The Kraken by JerseyCity Frankie - BOTTLE

[SpencerC]

Wow this looks fun! Now I'm hooked.

[JerseyCity Frankie]

This latest update has no photos. Playing around with the hull and the arms on my desktop, cycling through removing the arms and plugging the arms back in around the hull using my hands, has shown me a few things and I have reached some conclusions based on how things are working out: Pulling the lines that raise the rig on a bottle model puts a lot of temporary horizontal strain on a conventional ship in a bottle. I have had previous ships in bottles pull out of the plasticine sea they are bedded in while raising the masts. I intend to have this ships hull supported entirely out of the water so I will need to supplement the Kraken arms with a pair of brass pins hidden within the wreathing tentacles to hold the ship firmly aloft. It wouldn’t do, at some point years down the road, to have the Kraken and the ship slowly slouch over on its side one hot  summer day when the plasticine is softened by the heat. I intend to err on the side of stability.

 

Thinking about the ship itself, I'm a bit disappointed with the rig depicted in the print. I want my kraken ship to have more square yards and more canvas visible, so I am going to liberally reinterpret the rig to show topsails and tagalents and a spanker and some staysails. Considering the ship it occurs to me the ship itself is a mystery. I have no idea what era it is from nor do I know its name or nationality, all I know is that it made the mistake of offending the Kraken. Speaking of the consequences of offending insurmountable forces, I want to apologize to the moderators for spending so much time on this build log on the process of building the creature, I’m spending a lot of time and energy describing the construction of a thing that is not a ship and I hope they will understand that the overall project IS a ship model, even if my mystery ship has no provenance.

[JerseyCity Frankie]

On to the ship itself, a little bit. I assume everyone knows about raising the masts inside the bottle? If not google some phrase like "the secret to a ship in a bottle" and you will find plenty of explanations. The issue I am addressing here is the masts. The masts have to fold, so you have to have a hinge at the base of each mast. Typically you drill a hole athwartship through the base of each mast and bend a wire to run through the hole, attached to the deck. Easy in theory but I had a lot of trouble over the years drilling through the thin wooden masts I was using. I used a paper hinge once and that worked but didn’t feel very robust. I tried leather once. Drilling a hole through an already very small wooden spar weakens the spar and I have had masts buckle and spring right in the middle of the most crucial part of raising the masts inside the bottle. Cursing ensued. I would stiffen the spar by soaking it in cyano but still I had trouble with the flimsy wood. Another issue that happens then is the wire. How to bend the wire so that it fits perfectly and is least visible? Band the wire 90 degrees, insert it through the spar then try to bend the other side 90 degrees and you will soon discover a new appreciation for the bending properties of small diameter wire, and right after that you will become disappointed with the bending properties of all the wire you can find. The wire will be either too resistant to bending or be too floppy and insubstantial. So I moved on from wooden spars and I use brass rod. Available in many small diameters and cheap, its easy to cut drill and work and now when I need to bend the wire through the hole in the base of the mast I can just squeeze the spar and the wire in the jaws of a tool and its bent perfectly and the spar won’t suffer any smashing the way wood does. Here are photos of some masts being made:

[HSM]

Good idea, but you still have the problem of bending the hinge-pin to mate with that...

 

What if you were to cut two grooves in a cross-shape on the deck. One is a fore/aft groove in the deck that would just allow the "foot" of the mast to pivot, and the other is athwartships (thanks for the new word :-) in which a straight pin would sit flush with the deck on either side of the mast? The small cavity where the mast recesses into would probably be less visible than the right-angled hinge and would probably be a stronger, tighter hinge because you don't have the undesired curve of the "C" shaped hinge-pin.

[Thanasis]

About the Greek "Π" (P) shape of the bended wire at the base of a mast...

I have also used nylon thread on wooden mast, after I had stiffen the edges and glued  them in holes on the deck. 

Nylon thread, because of its elastic nature, gives also some tightening, when keeps the mast in the upper position and after you have glue it on the deck, with the mast in an angle...

Thanks

[guillemot]

A friend of mine used to drill a mast diameter hole in the deck and then, due to elasticity in his rigging material, he could start to raise the masts and cajole the masts into their shallow holes, the rigging would then keep them there.....can't imagine it was easy but it looked great.

[DSiemens]

I haven't seen this done with brass rods so it will be interesting to see how it all comes together.  I've gotten used to bamboo and thread blocks which eliminates drilling.  Still bamboo can only go so small before it's to weak.  I've been experimenting with rusting needles to get the brown wood look then adding clear nail polish to seal it a technique I learned from John Fox.   

