Glen McGuire

Thanks, Kenny! If you want to try an SIB, you might consider Amati's Hannah SIB kit. It's how I got started making SIBs 4 years ago. @Landlubber Mike has a great build log for the kit, which helped me tremendously.

Glad to hear you are on the mend, Bob. That's a beautiful display case. A fitting place for all your wonderful work.

Thanks, Keith! But it wasn't quite finished. Still a few things to add. Before I finished up that stern piece, however, I decided to make the balconies that protrude forward of the mizzen mast. I finished assembling and painting the balconies, but didn't take a pic, so moving on to finishing up the stern. Obviously, I can't recreate all the detail of such an elaborate piece of work at this scale. I just try to add as many elements as I can to try and make it look recognizable. The hanging stern lantern and the 2 other corner lanterns grabbed my eye so I did my best to add them. Except with the corner lanterns, I decided to make torches. While the picture of the model in the previous post shows lanterns in both corners of the stern, the movie ship looks like it has torches. For the hanging lantern, I used the head of a small belaying pin. For the torches, I took some of the yellow-painted cotton I had made earlier for my test fireball, glued it to part of a small brass nail, put a piece of thread around it for a base, and inserted it into a hole in each corner of the stern rail. I also added a small bit of red thread to mimic the drapery shown in the pic. Here's how the hunka hunka burning love looks with all those pieces in place. I hope the hanging lantern and torches survive the fitting process inside the bottle!

Next up is the very elaborate and high-rising stern structure. The goal is to have something that in some way resembles this: The structure causes the stern to be way too tall to fit thru the bottle's neck, so it will be built as a sub-assembly and installed after the ship is in the bottle. In fact, it will actually be 2 separately built sub-assemblies. The first will contain the sidewalls and stern wall as well as the deck behind the mizzen mast. The second will be the 2 balconies and their decking that protrude in front of the mizzen mast. The 2nd sub-assembly must also be added after insertion because it would get in the way of the main mast when it is folded to stern. Nothing complicated about the build process - just carving and sanding a number of tiny pieces and fitting them together. Test fit of the first piece. Once I was happy with the fit, I added the side railings, curved stern railing, and some other things to give a hint of the stern area decorative elements from the real thing. Also, you can see that I did a bit more carving to the descending side wall to make it look more like the real thing.

That's a reasonable suggestion, Keith. However, I spent such a ridiculous amount of time getting the hull color the way I wanted, there's no way I would paint over it. Plus, the railing is so small I figured that if I could get a fairly close match to the hull color, it would not be noticeable. Hmmm. If I agreed to put a penguin on the build, it must have been the Bundy rum talking. I am not responsible for any typing done under the influence of @BANYAN's Aussie firewater.

Such a unique subject and very well executed. Congratulations, Keith!

She's my hunka hunka burning love, Keith! The next task is to try and create something that resembles the railing on the bow. I went to a dear friend's wedding in Philly last summer and they were handing out little fans because the temps were a bit warm. The 90 degree weather felt like a nice fall afternoon for me but I took a fan anyway. Then I noticed the ribs were made of super-thin bamboo, so I kept it knowing I'd find a good use for it. The ribs are 0.4mm in thickness which I thought might work well for the railing. For the 2 curved portions of the railing, it's way too small and frail to try and bend, so I took a diamond crusted grinding bit and gently carved it to shape. It's shaved down to about 0.5mm in the 2nd pic below. The vertical sections of the railing were pretty much specks that were difficult to pick up and put in place even with my finest point tweezers. Here's the railing in place.. It's here where I realized I should not have painted the hull yet. It was a varying mix of 4 different colors plus some thinner to get the look I wanted, but now I needed to match it and unfortunately, I didn't pay much attention to how I mixed things earlier. So I did my best to get a match. I will have the same problem when I build the tall, rising back end of the ship.

Coming along very nicely, Mark!

I'd say the blind hog found a 5 gallon bucker full of acorns. The whole build is fantastic. Well done, Keith!

That's hard to believe that it's your first big planking job, Kenny. Looks like the work of a seasoned pro.

On to the mast and yards. Again I start with bamboo toothpicks since I have to drill small holes for the pull threads and the shrouds. Here are the mast sections. I already hinged the lower masts using a crude version of the hidden hinge method that I borrowed from @John Fox III. I've covered that in several previous build logs so I won't go into detail here. For the mast tops, I take another bamboo stir stick and shave it down to about .5 mm and square off the sides. Then I carve out a hole in the middle, drill tiny holes for the upper shrouds, and cut them to shape. Here are the masts fully assembled.

Your cabins are looking sharp, Paul. Nice work. Also, what is this thing you are using as a weight?

Another ingenious use of Lego blocks! Hadn't seen that one before.

Penguins aside, it's time to work on the Queen's armament. I'm using the diagram below as a guide. It shows 7 gun ports on the main deck bulwark and 8 gun ports on the gun deck, so I'll make cannons to fit that configuration. I start with the 14 carriages needed for the main deck guns. Taking a thin (0.4 mm) piece of planking from my Constellation kit, I narrow it to 3mm wide. Then I cut a bunch of pieces 1/8" long and an equal bunch of pieces 1/16" long. Next, I glue the 1/16" pieces on top of the 1/8" pieces to give each carriage the semblance of the stairstep look you see from the side of carriages. Next I take a small diamond grinding bit in my cordless rotary tool and hollow out a cradle for the cannon barrel. The next step is making the cannon barrels. I start with 20 gauge veterinary needles that are 0.8mm in diameter. I like using vet needles because they are hollow like a real cannon barrel. It's hard to see inside the bottle, but when you look at them close enough they look much better than the solid wire cannon barrels I used in my first SIB efforts. I mark them off in 4mm lengths, then use a thin cutting wheel on my Dremel drill press to cut them into pieces. The last steps are gluing the barrels into the carriage cradles and painting. The gun deck cannons are much simpler since I don't build carriages for them. I just cut slightly longer cannon barrels from the needles. When the time comes, I will drill holes into the ports on the gun deck and insert these cannon barrels. Here's the full armament ready to equip the Queen.

