for this bottle for this job was not my fancy articulated arm, it was a bit of stout copper wire wrapped around the end of a dowel. To get the angle I needed on the tool within the bottle, I was able to bend the wire against the inside back of the bottle into positions it could not have held while being inserted through the neck of the bottle. Little tiny bights of clay are removed one greasy little chunk at a time. Finally at the end of the days work I put in a piece of the Kraken to see what it would look like in there. I think I am finally ready to start actually putting things into the bottle.

The lashing would go between the two eyes only, not taking the long way around the spar but rather the shortest path between the eyes. The lashing would be made of some smaller stuff and several turns would go between each eye. For a nice flourish look up "rose lashing". As to the relationship between the eyes and the deadeye, I can't say with certainty. But I tend to think the disposition won't matter, neither one or the the other types you have drawn look better or worse. What could make a difference is how this bit of rigging fits onto the spar, what other equipment is alongside, where are the stop cleats, that sort of thing.

The loop over the pin would be a guide on which side should be up if dropping the coil on deck, get the wrong side up and what a tangled weave we would make, get the right side up and the line would run off the coils without kinks or twisting.
jud.

I am modeling the USS Constitution and the pictures below are of the ship as it is docked in Boston.
I cannot imagine that a Navy ship would have the lines loosely thrown over the pin as shown in John's pictures.
 
 
By having the small loop pulled through and draped over the pin, it would still be a simple matter to grab the large coil in the left hand, slip the small loop off the pin with the right hand and, voila, the whole coil is loose. Besides, I really don't think this should be called a hitch, but that is a matter of terminology.
 

I too want to put in a word for "artist" acrylic paint. In tubes or in small jars, manufactured by Golden, Liquitex or whatever. All of them are water based and can be mixed with other brands. Full strength or thinned to nearly nothing at all, acrylic can be anything from a stain to an thick opaque coating. Water is all you need to thin or clean up. The paint dries as fast as water dries and when its dry its no longer water soluble and will stand up to U.V. light, changing humidity and who knows what else? Acrylic artists paint is available in nearly any size, from a very small tube the size of your pinkie on up to gallons, and in every color. Its possible to find "student grade" acrylic colors and these will have a "hamburger helper" dumbed down pigment content but the artist grade paint will contain the best sorts of pigments available anywhere and the pigment content is listed on the container- something I suspect other hobby paints won't do for you. Note that the use of the finest pigments includes poisonous ones like cobalt and cadmium which should NEVER be used with a sprayer. Sometimes the "student grade" colors are better for what you have in mind and they cost about 1/3 less than the Artist Grade ones. You can't use Acrylic over unprimed metal though, nor any sort of smooth ceramic like surface. But it will stick fairly well to plastic. The shelf life of the paint is pretty good. If you leave a tube of acrylic paint sealed it will still be fine a year later. 

I'm not familiar with the vessel in question but here are my two cents. The reason for more than one peak halyard would be to make the job of setting the sail easier or faster. On paper, one line can be used to do the job of raising the peak on any fore and aft sail but in practice you have to factor in the impact on the crew. If the sail is large enough your single line has to be made of stouter rope and the physical effort in raising sail becomes problematic. I don't know at what point a double peak halyard would come in but I can tell you from my direct experience on a 102' and a 125' schooner that there was only one line on each peak and a group of four or five people could handle it on the smaller 102' schooner, all hands on the larger. The Throats too. Incidentally you need separate peak and throat lines. It would be possible to rig one line to do all the work but it would rob you of sail handling options. Underway, one person can take all the horsepower out of the sail by simply easing the peak a bit, this makes the peak of the sail droop down enough to ruin the sails aerodynamic effect and doing this can give the helmsman more options for maneuvering in certain situations. Its also useful to be able to change the gaff angle when you are furling the sail, when you lower the gaff to the deck the angle of the gaff as it comes down has a huge effect on how the sail is gathered and folded for stowing.

The orlop deck planking is European beech wood and is shown on the starboard side the port side will be left open to show the framing on all the decks.

Wooden ship kit manufacturers seldom show a painted completed model on the kits box art. I think this practice has instilled the idea in some people’s heads that the finished kit should be left unpainted. I think the kit manufacturers actual intentions though are only to clearly depict the different materials provided in the kit and a painted model would disguise the different species of wood or white metal or brass parts the kit features. This aside, there is a lot to be said for the practice of leaving a model unpainted that has nothing to do with how kits are marketed. Demonstrating to the viewer a models true nature is best done without covering anything with paint. For instance it would make no sense at all to paint a bone model.  On the other hand I don’t think any serious plastic kit model builders ever leave any part of a finished plastic kit unpainted, their goal is to produce something that “looks like the real thing”, not to “demonstrate the true nature” of the styrene plastic the kit was made of. So I think the intentions of the builder dictate weather or not to use paint. I will point out though that there were no unpainted ships sailing the world’s oceans. Every exterior surface on a wooden ship was painted tarred oiled or varnished in one way or another in order to protect the ship from the elements and any wooden vessel that didn’t get some sort of surface coating would quickly be reduced to driftwood by the marine environment.