[JerseyCity Frankie]

Working on the nameless ship some more. I forget where I first learned of the hint of using a building cradle shaped like this, some book or website I guess. The shape makes sense since the hulls are so small you will need to have them attached to something you can grasp and handle, while at the same time a lot of rigging comes off the model and needs a place to live while it is awaiting the insertion into the bottle. The assembly can be fixed in your vice or it can sit on your desk. I have drilled holes for numerous “belaying pins” along the shorter bar. The rigging can be belayed, snubbed, eased, taken up or cast off just as on an actual pin and its very handy to be able to cycle through all those steps with each line, since as you build the ship the lines are going to be run every which way. The two screw eyes are fairleads to get the rigging to run from the ship to the pins in an orderly linier way.

[JerseyCity Frankie]

Here is a shot of the nameless ship with the masts stepped. If you look closely you will see the hinges. I should not have drilled the holes in the deck for the toothpick rig I had in place, but I thought I needed the toothpicks back in that earlier step in the process when I was firing the sculpy Kraken arms. I can dowel up the holes or disguise them or leave them, they will be hard to see. The hinges are very small. Everything will be viewed through the wavy glass of the bottle and be difficult to see clearly so there is a lot of leeway regarding visible contrivances on the deck. I have added tops and topmasts of brass. I used 5 minute epoxy to glue the brass together but its not as good as solder. My soldering iron is a big ugly crude affair though and I cant do detail work with it. At this point in the rigging the masts flop around in any direction. 

[JerseyCity Frankie]

Its the fore and aft stays that will be doing the mast pivoting job inside the bottle. The stays will be bent to the the masts high up in the rig and run to the mast or deck in front or to the bowsprit. In some cases the stays will have to run through a fairlead to get to where they are going- from the mizen mast over to the main and then down to the deck for instance, with a fairlead needed on the main to allow the line to make the turn back down to the deck and still be able to run. You could drill through your spars to get this to work, but thats hard at this scale and even a small hole through a spar is going to cause more friction than a wire eye, which is what I am showing being made here. I use some really thin 34 gauge wire and a medium sized sewing needle. Twisted around the shaft of the needle, forming a "neck" of just a few turns and leaving long tails on either end in order to twist the tails around whatever part of the ship the fairlead will be fixed to.

[DSiemens]

The masts look great!  I wouldn't worry to much about the tooth pick holes.  I think people will be so focused on the kraken they'll never think to look.  I'm interested to see how the fairlead works out.  I'm used to drilling holes or using thread.    

[JerseyCity Frankie]

I use acrylic artist paint for EVERYTHING in my life and certainly everything in ship modeling. I painted the hull dark brown ( burnt umber with a bit of ultramarine blue mixed in) and painted the deck a chalky holystoned deck color. A red stripe was painted around the edge as waterway. Not shown, I painted the masts a natural darker varnished wood color and the tops black.

[JerseyCity Frankie]

This next part may appear confusing but bear with me. I’m making the bulwarks out of paper and both sides will be visible. The inboard side will be red with some texture to suggest wooden details and the exterior will eventually get the Nelson checker with buff and black. I paint both sides of a piece of acid-free printer paper in the appropriate colors. The printer paper was purchased at a fancy-ish stationary store and being acid free its unlikely to become brittle as fast as regular paper. I want the model to last as long as possible. Note the black and yellow bumble bee stripes. These will be the Nelson checker by the final step. All that is important at this point is their size and spacing and it will become clear soon.

[JerseyCity Frankie]

White glue is applied to the outer hull right up to the deck edge and on the red face of the paper bulwark and the paper is glued to the hull. In this photo you see the portside bulwarks glued on and in the foreground a selection of Japanese origami paper. This particular bunch of paper has many shades of all sorts of colors and this brand of paper is colored all the way through so if I laminate some of it together with white glue, a cut out shape will be consistently the same color on each facet, a handy attribute. I use a lot of this paper for small details. Cut into long thin strips, I lay in a brown paper pinrail within my bulwarks. This strake glued inside the bulwarks also stiffens the paper and helps it to hold its shape. In the second photo you see a selection of shapes. I always keep my eye out for paper punches of different diameters since little round colored circles can be used for all sorts of things on small ship models. Coils on deck, running lights, all sorts of things.

[JerseyCity Frankie]

The bulwarks are then cut to the proper shear and hatches made of the origami paper are glued onto the deck. On the exterior hull I have the silly looking caterpillar stripes. I cut some pieces of black origami paper, with the proper shear line and when I glue them to the hull at the proper spot they define the lower edge of the Nelson checkers. I literally cap it off with a cap rail, which is made of a black artist paper heavier than the Origami stuff. I could have laminated the origami to get it thicker but I love this paper called Stonehenge, an artist paper. Black all the way through and acid free, it glues on with perfect ease with white glue. I could have simply painted the checkers on but I get a very quick very crisp checker using the paper, and the paper laminations add a great deal of rigidity to the otherwise floppy bulwarks. (I do have a world of caution though. I used this technique on a bottle model with a light grey hull. The oil in the plastecine clay soaked into the paper and turned it very dark. So if the paper will touch the plastecine you should seal it with something. ) A transom is glued on and then cut fair with some small personal grooming scissors which have the perfect camber. Parts of the caprail extend forward serendipitously and become the headrails I didn't even plan on making. Its not a bad little hull for the small amount of effort expended. Looks to me a little like Niagara.

