Glen McGuire

Simply amazing work.

Compared to the piping on your tanker, I figured you could do this one in your sleep! Just kidding, Roel! This one offers a whole different world of challenges, as you have described so well above. Looks to me like you are on a solid track though. Onward thru the fog!

850 knots down and 850 to go, on the lower shrouds anyway! I haven't estimated a number for the uppers yet, but at least it won't be near as many. I kept waiting for Bob to get here and help but I guess PFC Pile would not give him a weekend pass. Mini-Dimples did show up to supervise. Unfortunately, she was not much help. As tedious as those ratlines are, the ship really starts coming to life visually when they are added. For me, they are a defining aspect of the look and feel of the large age of sail ships. My goal when I got back from Hawaii was to get the lower starboard side complete before I head out of town for Thanksgiving. Mission accomplished! After the holiday, I will take a break from the Constitution here and swing back over to the Flying Dutchman/Black Pearl SIB to have a go at making the whirlpool. Yikes!! Speaking of Thanksgiving, one of the things I'm thankful for is all of the incredible people that make up the MSW community. As I've said many times before, y'all make all of my work better and so much more enjoyable. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

I think Michigan is somewhere between you and Austin, so you might as well grab @Keith Black on your way and bring him down here to the ratline party.

Good plan insertion, Roel. Sounds well thought out.

More progress the last couple of days. First was adding the mast top deadeyes. Next was snaking the fore stay and main stay. Then I snugged up the lower shroud deadeyes and added sheer poles. I went outside yesterday morning and there was something in the air. Took me a few minutes, but I finally realized it was the smell of ratlines. That dang north wind blew it all the way down from @Knocklouder's workshop in Canada to Austin. I don't see any way out of it, so I started by making some templates. Only 1700 knots. If I can average 30 seconds per knot, that's only about 14 hours of fun and frolic!! Or maybe I should send Bob a plane ticket and have him fly down here and knock 'em out for me!

Wasn't there a line in an old movie, "I love the smell of ratlines in the morning!"?

I thought the hull was beautiful before, but the varnish takes it to a whole nother level! Wow! Love the pic of your granddaughter as well!!

Very impressive research document, Thukydides!

Right back at him! And tell him I hope he's enjoying his long rest, but he needs to get back to work ASAP! That pile of kits in your workshop ain't gonna build themselves! Thanks, Keith. Yes, they were quite happy when I got back and gave them their cow candy!

Thanks for the well wishes on the Hawaii trip. We had an amazing time. Beaches, sunsets, mai tais.........ahhhhhh. Time to get back to work. The first thing I did upon return was finish seizing the mizzen shrouds and threading the deadeyes. Still managing to keep the deadeyes aligned fairly well. Next up was the forward stays and preventer stays. These are looped around each mast with an eye and mouse. I made my mice with a 3/16" dowel, sanding to a conical shape and drilling out the center for the stay to pass through. One more thing to make before installing all the stays - the two U-shaped collars that the fore stay and fore preventer stay attach to at the base of the jib boom. I carved these out of 1/8" thick basswood. Here's a good look at the attachment points. The fore stay and fore preventer stay are in the foreground with the U-shaped collars. In the background you can see the main stay and main preventer stay using lanyards anchored at the base of the bow pinrail. And here's a look at the whole thing. That was a lot of work to string only 6 dang lines!!

Glad to see you hitting the bottle again, Roel! This looks like it's going to be a fascinating build and you are off to a nice start. I'm anxious to see the sketch to get a better idea of what the overall project will be. You continue to choose such interesting vessels!

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! 😃