The Kraken by JerseyCity Frankie - BOTTLE

[JerseyCity Frankie]

The liquid plasticine lapped up the side of the bottle and left a film of goop and the tool I had been using so far (my largest tweezers on a threaded rod) could not reach around to the inside sides of the bottle so I had to make a new tool that could get into the nooks and crannies.

[JerseyCity Frankie]

Making tools to get at stuff on the inside of the bottle need not be a huge challenge if you select a bottle with the right ratio of neck diameter to neck width. The inside diameter of the bottle also plays a roll and some geometries won’t allow you to have an influence anywhere inside the bottle. Usually you don’t need anything more than a bit of wire twisted over the end of a wooden dowel or bamboo skewer and up till now I had not needed to build special tools more complex than a piece of razor blade attached to a stick. But this project has had some special challenges.  This tool is simply a tweezers tied to a threaded rod. I use metal rod since the leverage you put onto the end of the tool that you can grasp has a strong effect within the bottle and wood can break or bend more often than you would think. 

[JerseyCity Frankie]

I had hoped to avoid building an articulated tool but it has become apparent that with all those tentacles I will have to manipulate I was going to have to make something I could bend around inside the bottle. It turns out it was very easy to make this elbow tool and I was done and using it a lot sooner than I imagined, I had set aside the whole night to cobble something together and really all I had to do was drill a hole and bend some wire. There is no glue or solder in use here at all its just bent wire and knots on the string. The inset photo is the tool in its bent mode. It swings through 120 degrees roughly when I pull on one string and ease the other. I’m sure anyone reading this could build one of these and a lot of you could build a more elegant tool, based on some of the build logs and evident competence I see on this site.

[JerseyCity Frankie]

Here is the tool in use within the bottle. Its holding a cotton swab dipped in rubbing alcohol and its making short work of the glommed on clay residue at the “water line”. The tool with the tweezers on the end could not reach the waters edge and when I tried to hold a Q-tip and use that to swab the inside it simply wasn't effective.

[JerseyCity Frankie]

With the water in place and the wooden base built, the ship itself constructed and painted and now a new useful tool to use I guess there is no excuse but to proceed with getting the Kraken inside the bottle.

[captainbob]

Fine creativity. Can’t wait to see the Kraken inside.

 

Bob

[shipmodel]

Nice save with the new tool.  When I saw the first photo I could not imagine how you were going to get the clay removed from the inside walls of the bottle.  There are some intricate tools developed by Ralph Preston for bottling models that you can read in Ship Modelers' Shop Notes II from the Nautical Research Guild.  The articles may give you some ideas.  Ralph is one of the top ship-in-a-bottle modelers in the US.

 

Dan

[JerseyCity Frankie]

Dan I suppose Ralph Preston got to be one of the top U.S. ship-in-a-bottle modelers by pulling a few strings......

[JerseyCity Frankie]

Working on the plasticine “sea” some more. I wanted the surface of the water to appear more realistic so I added waves and whitecaps. Waves were achieved by rolling clay “snakes” and laying them in on the surface of the sea diagonally and then slightly mashing them down. The snakes were of a slightly darker color than the base sea. Note that I have tied the bottle down tight to the base it will sit on. I don't want the bottle rolling around since from this point on it often takes two hands to manipulate things.   

 

I made a bunch of shorter and much thinner white clay snakes and laid them in on top of my “waves” and mashed them down. The white clay quickly blends into the sea and looks pretty good for a very small amount of effort.

 

If I were modeling a ship underway and not molested by a monster, I would at this point make the ships bow wave and wake using the same white snake method.

[JerseyCity Frankie]

Another step is to remove a little bit of the “water” your ship (or in this case your creature) will displace so that the hull can be bedded in the sea firmly. I make a paper template of the hull or creatures waterline and put it in the bottle over the spot the assemblage is going to sit on and using an improvised tool I scrape out the outline of the ship or creature. I remove the template then excavate some of the clay out. How much clay to remove and how deep you go will be determined by your models draft. This is a slow messy uscientific process. The best tool I found for this bottle for this job was not my fancy articulated arm, it was a bit of stout copper wire wrapped around the end of a dowel. To get the angle I needed on the tool within the bottle, I was able to bend the wire against the inside back of the bottle into positions it could not have held while being inserted through the neck of the bottle. Little tiny bights of clay are removed one greasy little chunk at a time. Finally at the end of the days work I put in a piece of the Kraken to see what it would look like in there. I think I am finally ready to start actually putting things into the bottle.

[captainbob]

Ah.  Starting to take shape.  I like the water.

 

Bob

[SpencerC]

The water looks great

[DSiemens]

Masterfully done.  I like the idea of tying the bottle down.  I've often struggled with needing more then two hands to hold the bottle and manipulate the tools.    

[shipmodel]

Frankie -

 

Nice look to the water.  The waves and whitecaps bring out some of the violence of the scene.  I also like the contrast with the color of the Kraken's body - a nice angry octopussy sort of color.

 

Dan

[JerseyCity Frankie]

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

[Omega1234]

Hi Frankie. A truly inspirational build which will surely fire the imagination once finished. That's the beauty of our hobby. It will always challenge us, yet, get our emotions and thoughts firing.

 

Well done and I look forward to seeing your build progressing!

 

All the best.

[captainbob]

Frankie, glad to see you back on the Kraken.

 

Bob

[Chasseur]

Frankie ... Looking really good! The photo I believe is an ink drawing from one of Jules Verne's novels. The Kraken and ship will be excellent once completed! I have a similar painting on this site on a diorama I completed. Search Nemo's War here on MSW. Just so you know I am building the Clipper Ship Preussen in a bottle and love the tool idea you came up with.

 

I am going to carve my seas from Douglas fir and then paint it up so watch my future posts here on MSW.

Jeff

[Landlubber Mike]

JC Frankie, it's funny, I was at a liquor store the other day looking at bottles for building a SIB, and saw the Kraken rum bottle.  I thought it would be cool to add a ship and kraken to that bottle - looks like you beat me to the idea!

[Hyposphagma]

Very nice bottle with very naturalistic looking sea. The ship will look wonderful in it when finished.

 

I prepare my sea always outside of the bottle. I use a piece of thin cardboard or 0.3 mm polystyrol that I fit to the bottle and model the sea on it. After finishing the sea the whole thing can be rolled easily after smoothing the plasticine a little with a hairdryer. Apply some glue inside of the bottle. Then push the whole sea thru the neck and glue it inside of the bottle. The cardboard or polystyrol can be painted blue underneath before. After the glue dried i just put some plasticine around the edges and the sea looks like it has been modeled inside of the bottle. Then the ship can be added and modeled into its place. For me it saves a lot of time with the same result.