Glen McGuire

Brilliant work, Gary. She is coming along very nicely!

I would be distraught beyond words if I ever found one of those pieces missing! I took a short break from my shift on the Connie to do a little test run on the layered whirlpool idea my artistic friend suggested. My first thought was to build the whirlpool inside a funnel and slice it into layers after it dried. I took some of the DAP UltraClear caulk, did some coloring, and layered it into a funnel that was the appropriate size. I got excited because it looked pretty good at the start as you can see in the pic below. Unfortunately, my excitement faded as gravity overpowered the thickness of the caulk. It eventually ran down the sides of the funnel and ended up as a sticky, blob of goo. The goo was really pretty with its various shades of blue, but a total fail nonetheless. On to Plan B. With the funnel being totally useless, I took the caulk and laid out a bunch of concentric circles with different shades of blue. The color gradient is supposed to enhance the depth as it moves from light on the top to darker and darker as you descend into the whirlpool. After the caulk dried, I scraped it off the glass with a straight razor. Even though it was dry, it was still very sticky, clinging to itself almost like bubble gum. This made it very hard to pull off each circle intact. So much so that I ended up cutting each circle into quarters to get it off cleanly. I think that will actually be beneficial when it's time to do this inside the bottle. The stuff is so sticky that I think I will be able to cut the rings of caulk up into small pieces and add them one at a time inside the bottle. Here's what the test whirlpool looks like after pretty much following that process outside the bottle. For the first time I'm starting to think this whole thing might actually work!

This will be my last post for a couple of weeks as I'm fixing to head out of town for a trip to Hawaii. Slow and steady progress has continued on the lower shroud rigging. I got the lower main mast deadeyes hung and triple-seized, and the lanyards strung. On the mizzen, I got the deadeyes hung but ran out of time before I could seize them and string the lanyards. Although I did get all the swifters in place.

That catwalk is particularly well done, Roel!

Takes one to know one, Gary!!

Thank you, Bob, Keith, Pat, and Henry. Just to make sure I'm clear on the recommended steps, they are: 1. Snug up all the shrouds equally taut but don't tie them off. 2. When snugging up the shrouds, start with rear-most then forward-most, back to rear, etc finishing in the middle. 3. Also, when snugging up the shrouds, alternate starboard to port for each shroud. 4. Add stays and other rigging. 5. Do final tweak on shrouds for final alignment, then tie each shroud off permanently.

Hey Jackson! What an interesting thesis you have chosen. I hope you will share it with us after its completion. I got into ship modeling just a few years ago at probably an advance age for a beginner (60). For me, the initial attraction of ship modeling was the challenge of building something that look so complex and intimidating with curving woodwork and an infinite spiderweb of lines running everywhere. I’ve always liked to build things, and a wooden ship model seemed like the ultimate challenge. After buying a kit and completing my first ship, I stumbled upon a ship in a bottle (SIB) kit that looked like another level of challenge. Although I’m not a mechanical engineer like Snug Harbor Johnny above, and many other builders on this site, my dad was a mechanical engineer and I think I’ve got a bit of his ME blood in me. I successfully completed the SIB kit and began doing SIBs from scratch. I really like the engineering aspect of SIBs as you have to devise a mechanical solution for doing what looks impossible - folding masts, twisting yards, scrunching sails, and fitting the assembly through something it looks like it won’t fit through. I also love the fact that there are so many unique ships with incredible stories behind them. From majestic ships that were the centerpiece of some of the most consequential battles in wartime history to ghost ships with an eerie, unexplainable past, there is an endless list of great subjects for us to model and add a small piece to their legacy. On a more personal note, as I started doing these SIBs, something happened and I found it quite interesting. Creating my SIBs brought out an artistic side that I never even knew I had – nor did anyone that’s known me knew I had. The most common reaction from friends and family that see my work is a head scratch and “you did that??” So the word you chose to describe this hobby of ours – enrapturing – is perfect. I am wrapped up in this because I like to build things, it’s incredibly challenging, there are so many fascinating ships with incredible stories, and it brings out things in me I didn’t even realize were there. There’s one other aspect too, and that’s the joy and amazement we get to see in others (particularly children) that look at our work. I cannot think of a more satisfying hobby than ship modeling. Thank you for your interest in our endeavors. Again, I hope you can share your thesis with us after you are done. Best of luck to you!

I got the deadeyes on the foremast tied off. The bottom row of deadeyes were already attached to the channel by the previous builder. That meant for me it was just a matter of lashing the top row of deadeyes to the shrouds and then stringing the lanyards. It seems like every builder on MSW has a different jig for aligning the top row of deadeyes. I wanted to keep up the tradition. so here's what I came up with. A rectangular piece of basswood with an alignment strip glued horizontally. Legs on each end fit over the ends of the channels to hold it in place. I use a couple of straight pins to hold the deadeye in position while I attach the shroud. After attaching all the shrouds to the deadeyes, I threaded the lanyards and "hand-tightened" them equally to check my deadeye alignment. Not too bad. Here's a question for the group - should I tighten all 9 lanyards on one side and then move to the other side or should I alternate back and forth, doing 1 on the starboard side followed immediately by the opposite one on the port side, then back to the starboard side, etc... ?

Oh no, no, no. Phil. Not you too! You've been hanging around @Keith Black for too long! 🐧🐧🐧

Thanks for the explanation, Henry! Now it makes sense to me.

Agree with Mark. You've done a magnificent job on this project. I hear Lula clamoring for your attention!!

Words of wisdom. Come to think of it, they do call the SIB genre "Impossible Bottles", don't they? Thank you for your perspective, Roel!

OMG! That sounds like it requires patience, which makes it totally out of the question for me! 😃

Really nice job on the color match. That can be difficult, especially with two different types of wood.

Switching shipyards back to the Constitution and time to start rigging the masts. First up, I made the running pendants. I'm not exactly sure what the purpose of these are as they appear to just hang from the mast unused. Nevertheless, they are going on. After fixing the runner pendants in place, I started adding the shroud pairs. The kit instructions recommend working bow to stern, alternating starboard to port. Nothing too difficult, but when I finished with the foremast, I noticed the lines did not hang very straight. They had prominent creases. I'm using shroud line from the original kit, which is 20 plus years old. The line is wrapped tightly around a cardboard square and has been sitting like that for a long time. Plus, the line feels heavily waxed which is probably why the creases hold their shape so well when unwound. Unfortunately, I didn't notice this and realize the possible consequences until I'd already seized the shroud pairs to the foremast. Since I didn't want to cut them all off and start over, I decided to see if I could literally iron out the creases. I did a test on a foot-long piece of line pressing the thread with 6-7 passes and a few puffs of steam. It worked very well. so time to try it on the installed shrouds. The challenge would be not having an ironing board. I have no pictures of the process since it took both hands, but what I did was grab a shroud pair, stretch it out horizontally and press the iron against the line as best I could with nothing to press it against. To my surprise (and thrill) it worked nicely. You can see in the pic below how much straighter they hang. Hopefully that will make aligning the deadeyes easier when I tie them off. Here's where I'm at now with all lower shroud pairs in place.