I was VERY SURPRISED to learn recently, here on M.S.W., that there were at one point in the past New York City Pilot Schooners that had no ratlines on their shrouds. Presumably to make them that much faster?  I couldn't then and still can't fathom how they would have been able to manage things without them. Sure they could use a boatswains chair for getting aloft and maybe they even had crew aboard who were so extraordinarily fit that they could go aloft arm over arm on the naked shrouds? But I still can't understand what, if anything, was gained by omitting ratlines. A tiny bit less windage? an infinitesimal lowering of the center of gravity?

Part 2
 
 

have to push through... "Pamir" takes 32 sails and "Gorch Fock" 23 sails
 

textile glue with fine applicartion nozzle, works surprisingly well (found on Ebay)
 

this is a spool of 0,5mm Polyester weaved hollow thread. Predestinated for pushing a wire Soul through, works well !
 

 full suit sails mounted, my Tallship "Pamir" model
 

likewise, sails attached to "Gorch Fock"
 
Nils

Wooden ship kit manufacturers seldom show a painted completed model on the kits box art. I think this practice has instilled the idea in some people’s heads that the finished kit should be left unpainted. I think the kit manufacturers actual intentions though are only to clearly depict the different materials provided in the kit and a painted model would disguise the different species of wood or white metal or brass parts the kit features. This aside, there is a lot to be said for the practice of leaving a model unpainted that has nothing to do with how kits are marketed. Demonstrating to the viewer a models true nature is best done without covering anything with paint. For instance it would make no sense at all to paint a bone model.  On the other hand I don’t think any serious plastic kit model builders ever leave any part of a finished plastic kit unpainted, their goal is to produce something that “looks like the real thing”, not to “demonstrate the true nature” of the styrene plastic the kit was made of. So I think the intentions of the builder dictate weather or not to use paint. I will point out though that there were no unpainted ships sailing the world’s oceans. Every exterior surface on a wooden ship was painted tarred oiled or varnished in one way or another in order to protect the ship from the elements and any wooden vessel that didn’t get some sort of surface coating would quickly be reduced to driftwood by the marine environment.

So the pot is empty ...
 

 
... time to do something more important and worthy ...
 

 
... as both scuttles for the vent trunks were mere black holes. So they got their wooden cases and look much more in tune now  :-)
 

 
And here some fresh impressions from the shipyard.
 

 

 

 

 
Good night, Daniel

Rainy day, I thought some indoor tasks would be just the thing, so I've started carving the sea base. I have some new Flexcut chisels on order but they'll be another few days so I had a shot at resharpening the two old gouges I have. Gouges are a total sod to sharpen but I got them to a reasonably servicable state. This is the result so far, lots more wood to be removed. I'm considering training a beaver...
The hole for the model is oversize to allow setting it in at an angle and the spare space around the edge will be filled in with milliput - white.
 
Christian, Good luck with Diligent, she really had an extreme hull form! Scottish Maid, of course comes from a rather different tradition, and really isn't related at all to the Baltimore ships. Of the Baltimore Clippers, I have a 'Fair Rosamund' under construction and the one I'd really like to do would be 'Grecian'.

Dan I suppose Ralph Preston got to be one of the top U.S. ship-in-a-bottle modelers by pulling a few strings......

With the water in place and the wooden base built, the ship itself constructed and painted and now a new useful tool to use I guess there is no excuse but to proceed with getting the Kraken inside the bottle.

With the water in place and the wooden base built, the ship itself constructed and painted and now a new useful tool to use I guess there is no excuse but to proceed with getting the Kraken inside the bottle.

I got fed up with the plastic kit and it served it's purpose, I back working on my KF.
 
Shaping the parts at the bow is a little tricky but fun especially with the scarph joints and the mast partner that has it's carlings cut from the onder side of the beam. Partially fixed partially test fitted here's the progress to date. Having the fore mast finished already helps to align all parts. 
 



 
Nils, thank you. Indeed the frame work is close to the real thing but not completely. I did not make the chokes as separate parts but they are part of the frame timbers. 
 
Remco