Glen McGuire
-
Posts
1,835 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Gallery
Events
Everything posted by Glen McGuire
-
Time to try and bring this idea to life (or an untimely death!). I bought a 2 pound package of DAS air-dry modeling clay at Michael's, which is supposed to be good for beginners. Then a friend told me I was making this way too difficult. I should just go get a "Cranky the Octopus" Play-Doh set for this thing and be done with it!. Dang! Why didn't I think of that. But since I was so far down the road with my Youtube sculpting classes, etc, I decided to stick with the original plan. Here's the modeling clay I got. First step was adding a somewhat smooth layer of clay to the copper wire tentacles. I didn't smooth it out completely as I think variations and imperfections will make it look more realistic. Next was figuring out what to do with the suckers. First, I tried some beads, but I really did not like the way they looked. Too perfect. Too uniform. One of the Youtube tutorials I watched had a person making coral. They rolled the clay into little balls and made things that looked like suckers to me. So I tried that and I liked them better than the beads. Again, I wanted variation rather than uniformity. Here's a side-by-side. Once that decision was made, I spent a couple of hours rolling little clay balls of various sizes and indenting the centers. And here's what the shortest tentacle looks like with suckers added. I am using CA glue to attach them one at a time. Gonna be a long process!
- 240 replies
-
- 16
-
-
-
-
Welcome to the best place on the entire interweb!
-
As usual, Grant, you've got it figured out! These just arrived from Amazon ($7). Now it's just a matter of picking a pair! Probably let my color consultant friend decide.
-
Thanks for the comments and encouragement. I definitely need it for this part of the project! I have not made much actual progress in the past couple of weeks, as I've been trying out some various ideas (some good, some bad), and going to Youtube U for some clay sculpting lessons. But I think I've finally zeroed in on a plan, so I hope to get some real work done this week. Thanks, Ian. It did not occur to me to scuff the insulation up a bit. I had tested the clay on a small piece of the insulated wire before I saw your post and, surprisingly, it stuck quite well. However, I like your scuffing idea so I'm going to do that on the real ones. That's the first thing I tried to do on a practice tentacle. It looked ok, but I was worried about it cracking and/or breaking off. Yes - head and mouth and maybe eyes barely protruding out of the water. Of course that assumes I can sculpt something from the clay that does not look too ridiculous. A large assumption there! See pic below for very rough idea of what the head and mouth may (or may not) resemble! I repeat, it's a rough draft, so no laughing allowed! Yes to all of that, Steve! I stripped it as you said, then twirled the exposed end against the side of my bench grinder to taper the ends. A few wires got a bit unruly and had to be snipped, but overall I think the taper came out ok.
-
I know it's more work, but the sharp cone looks way better to me. It's going to be a prominent (but not dominate) feature of your presentation, so my opinion is that it would be well worth the extra effort. I also like where you positioned it in the drawing - close to the bottle for the more realistic look. I don't think you lose anything in the overall presentation by covering up more of the bottle's neck. Plus, like you said, the blade holes let light shine thru and give some visibility. My 2 cents anyway!
- 51 replies
-
- 3
-
-
- Sea Installer
- Bottle
- (and 1 more)
-
Looks fantastic! What did use for the lattice on the boom? Is that the 0.1mm copper wire?
- 51 replies
-
- 3
-
-
- Sea Installer
- Bottle
- (and 1 more)
-
Echo what everyone else says above - great to see you back at it, Mark!
- 505 replies
-
- 7
-
-
- vanguard models
- Sphinx
- (and 1 more)
-
Amazing job getting all those railroad ties in place with such uniform, even spacing. That had to be a lot harder than you make it seem!
-
Seriously??? OMG. That is unreal. And the worst timing. I hope everyone and everything is ok around you. As for the gap between the halves of the hull, I would not worry too much about that. Every single one of my bottle projects has flaws that I think are egregious at the time (including gaps like yours). But by the time I'm done, there's so much going on visually with the entire project, nobody ever notices them. Regardless, congratulations on getter her inside the bottle! Huge accomplishment! Fingers crossed that the small click you heard was something easily repaired.
-
I decided to start the "hard bit", as @gjdale called it, with the tentacles. I could not find anything online resembling kraken tentacles that I was happy with. So I started playing around with other ideas. I needed something that was the right thickness and bendable, but also sturdy enough to hold up the bottle on its own. I finally landed on #2 AWG stranded copper wire from Home Depot for about $3/ft. I will coat the wire with a thin layer of modeling clay, taper the tips, and add some suckers.
- 240 replies
-
- 13
-
-
-
-
Thanks for the drawing. This is such a cool project. I really like the idea of the bottle acting as the nacelle of the turbine, if that is what you were describing in the last sentence above. Even if it was a short tower holding up the nacelle and short blades, I still think it would be a great look. A lot of what I do with my presentations is not to scale. I like to give an impression and let the viewers imagination put it all together. Regardless of what you decide, you are on your way to a very unique build!
