Zheng He's Treasure Fleet by Glen McGuire – FINISHED - 1/1000 - BOTTLE

[Keith Black]

 Funny, earlier I was thinking what a challenge the ladders were going to be and here you're a step ahead with a great solution. 

[gjdale]

Very impressed by how you managed to get the two hull halves together inside the bottle, Glen. and an ingenious solution to the problem of the ladders. Well played, Sir! 👏👏👏

[BANYAN]

Love the planning you put into these micro builds Glen; looks like you have a winner here.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Glen McGuire]

On 7/28/2022 at 10:20 PM, Keith Black said:

here you're a step ahead with a great solution. 

Thanks Grant and Keith regarding the ladder idea.  Keith, you say a step ahead but I'm shaking my head saying, "why didn't I think of that sooner?"  Like two builds ago on the Aurora when I struggled with the railings and never came up with a great answer.  Ugh!  Gotta get my brain in gear! 

 

1 hour ago, BANYAN said:

looks like you have a winner here.

I appreciate your optimism, Pat.  I'll be on pins and needles and tweezers all the way up until every ship is fully assembled and afloat inside the bottle.  But at least for the next week or two I can relax since I'll be doing things I know how to do - painting the hull and making the sails/masts.  

[Glen McGuire]

I got the hull painted, completed construction of the 9 masts, and dry-fitted them into the hull.  The 2 pieces of the hull are held together by a small rubber band.   

[Glen McGuire]

I also need to give huge credit to @John Fox III and the detailed pictures from his Endurance ex-Polaris (in a light bulb) build log on how to construct a hidden hinge on the mast.  If you had told me when I started these SIBs that I would be able to do something like that, I would have said you were off your rocker.  But thanks to his step-by-step pics, I was actually able to make some reasonable facsimiles of his exacting work.  They look sooooo much better than what I was doing before. 

 

I gotta say, that's one of the best things about this forum - the ability to learn so many different things from so many true craftsmen.      

[John Fox III]

Greetings Glen,

Glad you found the info on my hidden hinges useful. That's what it's all about posting things here on MSW. It is indeed a wonderful place to find info and help.

Anchor's A Weigh!

John Fox III

[Glen McGuire]

Well, the wire mesh idea for ladders was a fail.  The weave of the mesh I ordered was too large - too much space between each square.  I still tried cutting it into individual strips, to see how workable it was, but it promptly unraveled.  I might try brushing some epoxy on it and then cutting again to see if it will work for a future build, but it's not going to work for this project. 

 

In the meantime, a neighbor was tossing out an old window screen and I thought, "hey, wait just a dang minute..."  I grabbed it and cut a big swath out of the middle.  The weave was still too large, but I came up with another idea.  The screen was thin and flat, so I tried folding it over, staggering the squares, and gluing it to itself (which basically cut the size of the weave in half).  I think it came out ok!  

 

Now, on to the sails...

[Glen McGuire]

Not so fast on the sails.  After finishing the ladders, I thought the window screen material might work well for the fencing around the cattle pens.  So I decided to work on those.  The Model Shipyard version has several pens for a variety of animals, but I'm going with just two for my herd of longhorns.  

 

The Model Shipyard version also shows a parcel of row crops being tended to on the forecastle.  For that, I decided a piece of green microfiber cloth that I'd been using to clean computer/phone screens might work.  I liked the color and texture of the microfiber, so it sacrificed a small piece of its corner for my treasure ship's row crops.  The crops are probably a bit tall, but let's just say it's corn ready for harvest!

 

So here's the hull with masts, ladders, cattle pens, and corn field dry-fitted. 

 

Now, it's on to the sails!   

 

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by Glen McGuire

[Keith Black]

Isn't it rich?

So, you're making a pair? 

High above ground

They'll graze in mid-air

Send in the cows. 

 

 

[Ian_Grant]

Really looking forward to seeing how you make the cattle!

 

Maybe you could place sheep in the other pen, and have a penguin as a shepherd 🤣. (for those folks who don't get it, you need to read some of Glen's previous logs).

[Glen McGuire]

9 hours ago, Keith Black said:

Send in the cows. 

Epic!!!

 

9 hours ago, Ian_Grant said:

Really looking forward to seeing how you make the cattle!

Keep your expectations low, Ian.  Very, very low!  I got a feeling they will be crude at best.

[Keith Black]

14 minutes ago, Glen McGuire said:

Epic!!!

Stephen Sondheim would be aghast at what I did to his Send in the Clowns but I just couldn't help myself. 

 

 

[mtaylor]

Is the cornfield on the wrong end of the boat?  Or did the cows move it?  As crazy as it seems to me and maybe others, the crops and critters on the ship are interesting yet strangely weird.

[Glen McGuire]

3 hours ago, mtaylor said:

Is the cornfield on the wrong end of the boat?  Or did the cows move it?

Hey Mark - I would not put it past those rascally cows to do something like that, but the corn field is indeed on the forecastle where it belongs.  The bow on the ship is so wide and so squared off that it looks more like a stern than a bow.  It has confused me more often than I care to admit!

[Glen McGuire]

3 hours ago, mtaylor said:

As crazy as it seems to me and maybe others, the crops and critters on the ship are interesting yet strangely weird.

I think interesting and strangely weird is a good description of this whole project!  As I said before, I told my son he is no longer allowed to suggest SIB subjects.  He replied that all he did was suggest I do a junk ship - I'm the one that turned his idea into something ridiculous.  Fair point! 

[Roger Pellett]

Green Vegetables,  did the ancient Chinese know how to prevent Scurvey?

 

Roger

[BANYAN]

Love the detail you are adding Glen, quite the diorama!