Nice use of Legos, Phil!

We made it dang near 2 pages before penguins got mentioned, which I think is a record! Maybe instead of the ship's cook getting roasted by the Greek Fire, I'll put a couple of penguins in the long boat. Y'all would call that penguins on the barbie, right Pat? 😄

You are right on both counts, Ken. They work great in my Dremel drill press and are also very brittle. If I drop one from more than an inch above my workbench it breaks. Or if I do anything more than push it exactly straight in and straight out, it breaks. But with careful use they work great.

Just noticed the link to this build in your signature. I'm on board. Looks like another AWESOME project! But I couldn't help but think of poor ol' neglected Tennessee...

Hey Kenny! Thanks for the kind words and I very much appreciate you following along. I've still got a long ways to go here but so far so good!

Thanks, Roel. Your earlier comment is the reason I went into detail on the process. Glad you found it worthwhile. And yes, I use CA glue for just about everything because I'm too impatient to wait for PVA glue to dry! The main exceptions are gluing the hull layers together (where I used wood glue with clamps) and when I need extended drying time like when I'm gluing things inside the bottle and need extra time to position things. For inside the bottle gluing I use 30 minute epoxy, which I've found really gives you about 15 minutes before it becomes unworkable. Also, you may be interested in what I use to drill the smallest holes. For a long time I tried regular regular hobby drill bits, fitting them into the smallest collets on my Dremel. But on the smallest bits, the collet could not keep the bit perfectly aligned and I would always have a bit of a wobble while spinning. And even the tiniest amount of wobble makes it very hard to drill precision holes that small. Then I discovered these circuit board routing bits on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BWCPXYNP?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_2&th=1 They fit into a standard Dremel collet, have zero wobble, and are very cheap. I got the 6 pack in the link above because I break the tiniest ones fairly often.

That is a really cool build, Ian. And my fireball is similar to the explosions on that sub with LED lighting and cotton balls for the explosion. Plus, that builder did a nice job with his colors using a paint brush. And glad to have you aboard here! At least you had the courtesy of not saying it reminded you of Disco Inferno! Any references to disco should be grounds for suspension from MSW. The next step for the ship is making the channels, which is always a painstaking chore. I'm not sure I've ever gone into much detail on how I make the channels so I'll give a little more info here. I start with bamboo stir sticks that I borrowed from a Panera Bread restaurant. I like to use bamboo on things I'm drilling tiny holes into because it does not splinter easily nor does it have any fuzz. You can make very tiny and very clean holes. The shape of the stir sticks is almost a very flat ellipse. So before drilling, I sand the tops and bottoms flat and square off the sides. Next, I mark the channel holes 1/16" apart - 6 holes for the fore and main (4 shrouds and 2 backstays) and 4 holes for the mizzen (3 shrouds and 1 backstay). Then I drill pilot holes with a .015" drill bit followed by the final hole at .018" diameter. Uniform spacing and straight alignment of the holes is the biggest challenge for me. To finish off the channels, I cut them apart then file down the sides as close as I can to the holes. The narrower the channels, the easier it should be to push the ship in the bottle. Without fail, however, my channels always seem to scrape the inside of the bottle's neck when I am inserting the ship. Ugh. After I took the pic below, I realized that I could get the margins closer to the holes on some of those channels, so I did. Once I was happy with the channel construction, I glued them in place and decided it was time to give the Queen's outer hull her first coat of paint. I took a screenshot from a movie clip to give me a color to try and match. The sides are kind of a dirty, faded red (with ugly sails to match). So here's my attempt at a color match. I think I got fairly close, but I still may do a bit of smudging to dirty it up just a bit more.

Amazing work, Keith!

I decided it looks like a light saber! LOL! Well, I can't blame it on the Bundy you sent me as it's gone! But don't be surprised to see that bottle show up in a future inspiration, Pat!

Yes, that would sure make these projects a lot less stressful!! Thanks, Gary. Glad to have you join the fun! Continuing the construction of the hull. I stacked my hull layers and sanded the down to the hull's basic shape. Before doing the final shaping, I decided to cut the tunnel for the LED and wires. I also decided to wait on gluing the layers together until I was satisfied with the tunnel, hence the heavy clamping below. The toothpick helps keep the layers aligned and gives me a way to secure the assembly in the vise for drilling the tunnel. I used a 1/8" drill bit for the tunnel. My main concern was keeping the bore straight and just below the gun deck (you can see the pencil marks for the gun ports below). And a test fit of the wires: Satisfied with the tunnel, I pulled the layers apart and cut the notches in the gun deck (2nd layer from right) where I will insert the cannon barrels later. The next step was to glue all the layers together. Next was additional shaping of the hull followed by work on the bulwarks. Bulwarks installed: Bowsprit added and another test fit of the LED (with light saber attached) and wires.

When the master of oil tanker piping says you did a great job, Keith, you did a great job! Maybe a tanker for your next project??