Glen McGuire

@Tomculb Hey Tom! Thank you for reviewing my work (so far) and for your comments. What an interesting story about your parents and your time in Hawaii! Thank you so much for sharing. As I did my research and learned more about the culture surrounding these ocean voyagers, I was fascinated at how the vessels were held in such high esteem by native Hawaiians as well as those like you and your parents who spent part of their lives on the islands and understood the history. I have been doing my best to do justice to this special reverence, which is one reason I tried to make my wa'a kualua out of as many native Hawaiian materials as possible. I absolutely love that model that your father found and you inherited. What a lovely tribute to him to have that model sit close by while you work on your models. As for sailing out on a Hobie to welcome the Hokulea on her return from her maiden voyage. Whoa!! What a cool thing to do!! While I did not try to build a copy of the Hokulea, I did use her plans as a baseline for some of my boat (like the relative hull and mast dimensions). She is an amazing vessel with an amazing story. I'm really glad you found this build log and shared your story!

Thank you very much, Noel!!!

Here’s how the whole operation transpired: Step 1 – Insert the hull assembly. I made some red Sharpie markings on the bottle to help me figure out where to dab the epoxy on the water. Then I slid the hull assembly inside, straightened it out, and lined it up on top of the epoxy. The main concern was getting the 2 hulls squarely aligned. No real difficulty encountered with this step. Step 2 – Add the deck. After the step 1 epoxy was set and the hull assembly securely in place, I put a touch of epoxy on the hull assembly’s connecting ribs and dropped the deck on top. Very easy. Step 3 – Insert the 2 mast/sail assemblies and drop them in their respective mast steps. This is where things got a bit tricky because of a small blunder. Since my original plan was to insert the deck and masts as 1 piece, I had put a hinge near the bottom of each mast. And that became problematic. I got the aft mast/sail inside the bottle ok. But when I tried to insert the base of the mast into its mast step hole, the hinge kept folding on me. Once folded, the angle made it dang near impossible to get enough leverage to push it down firmly into the hole. At one point, I even considered trying to pull the mast/sail back out of the bottle, but fortunately I came to my senses and abandoned that dodo idea. After maybe 45 minutes of frustration, I finally got that dang thing in place. Now it was a matter of orienting the mast/sail properly and securing it in place. I angled the sail forward at maybe 50 degrees (similar to some of the paintings), made sure the mast was vertical, then worked up a brass wire jig to hold the mast/sail in place while the epoxy dried. The last step was tying off the rigging. My standing rigging consisted of 2 shrouds on each side of each mast. The running rigging was simply a line on the starboard side attached to a loop of thread tied to the curved spar. All lines were tied off to the small spindles or studs protruding along the gunwale. This was a tedious process, but not very difficult. The pic below shows the aft mast/sail with all the rigging tied off and threads cut. Here’s the completed wa’a kualua fully assembled inside its new home. And with that, the easy part of this project is over. Now it’s time to figure out how to build a Hawaiian waterfall. YIKES!!

I just added another word added to my Aussie vocab – “gobsmacked” Thank you, @Louie da fly! Time for what I expected to be a relatively easy insertion process with my main concern being whether or not the pineapple leaves for sails would survive undamaged. My plan was to insert the hull assembly and glue in place. Then attach both masts/sails to the deck and insert the deck/mast/sail assembly as a single piece. I made a couple of practice runs with a dry-fitted deck/mast/sail assembly. It was tight and would require me to scrunch up the pineapple leaves more than I was comfortable doing. So I decided it would be safer to insert the deck by itself into the bottle, then add the mast/sails afterwards. So a 3-step insertion process – hull assembly, deck, and mast/sail assembly. I’ve got pictures and descriptions of the process in the next post. But if you want to see videos of how the sausage was made, here’s a couple of short ones. The first is about 5 minutes and covers the hull, deck and mast/sail installation. The second is about 10 minutes and covers the rigging. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldEVtqMFj_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HdLKyqNNMo

Did you say auditions for a new figurehead??? You knew this was coming...

Yes, for my Archimedes' claw project. Actually, historians were undecided on whether Archimedes used longhorns or penguins to pull the ropes on the mechanism. I ended up going with longhorns. Really impressive work all around, Javelin! The main ship, the multicat, the water, everything!! Well done.

I am unable to function at any single digit temps, much less ones with negative signs in front. 🥶🥶🥶 Thanks, Pat! And thanks for adding another line to my budding Aussie vocabulary (came up a treat)!!

Just found this build log. Very impressive work!! I especially like the paint job you did on the watermelons. Unexpected details like that really bring it to life!!