 

cheers

 

Pat

[mtaylor]

3 hours ago, Glen McGuire said:

Hey Mark - I would not put it past those rascally cows to do something like that, but the corn field is indeed on the forecastle where it belongs.  The bow on the ship is so wide and so squared off that it looks more like a stern than a bow.  It has confused me more often than I care to admit!

Ah... the light bulb just lit up. 

[Glen McGuire]

2 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

Green Vegetables,  did the ancient Chinese know how to prevent Scurvey?

Not sure about that, Roger.  I have not come across any mention of scurvy prevention in my research for this.  But I have read where the ancient Chinese were the first to construct ships with double hulls divided into separate watertight compartments which saved the ships from some battle damage and also allowed storage of fresh water for passengers and animals and tanks for keeping fish catches fresh.  They also were the first to install a sternpost rudder attached to the outside of the ship that could be raised or lowered depending on how close to shore they wanted to get.  

[Roger Pellett]

Between 1985 and 2001 I made a number of business trips to both mainland China and Taiwan.  Their culture revolves around fresh food.  On Saturday mornings, streets in Beijing would be lined with open air markets.  Some would feature cheap plastic kiddie pools with fish swimming about, and high class restaurants in Taiwan had tanks with live fish; both for decoration and dinner.

 

On the other hand, in November 1985, every corner in Beijing was piled high with Bok Choy..  People were buying piles of it and loading it on bicycle carts for delivery to their apartments.  Piled in unheated hallways, this would be their green vegetable for the winter.  Frozen green vegetables were apparently unavailable or financially out of reach.

 

So, maybe, the Ancient Chinese didn’t know any more about Scurvy than anyone else.  They were saved from it by their cultural norms.

 

Roger

[Glen McGuire]

Very interesting perspective, Roger!

[Glen McGuire]

Sail making assembly line.  As with the other ships, the sail material is red shirt cloth from Joana Fabrics with Gutermann silk thread glued to the edges for the bolt ropes.

[Glen McGuire]

It was a sweatfest in the central Texas shipyard this week as my house AC went out last Sunday and I was not able to get it replaced till Saturday.  Regardless, I was still able to get the battens made and complete the final assembly of the 9 sails.  Here's the assembly line process:

 

1.  For the battens I'm using these long, thin bamboo rods I scrounged from an old 70s-ish sliding door curtain.  I cut them into 2" long pieces and drill 2 #80 holes in the middle for the lashing that will secure the sail to the mast.  I need 60 of them.  

2.  Each rod is 3/32" in diameter.  I put them on the drill lathe and sand down to 1/32"

3.  Next is painting and then going back thru the tiny lashing holes with the #80 drill bit to open the holes back up.

4.  Next is threading 4" pieces of fly tying thread (136D 6/0W) thru the lashing holes and then tying off a small loop with a knot.

5.  Then I clip the fat ends off and glue the battens to the sails.  After all the battens are glued in place, I go back and clip the ends to their proper length so they extend just past the edge of the sail.

 

Edited August 15, 2022 by Glen McGuire

[Glen McGuire]

And here's where I discovered a screw-up.  When I insert the mast thru the lashing loops, there needs to be some wiggle room because the sails have to be able to rotate, scrunch up, and slide up and down the mast a bit during the final assembly inside the bottle.  In the first pic, you can see that the upper battens are loose where the mast tapers.  Unfortunately, the lower loops were too tight and were getting hung up on the hinge. The lashing is tied with a knot behind the batten and is glued to the sail.  So there's no way to rethread it.  Also, I did not want to narrow the mast further and potentially weaken it.  And I certainly did not want to start over.  UGH!!!

 

So after pacing around the house muttering about my lack of forethought, intelligence, and a few other things, I decided to see if I could add the needed wiggle room by carving out some of the batten.  I grabbed my dremel and a small reamer bit and ever so carefully routed out a groove in the lower battens.  I had to do the for all 6 of the masts that are hinged.  Somehow I managed to do it without snagging the thread and ripping the whole thing to pieces!  Hugh sigh of relief.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Glen McGuire

[Glen McGuire]

A couple of pics of the masts and sails dry-fitted into the hull.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Glen McGuire

[Glen McGuire]

With the sails complete, time to circle back to the corrals and their animals.  Based on Keith Black's suggestion about including my new calf Shiloh, I decided to go one step further and populate the ship with my entire small herd of longhorns.  The first picture shows all of them about 6 months ago.  From left to right, their names are Sweet Eileen, Rosanna, Shiloh, Allison, and Dimples.  Allison is Rosanna's mom and Dimples is Shiloh's mom.  Shiloh is the only male and is named after a nearby settlement from the 1800s.  I will bestow Honorary Texan status on anyone that can figure out where the other 4 names came from (without googling)!

Here's what I was able to do trying to make tiny versions of my longhorn family - same order left to right as in the above picture.  They are made from tiny balls of clay with very fine wire for the horns.

Since this is such a tough crowd at MSW, I know someone is going to ask where their legs are! 😃  Let's just say it's cud chewing time so they are all relaxed, lying on the ground, with legs folded underneath, enjoying their earlier meal for a second time!

 

Edited August 17, 2022 by Glen McGuire

[Ian_Grant]

Glen, I'm speechless with amazement! You even have Shiloh smaller, and hornless! Fabulous, outstanding, extraordinary........and whatever other superlatives you can think of.

 

This bottle display will be truly memorable.

[Alva004]

Fantastic job Glen, of the cow names I only think I know one Dimples, I think it's a whiskey.

 

I am already looking forward to seeing it in its bottle, an excellent choice.

 

Around here, where I live, I don't see anything like it.

 

Cheers.

[Keith Black]

 Super neat detail on the the Longhorn family, Glen. Are you actively trying to increase your herd size? The cows I've know didn't respect fences, are yours any different?