- 51 replies
-
- 2
-
-
- Sea Installer
- Bottle
- (and 1 more)
-
I've got quite a collection now of homemade bottle tool now! I like your spreader tool. Looks like it worked well. So if I understand what you are doing, the platform legs of the sea installer will rest on the sand, and water will extend up the legs to just under the base of the sea installer?
- 51 replies
-
- 2
-
-
- Sea Installer
- Bottle
- (and 1 more)
-
Looking good so far! How long did it take your acrylic gel/sand seafloor to dry with your very clever air flow setup?
- 51 replies
-
- 2
-
-
- Sea Installer
- Bottle
- (and 1 more)
-
Lordy, you've got that right, Grant! If you don't hear from me in a month, send out the search and rescue team.
-
How interesting! I had not even noticed that in the picture, Keith. You are right, it looks really cool! Unfortunately, I cannot take credit for it and claim it's some amazing artistic talent! ☹️ I went back and examined my bottle and found that it's actually the glass distorting the view in the picture. In reality, the water is totally flat from the back of the bottle's body to the front. Dang!
-
Yes and yes! I dabbed epoxy into the dowel holes as well as several spots up and down the inside of the hull. I was not sure if I could get full contact between the 2 halves along the entire length of the hull I, so I wanted to get epoxy in as many places as possible. I certainly did. But my concern was exactly what you mentioned - making sure the first half was in the proper position. The round bottle distorts my vision and makes it difficult to get things exactly where they need to be. My water was not very wide so I needed to be precise in my hull placement.
-
Glad you left off the rest of her quote since this is a family friendly forum! 😃 A big THANK YOU to everyone for comments and dialogue. Y'all add so much enjoyment to the work! OK. speaking of work, there was still a bit of work left on the ship. First, I had to revisit the curled ornamentation on the stem and stern posts and how to attach them inside the bottle. After pushing the 2 halves of the hull together inside the bottle, there was a small gap between each side of the stem and stern posts. So I cut a couple of tiny wedges to fit the gap, and glued the previously bent eye pins to the wedges (first pic below). Then the challenge was putting them in their spots and holding them in place while the glued dried. What I decided to do was mix the epoxy and wait 15 minutes until it was thick and sticky but not set. Then I glopped some on the wedge and stuck it in. With the epoxy being stickier, the eye pin assembly was then able to stand up on its own and stay in place while it set. Next was raising the mast, tightening the lines, gluing them to their respective eye pins, and cutting the threads off at the eye pins. No problems there. With that, the ship in the bottle part of this project is done! Unfortunately for me, I think that was the easy part. Now, as @Keith Black said, it's time to "get crackin' with the kraken!"
- 240 replies
-
- 15
-
-
-
Dang, Steven! I was hoping it would have the opposite effect and you'd be rushing out to find a bottle to empty! Rum is even better! But my store does not have Bundaberg rum. It's got this stuff (and I do see a kangaroo on the label). Any good?
-
Thank you, Gary! Hey Mike! Thanks for the kind words. The prongs are made from the long, straight part of metal coat hangers glued into a wooden dowel rod handle. I bent the ends to a 90 degree angle and filed them for a smooth and gently rounded tip. They have worked very well inside the bottle for pushing things around, holding things down, and untangling rigging lines. All without scratching the ship. To your last point, they don't bend very easily so I can apply a decent amount of force when necessary (like I had to do to get those 2 hull halves to finally join together).
-
LOL!!! You crack me up, Keith! Yes. I was definitely nervous the last few minutes because I knew the clock was ticking. A friend told me I should talk more during the video. I tried, but just can't do it. Too focused on trying to get the job done. That's why I went back and added some captions. And BTW, if I had your engineering skills, I could probably design these things a lot better up front and save myself a lot of anxiety during assembly! I think I'm going to celebrate by having a couple of those Bundy beers that you downunder folks mentioned near the start of this log! I checked and the Total Wine store down the street has them in stock!
-
Yes! I just finished posting the video that your First Mate requested. Apparently I am unable to build anything with greater than a zero margin for error. The insertion process went pretty well, but it took a while. The oars and tips of the stem post were scraping along the neck of the bottle as I pushed each half of the hull inside. I ended up bending a few of the oars but they can be straightened without too much difficulty. I got the hull pieces in pretty quickly. The time consuming part was getting the rigging threads out of the way (while making sure they did not slip into any of the small epoxy blobs) and then lining the hull pieces up and pressing them together. The whole process took about 10 minutes but felt like an hour! Long video link below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqDFXTSlX2s&t=116s
- 240 replies
-
- 16
-
-
Our Emblem ®
