Mercury by DSiemens - FINISHED - BOTTLE

[popeye the sailor]

very nice indeed! 

[Anja]

Hello Daniel,

 

 

Enjoy and have a great day.

 

Take care,

 

Anja

[DSiemens]

Hey some one noticed. Thanks!!!  

Edited April 12, 2013 by DSiemens

[popeye the sailor]

oh....WOW!    congrats,  my friend...........have a great day!

[augie]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY --- and many happy returns.

 

You had better pile on some more of these as, according to Sarah, you don't 'fit' with the rest of us relics  

[michael mott]

Many Happy returns Daniel, It was interesting that Sarah thought you were much older than you are , I too had the same thought, It seems that Sarah is still quite young as well judging from the picture in the builder thread.

 

I must echo the thoughts about working with the finer grained hardwoods. Basswood is nice but has it limitations as do all woods. if you have a Lee Valley store close, they sell small blanks of the fine grained woods for turning pen bodies etc, they are very reasonably priced as well.

 

The hull shape looks great.

 

Michael

[DSiemens]

Thank you all.  Yea I thought more people would have noticed how young I am after mentioning my three year old in a few threads.

 

 

 I'll be sure to pile on a few more.  After all it's statistically proven that people who have more birthdays live longer.       

[trippwj]

Great looking kids, Daniel!

 

Now about that comment...

 

After all it's statistically proven that people who have more birthdays live longer.

 

I can attest to the validity there of.  Happy Birthday, sir!  Enjoy the kids!

[john46]

Daniel, I can see you love those kids even more than your sib's.  Congratulations.

 

Regards,

John

[DSiemens]

I guess while I'm here I'll post some pictures of the progress.  Got the hull more or less carved.  I'm now working on getting the weather deck carved out.  Needs to come down a little more.  

 

 

 

 

 

[Cuda1949]

Have a very Happy Birthday.

 

 

Al Here are a few pics of The Black Pearl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I uesd coffee stirrers from a local coffee shop. After I applied them I sanded then down so they look more authenticate.

 

Your hull looks really good, keep up the good work.

 

Al

Edited April 12, 2013 by Cuda1949

[augie]

Hey Cuda----  gotta love the canonball holes in the sails!!!

[DSiemens]

Al that is awesome!  Thanks for sharing.  I really should do the Pearl.  It was that ship that got me into ship in bottle building in the first place.  Maybe once I get these two Mercury's, the Satisfaction and a mini ghost ship done.  I got  to stop saying yes to commissions and requests.  They get in the way of what I want  to do.  

[popeye the sailor]

nice work........all the way around!

[DSiemens]

More pictures!!!  I decided to try and scribe the planking.  My thought is I can scribe it and if it's awful I can plank over it.  

 

 

The deck planking came out well.  I'm very happy with it.  

 

 

 

The rest is so so.  From far away it's ok since it's such a small ship but up close it looks like it was planked by the three stooges.  I'm still in debate about it for a few reasons.  It isn't as well done as I would like but I do like the look.  I'm thinking though that with it in the bottle and with some channels going on as well as other fittings they won't be noticeable   So in effect it may work just fine.  

 

 

Also I'm adding the sealer,forgot the actual name, on the bottom which covers a lot of the planking lines.  Most of this will be under the ocean but I like having it.  

 

I am planning on building two or three of these so I may just keep this one as the practice ship and turn over the better ones to the pirates.  

[john46]

To me it is a wonderful start. Nice job.

 

Regards,

John

[augie]

Looking darned good from over here.

 

Respectfully,

 

#1 Stooge

[DSiemens]

Got some more work done.  I'm not going to worry about scribing planking on any of the other ships the channels covered it all up.  I tried a new idea and cut out the windows straight from the plans and glued them onto the side and back of the ship.  I like the look and it's much more accurate then trying to paint it on.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

[john46]

Looks great Daniel, sure you will hand her over to the pirates once finished ?

 

Regards,

John

[augie]

I like the windows!

[michael mott]

Daniel , The printed windows work very well at this scale.

 

Michael

[DSiemens]

Looks great Daniel, sure you will hand her over to the pirates once finished ?

 

Regards,

John

 

Thanks John.  The plan is to build two if I'm not sick of the ship by the time I'm done with the second I'll build a third.  We'll see I have a bunch of projects I want to get to as well.  To many ideas not enough time.  

 

Thank you Augie and Michael.  I saw some on do the same thing with hatches I figured it would work with the windows.  I may try to touch them up with white paint and more stain on the edges to darken them up.  Debating a darker stain on the channels as well just so there's some contrast.  I asked the pirates about color schemes but haven't heard anything back yet.    

[DSiemens]

Got the port side done and the rudder in place.  Still need to add the keel which is why I left the rudder so long.  My philosophy is cut big and sand to size. So far it works.

 

 I also decided to change the way I did the windows and the transom.  The ship lacked color so I cut off the old transom added color to the plans in Photoshop and printed a new one.  I like this much better.  Then like an idiot I nick it with the dremel.   So if you see some paint differences that's why.  

 

I also added gold paint around the windows.  This actually did two things added color and the build up of the paint gave it a more defined  windowsill look.  I'm much happier with my windows now.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now I'm finally getting to the itty bitty fun parts.  

Edited April 21, 2013 by DSiemens

[john46]

She looks very good and brave in the hands of Gulliver.

 

Regards,

John

[DSiemens]

I tried a new technique today creating the figurehead.  Took a lot of tries but it worked out.

 

 

 

 

You can see what she's supposed to look like on the plans.  Given the scale I think she looks pretty good.  Got the idea from an amazing SIB builder Michael Bardet of France.  Here's the link.

 

 http://michel.bardet.pagesperso-orange.fr/rdr2006infoa.htm

 

Simply put I took a piece of wire and bent it into the shape of the figurehead.  Then painted it a couple times to fill out the shape.  

 

 

 

 

 

[john46]

The lady with the trumpet, very inventive. You added a new gadged to the ship.

 

Regards,

John

[augie]

She's a really nice touch Daniel.

[popeye the sailor]

very impressive Daniel,  given the size of your build........that's detail usually lost.  glad you chose to include it

[michael mott]

Daniel on my slow laptop, wow that is some impresive modelwork! now lets see some fine details :D

 

michael

[DSiemens]

Wow I leave for a few days and there's a million posts to go through.  Thank you all for your comments.  I try to add as much detail as I can just to see if I can. I was actually pretty excited to get the figure head on.  I've always wanted to add figure heads but couldn't figure out how to get them so small.  I'll see if this technique will work for the lion on the Satisfaction as well.