Hey Steven, I just ran across this build log. What an interesting subject and a beautiful build. Congratulations! But I am most impressed by the fact that you are able to do 2 models at once. I saw the framework of your San Marco mosaic ship in the background on one of your pics above. Not sure how you are able to pull that off!!

Welcome to the best site on the whole dang interweb, Christopher!!

It was a cold, dreary, rainy day here in central Texas yesterday which was a good excuse to get a lot of work done. Although I have no doubt the Canadians like @Knocklouder and @Ian_Grant and probably even @Keith Black would laugh at what I consider cold. Time to pull the leaves out of their bath and make the pe'a's (sails). I laid them all out on a paper towel to let them dry and then cut them into shape. The fore pe'a is the larger of the two. As I was cutting them, it became obvious that the plumeria leaves were too too fragile (the 4 darker leaves on the left in the pic below). The pineapple leaves have harder fibers running vertically which you can kinda see. It gives them more strength to withstand the thread loops I'll use to attach them. Plus, I like the lighter color. I ran a thin coat of fabric glue along the edges where I planned to punch thru with the needle and thread. You can see the narrow shiny strip along the 2 vertical edges. I'm hoping this ensures I don't rip the thread out of the leaves when they get folded, spindled and mutilated during the insertion process. Here's what the kia (mast) assembly looks like dry-fitted into the pola (deck). And now, the whole wa'a kualua put together (dry-fit again) with the exception of the rigging. And now the rigging. The paintings of wa'a kaulua's show minimal rigging, thankfully. The stays are called kaula iha's and I'm going with 2 on each side. There is 1 piece of what I guess you would call running rigging, the kaula o'pe'a. It ties to a loop attached at 2 points to the o'pe'a (upwardly curved spar). I've got all the rigging with long threads that will extend out of the bottle. Once the boat is inside the bottle, I will manipulate the masts and sails into their proper places, tie the threads off to the little protrusions pointing outward from the hulls, and them cut them off. In theory anyway!! 😳

OH NO!! So painful to see Pegasus in that condition and I'm sure it was even more painful to watch it happen. But you cannot keep a good man down, so I know you'll get her back in order shortly.

Funny (and almost not funny) that you should mention that, Pat. The thought that my little river of water running thru the neck would reduce my available space for ship insertion never occurred to me until after the epoxy resin was set and I turned my attention back to the ship. My heart blood pressure and heart rate were skyrocketing until I was able to confirm that there was still plenty of room! If the hulls were U or V shaped instead of flat, I would have had a serious problem (and meltdown)!!

After funneling the epoxy resin into the bottle, it's usually time to relax for a couple of days waiting for it to dry. Before I got to relax though, I needed to clean up the usual horrible mess I'd made with the epoxy resin. It was then that I suddenly remembered that I needed to show water flowing thru the neck of the bottle and into the body for my illusion of the waterfall filling up the bottle with water. I had about an ounce of leftover epoxy resin still in the pouring container which would be plenty. But how to do it was the question. I could not just pour it in because that would require tilting the bottle and would cause the main body of epoxy resin to slide up the back side of the bottle and leave residue when leveled off again. So I decided to wait for the leftover epoxy resin to solidify, but not harden..........Cue 3 1/2 hours of Jeopardy music..........Once the epoxy resin got to what I thought was the proper thickness, I took a bamboo skewer and pasted a thin layer of epoxy resin on the bottle's neck. That was the easy part. The hard part was getting epoxy resin affixed to the dropoff from the neck of the bottle to the main body of water and making it look like a smooth flow. So I swirled a large blob onto the skewer and prepared to try and get it in place without making a huge mess - see below. By this time, the epoxy resin was getting pretty solid and difficult to work with. I ended up scraping the blob against the top of the dropoff, where to my horror, it just stood straight out like a diving board (no picture unfortunately). My hope was that even though the epoxy resin was stiff enough to stick straight out, it wasn't stiff enough to overcome gravity. Sure enough, after about 15 minutes, I could see it starting to droop. After an hour, it had fallen perfectly into place! WHEW!! Fast forward to today and the epoxy resin was set. I added some slight texturing of the water with Woodland Scenics Water Ripples. I did not want to go overboard with the stuff thinking that there should not be much turbulence with a small flow of water filling the bottle. No whitecaps either. Closeup below of the water coming in from the bottle's neck and hitting the textured water. After the boat is in the bottle, I'll probably add a little froth to where the little waterfall hits the main body of water, but I'm thinking it will be pretty subtle.

What a great build, Bryan! I love the base. Very nice presentation.

That's no fun!! But I guess it's motivation to get to the finish line. You are doing a great job on this build, Bob. Love the way she looks so far.

