Glen McGuire

Agree with Pat. She is beautiful!

Thanks Tim and Keith. I had completely overlooked that netting on those broken pieces. Interesting. I went through all the pictures of the Constitution I could find in the Gallery and didn't see a single model with that netting. So I may leave it off. But I reserve the right to change my mind!

There you go again, Pat. I hope tiddly is something good! Netting? I don't see any netting referred to in the plans. Are you trying to confuse me like Pat?

I got my parts finally delivered (bullseyes and blocks), which meant it was time to put down the bottle and get back to work on the Connie. The next step was trying to figure out what the next step was. According to the kit instructions, it was the lower shrouds. However, Carson’s dad had begun rigging the bowsprit first. I reviewed a bunch of build logs and found that some builders do the shrouds first and others do the bowsprit and spritsail yard. So with no real consensus, I chose the bowsprit. Here’s the other thing I learned from all the Connie build logs – they were all rigged differently, even among the same kits. So I decided I would just follow the Blue Jacket instructions as close as possible. This led to the second learning experience – the instructions are written in some kind of language that even Google Translator can’t help with. It's even harder to figure out than "Let Stalk Strine" like @gjdale, @PvG Aussie, and @BANYAN introduced me to on the Banshee SIB! Example: B - 2”flying jibboom traveling guy: seized to flying jibboom traveling guy. Through thimble on yard. Set up to S on cathead with gun tackle. Belay to small cleats on bow bulwark. Or this one: Jibstay (jib outhauler) – 3 ½”: long eye splice seated on foretopmast head. Through roller (if fitted) on jib traveler ring through sheave at outer end of jibboom to 3/32” DB in end. Set up fiddle block on bowsprit cap with tackle. Fall is led through port bowsprit fairlead to bow pinrail. It took waaaaay longer than I care to admit to crack the code and figure out what the instructions were telling me to do. But the light bulb finally flickered on and I was able to move forward. Actually, the first part of this exercise did have instructions – setting up the spritsail yard. It was a just matter of making the yard, then adding the bullseyes and foot ropes. My goal for the foot ropes was to make them as nice as the ones @Keith Black did on his Tennessee. Next, it was following the instructions and setting up the guy lines that attach to 4 different points along the jib and flying jib. The guys that tie off firmly to the jib/flying jib are anchored to the cathead with deadeye lanyards. The guys that tie off to traveling guys attach to the cathead via gun tackle with the end of the rope belayed to cleats on the bowhead bulwark. Going forward, I hope to get faster at decoding the instructions. 😃

Wonderful job, Stephen! It was very interesting to tag along and watch you create such a realistic representation from such a wide variety of mosaics. Well done!

Very creative! The teabag looks great, Bryan.

Definitely send me some pics. I'd like to see what Michigan longhorns look like!

Where does Keith find these thing?? SMH! My goal was to get the Flying Dutchman hull finished up before jumping ship (ha ha 🙄) back to the Constitution. I measured the inside of the brandy bottle and figured a ship length of 3.0" - 3.25" would work. I did a crude test to see how things might look by pouring some Gatorade in the bottle and floating a couple of 3" dummy hulls inside, spacing them apart as they will be on opposing sides of the whirlpool. I thought it looked reasonable. For the ship, I like to highlight (or even exaggerate) the things that catch my eye and make the ship recognizable. For the Flying Dutchman, I think these are the dragon's jaw and teeth on the bow, the prominent vertical and horizontal ribs on the side, the weird screeching faces surrounding the gun ports, and of course the color. So hopefully when done, those features will stand out making the ship easily identifiable. I started with a 7-layer laminated hull. I cut the layers in rectangles, boiled them for about 10 minutes, then put them on very high tech a press to get the proper curvature from bow to stern. The hull is made with 5 layers of basswood and 2 of darker cherry. The cherry layers will be the horizontal ribs and will protrude from the other layers. For ribs like that, I find it easier to sand them down to fit vs adding small strips as separate pieces. Next, I added the vertical ribs and the weird screeching gun port faces. The ribs are just slivers of cherry wood the I cut. The faces are made from caulk. Next was adding the rails and quarter galleries. Like the vertical ribs, the rails are slivers of cherry. Next, I carved little balconies out of basswood for the stern. And then it was time for some fun - figuring out how to do the dragon's mouth bow head. I tried several different ideas that turned out horribly (like using photo-etch sprues) but ended up going back to the simplicity of wood. The upper and lower jaw were carved from basswood and the teeth are the snipped-off ends of toothpicks. And finally, it was time to paint this thing. I played around with some swirls of gray and black to give it an uneven and weathered look. The picture of the Dutchman in the first post has some brown splotches scattered about. I may go back later and add a little of that, but for now I'm ok with how it looks. I went with a lighter shade on the deck to give it comes contrast. Now I gotta flip my magnifying glasses around and get back to work on the Connie!

I don't know about Jack Sparrow, Pat. How about Jack Penguin? 😃

Thank you, Kauz! I already found some for the Flying Dutchman but not the Black Pearl. So that will definitely help!

Very well done! The layering of blue shades looks superb.

If you have been following my Constitution build log, thank you for taking a detour over to this one. If you are just tuning in to this one, thank you for being a part of it. My short attention span and ever-dwindling brain cells do not usually allow for simultaneous projects. But I had to put Connie on a brief hold while I wait for delivery of some parts that I ordered. So I figured I’d get started on another bottle project I’ve been mulling over for the past couple of months. When I was working on my Kraken SIB, @O.B.one made a reference to one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. So I did some digging on the movie series and came a cross an image that caught my eye and has been sitting in the back of my mind ever since. It’s a scene from the third installment of the franchise, At World’s End. Calypso summons a maelstrom and the Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman do battle on opposites sides of the whirlpool. Here’s the pic: Last month, I was wandering through the woods of my ranch, trying to find an ornery steer, and I spotted an interesting branch sticking out of the base of a cedar tree. The branch had a sharp curve and grain that swirled around. It reminded me of a whirlpool. Then the lightbulb flickered in my head and I thought the branch might make the perfect backdrop for a project – recreate the scene from At World’s End with the Black Pearl, Flying Dutchman, and a whirlpool inside the bottle. Here’s the piece of wood. It was dead but had weirdly grown upward from the base, made a u-turn, and dove back into the ground. Never seen anything quite like it. To have room for all the action going on inside the bottle, I needed a bottle that was more wide than long. A Paul Masson bottle of brandy had the perfect shape and it fit almost naturally into the piece of wood. The last bit of planning was finding good images of each ship to fashion my build after. I decided to take on the Flying Dutchman first and use this pic as a basic guide. I certainly won’t be able to match all the wonderful imagery and eerie ornamentation at my scale, but will do my best to give a good impression of it. The biggest challenge I think will be figuring out how to make a realistic looking whirlpool inside the bottle. Not sure how I'm gonna do that, but I'll build the ships first and give myself time to figure that out. I will likely be bouncing back and forth between this project and the Constitution. Hopefully I don’t get confused and try to put some of those humongous Connie parts inside the bottle here!

That is amazing work at such a small scale! Well done!

Glad to have you join us, Vytautas!

The surface of those roofs look pretty smooth to me. I'd be inclined to do your first idea - paint the wood with a black/gray mixture.

There are probably several different things you can do with that roof. Do you have a picture of what you want it to look like?

Thanks, Grant! So glad to have you on board. No doubt I'll be running around in circles on this project, so your seat in the back row may end up being in the front row!

Just found this build log, Bryan. What a cool project!! I think your Oseberg needs a bottle for a home!

Good question, Keith. The first rigging job I'm going to tackle is the bowsprit and spritsail yard. After that, I have not studied the rigging instructions in detail yet, but at first glance it looks like it goes lower shrouds from front to back followed by upper shrouds, front to back.