I agree about the plumeria midrib, but the sail footprint is really small compared to the size of the leaf, so I don't know if that will work or not. We will see in a day or two. I want to wait till the epoxy resin is fully hardened before I take the leaves out of their bath. I want to take them out, attach them, and get them in the bottle quickly, while they are at their most supple. Thank you, Ken! You have put my mind at ease. I was a big Star Trek fan of the original series but never watched much of its offspring. I youtube'd the Enterprise opening credits that you mention and saw the Polynesian vessel (see below). Very cool! I agree with you about their incredible navigational skills. The more I learn about this subject, the more fascinated I become.

Glad to have you on board, Ponytail!!

Time to dive into the sails or pe'a's as they wee called. Each pe'a is shaped like an upside down triangle with the upper section curved downward like the letter U. According to https://www.hemakeewaa.org, "the U in the sail serves as kind of a safety valve allowing wind to escape over the top of the sail thus reducing the force that could capsize a canoe." As far a construction of the pe'a, it was made from the leaves of the hala tree. The leaves (lauhala) were cut into very narrow strips, maybe 1/4" wide, then woven together to form mats about a foot and a half square. Finally, the mats were sewn together to create the full pe'a. So far, I've been trying to make as much of my wa'a kaulua as possible with native Hawaiian materials. There are no hala trees around here in central Texas, but I do have a pineapple plant and a plumeria tree which I am going to try and make the pe's's from. I took a couple of dead leaves from each because I need a brownish/yellowish color. Obviously, they were pretty crunchy, so I need a way to make them pliable again. Hmmmm. Several years ago, I killed a few small rattlesnakes and a couple of copper heads at my ranch. I preserved the skins by soaking them in a glycerin/water solution and to this day they are still soft. Would that same method work for leaves? There are people in the googleverse that say it will, so I'm giving it a try. The first pic shows the leaves from my pineapple plant and the second is from the plumeria. The plumeria is a little darker than I want, but I like the prominent veins that could maybe pass as sewing seams. We'll see how everything looks in a couple of days when they are done soaking. While the leaves are relaxing in their glycerin bath, I decided to get the water in the bottle. I went with more of a turquoise color instead of the deep sea dark blue I usually use. I also wanted it to be a little more transparent to indicate shallower water like you would find at the base of a waterfall.

That had to be a gut wrenching decision to scrap those braces after the superb job you did with their complex curvature. But your remodeled ones look great. Very fine work, Steven.

You're trying to make me name names aren't you, Pat!! 🤐

I think we might have a few Larrikins on MSW, but I won't name names!! 😃😃😃

Thank you, Steven! I'm actually not too nervous about the insertion process this time as I know my hull assembly will fit easily and I think my deck/mast/sail assembly will not be too tight either. My concern right now is whether or not this idea I've got for the sails will work (speaking of weeds...). More on that in my next post. On another note, curiosity finally got the best of me. I'd been wondering for a while about your screen name and if there was a story behind it. My initial thought was that it sounded like some kind of gangster from the roaring 20's. So I googled and found that it's a mascot for a bug spray (Mortein)!! And I even listened to his jingle: Louie the Fly, I'm Louie the Fly, Straight from rubbish tin to you! Spreading disease with the greatest of ease, straight from rubbish tin to you! I'm bad and mean and mighty unclean, afraid of no one, except the man with the can of Mortein. Hate that word, Mortein! He even has his own Facebook page with 242,000 followers!!! And apparently I was on the right track with my initial thought because I read that the producers of the jingle wanted his voice to sound gravelly, like a Chicago-land gangster. So now I think you have the coolest screen name on MSW!!!

The MSW display on my Samsung (Galaxy S10) has not changed.

On to the masts, which are called kia's and look quite interesting. The wa'a kaulua sails were triangular in shape with a straight vertical kia (mast) and a 'o pe'a (curved spar). I made the kia in my usual way with a small bamboo rod hinged near the base and shaved down to 1.5mm above the hinge. For the 'o pe'a's, I boiled a couple of bamboo rods for 20 minutes, then rubber-banded them to a couple of wood scraps that I had shaped to the proper curve. While the curved 'o pe'a's were drying I went to work on the thatched structure that rests between the pe'a's, or doghouse as @Keith Black called it. I think it's called a halau wa'a, which translates to canoe house but I am not sure. I was out on a run yesterday and saw some very thin, hairy, dead grass growing out of a crack in the pavement. It looked perfect for small thatch like I needed. So I grabbed a handful and carried it home. I built a little halau wa'a out of a bamboo chopstick, chopped the grass into tiny pieces and glued it on. As with a lot of my deck fixtures, they look better the further you are away from them. By the time I finished the halau wa'a, the 'o pe'a's (curved spars) were done drying. Here's a pic of everything I've made so far, dry-fitted into place.