Did you say 8 seconds or 8 months, Ken? I think this will be the longest bull ride in history! And just when I thought I was getting the bull under control, he turned and started raging in a new direction! I was looking at the ship sitting on my table and something didn't look quite right. I dismissed the idea at first thinking it was because, like @Bryan Woods said earlier, I'm not used to seeing a boat that large on my work table. Then it hit me like the business end of that bull's horn. The masts were on backwards. Going back to the first pic I took when I started, you can see that top masts and topgallant masts are attached to the rear instead of forward and the the fences on the mast tops are in front instead of in the back. The good news was that, as I mentioned earlier, the glue bond on the main and fore mast was broken, so they were easy to remove from the hull. The bad news was the the mizzen mast was still firmly in place. The worse news was that more close-quarters cutting would be required to get the mizzen mast flipped. So I put a circular saw blade on my Dremel and oh-so-carefully made a cut through the bottom of the mast, trying not slip and shred the ship's wheel which sits 1/4" from the front of the mast. Why didn't I just make a cut higher up on the mast? I wanted to cut as close to the deck as possible to fix another minor issue. The mizzen mast tilted to the starboard side, so I thought this was a good opportunity to straighten it up. I figured a slight angle in the mast near the deck would not be near as noticeable as one higher up on the mast. The cut was successful, dowel was installed, mast was flipped, and glued in place. Whew! Still riding that bull! Next, I decided to re-repair the sky sail pole which required another (much easier) cut and dowel job. Then it was a matter of color matching the shade of brown used on the mast. Before and after pics below. With all mast repairs completed, time to re-step the masts into the deck. The bull decided to take a nap during this part and things went pretty smoothly. The first pic shows decent alignment of the bowsprit and masts from bow to stern. The second shows ok vertical alignment as well. The plans show virtually no rake, so I made them as perpendicular as possible. Next, I revisited the bowsprit where I had to make that cut inside the bow head. I had an ugly gash from a slip of the reamer plus an unsightly junction showing between the original bowsprit and the new one. So after getting everything epoxied in place, I hid the ugliness with a gammoning rope. The plans called for 9 turns of the rope which was just enough to hide my mess. With the bow head grating already in place, there was no way to actually wrap the gammoning rope around the bowsprit, so the ends are just tucked down the small gap on each side. That will be our little secret, ok? Before and after pics:

Sorry to hear the whole crew is sick. Hope y'all get done with that covid mess quickly.

Thanks, Keith. I emailed Carson the link to this build log after I made the first post. He replied back after reading the post so I know he's keeping an eye on things. I don't expect him to be an MSW junkie like the rest of us hopeless people, but I do think he will look in from time to time.

The warm up is over. It's time to jump on top of the bull and see if we can ride this thing out. The first real step in this project is also the one that makes me the most nervous - fixing the broken bowsprit assembly. A lot can go wrong when you try to deconstruct something with drills and reamers and chisels and such. Here's what it looked like starting out. My first thought was to cut the bowsprit, drill it completely out, and then replace it entirely. But I was nervous about a slip of the hand and damaging the bowhead or deck or grating, etc. So I decided on this plan: cut the bowsprit down as close as possible to where it submerges beneath the deck, then use a dowel rod to connect the new bowsprit to what remains of the original one. Here's what it looked like after making the cut and drilling the dowel hole. I managed to do my drilling and reaming with only a slight bit of damage to the end of the gunwale, which will be an easy cleanup later. Here's the new bowsprit blank connected by dowel rod to the original (dry-fit). You can see a small, unwanted notch on the top of the original bowsprit where the reamer bit got away from me for an instant. However, I plan to hide the notch as well as the entire junction between the bowsprit pieces with gammoning rope. Now for construction of the new bowsprit. I'm using the Blue Jacket instructions for reference, but they are not very detailed. Fortunately for me, @KurtH has a very nice build log for this kit with a lot of helpful photos. Plus, his finished model in a thing of beauty. So I am using it for additional reference. The bowsprit has a lot going on, but nothing too difficult. Here's the new bowsprit with components added - cap, bee blocks, hoops, forestay cleats, and jib boom step. The most interesting things to build were the bee blocks. For the sheaves, I used 5mm deadeyes and sanded them down to fit in their slots. I liked the deadeyes because they already had a groove cut down the middle and look perfect for a rope to slide through. As Kurt mentions in his build log, the kit does not supply a fairlead. For his fairlead, Kurt said he ordered a spare spider ring from Blue Jacket. I'm too impatient to wait for an order and delivery so I roughed one out with basswood. I think Kurt's looks better, but mine should work ok. The last step for the new bowsprit was making the dolphin striker. The cap is still a bit oversized, but will be sanded down when I figure out exact positioning for the jib boom and flying jib boom. The bowsprit is still dry-fit in the pics below.

I love the rusting effects on the anchors. That's a nice touch and very well done, Steven.

You are cracking me up, Bryan!! 🤣 The answer to your question is YES! Those whale boats are gargantuan!! And get this - I can drop things on the floor and actually look down and find them without having to spend 30 minutes searching with a magnifying glass and spot light.