Edited September 12, 2013 by JerseyCity Frankie

[guillemot]

Great stuff!

[ndeconte]

Coming along nicely Frank! I use a lot of acrylic paints also, the squeeze bottle type you can pick up at your local craft stores. I tend to build large items and it's economical to use them.

 

Do you usually seal your baked clay with some sort of solvent based primer or clearcoat? May be beneficial to do, may stop the problem. 

[JerseyCity Frankie]

 Shrouds and Stays: The masts flop around chaotically without anything holding them up so there is some degree of frustration in this step. When the shrouds and stays are tight the masts are rigid and behave themselves. But with JUST the shrouds or JUST the stays they will flop around. This is where the belaying pins on the base come in so handy since you can make one handed adjustments with the line while you hold the mast at the proper angle with the other hand. (As on a real ship, you can belay a line with just three figure eight turns around the top and bottom of a pin) I tie the stays onto the masts first and give them a drop of glue. Then I put the shroud gang on under the caps (each pair of shrouds middled and overhand knotted just under the top and a drop of glue) and leave their ends long. I hold the mast at the proper position and make off the stay on a pin at the base. Please note that the line you cut to make the stays has to be very long in order to reach outside the bottle later. With the stays belayed I move the shrouds, one opposing pair at a time, into their positions against the hull. I pass the ends of the shrouds to opposite sides under the keel to keep them flat against the hull and tape them temporarily in place. Once all is as I could wish it I white glue them onto the hull in one of those instances in which you want a REALLY SECURE GLUE JOB since the shrouds will be out of reach within the bottle when you erect the masts and you DO NOT WANT THEM TO COME FREE when you are tugging on the stays. The stays are going to be the only rigging outside of the bottle and they are opposed only by the shrouds. I put on some paper deadeyes made with a paper punch. A bit out of scale but I can live with them and I like adding any sort of detail I can at this small scale. After the glue has dried I cut off the tails of the shrouds. 

[JerseyCity Frankie]

The stays were bent to the mast, then they pass through holes I drilled right through the deck and are left long outside the hull, about ten inches long. I paint one, two and three white stripes on the bitter end of each lower stay so that I can identify them outside the bottle. When the time comes to erect the masts within the bottle you will spend a lot of time trying to find which exact line to adjust during the process. Paper tags would work but I find the lines get pulled out and re-run a few times during the whole process so the paint works best for me. If I put on the upper stays they will pass through the wire eye fairleads aft of the tops and on the bowsprit. The ones the go through the tops will also pass through holes in the hull.

[JerseyCity Frankie]

With everything dry you can cast off from the building jig and fold the masts over to check for fit in the neck of the bottle. Drop the model right in with confidence since you can pull it back out again via the stays. If its a tight squeeze, sand file or shave off some of the bottom of the hull. In a conventional ship in a bottle, you are making a waterline hull anyway and shaving off the bottom is no big deal. Another conventional ship in a bottle practice is to attache the yards and have them stay with the masts through the insertion and erection inside the bottle. I have done this in the past but the yards add a TREMENDOUS amount of bulk and complexity and you have to finagle them back out of their inevitable cockbilled disposition once the masts are up.  I am opting to attach the yards AFTER the ship is in and the masts are up and glue them on one at a time.

[JerseyCity Frankie]

The ship building and preparing will reach a point where I will need to start using the bottle in the planning and prep. I will need this round bottle to be stable so I should at this point build the base for the bottle and I may as well build the base I intend to display the model in rather than make a temporary jig that would be discarded later. A square bottle is nice since it will sit on the workbench but this one has the word "KRAKEN" embossed on it and two nice loops (presumably so that it may better be grasped with tentacles) so I want it to sit exactly at the right position. I need two brackets to conform to the profile of the bottle so I trace the bottle onto the timber I want to use and cut out the arcs. I learned the trick of finessing the cut to fit the bottle by wrapping some sandpaper around the bottle and sanding into the rough cut to make a nice fit even nicer.

[rwiederrich]

Fine job for sure Frankie.  I never have built a ship in a bottle before...I even have a kit.  I know it takes some engineering to lay everything down and then pull it all back up once in......still pretty nifty stuff.

 

Watching with anticipation.

 

Rob

[JerseyCity Frankie]

Thanks Rob! Its not as hard as I had imagined it would be but there is still plenty of frustration involved at times. I recommend you or anyone else even remotely interested give it a try. Schooners are pretty easy actually.

[guillemot]

I have the bottles.... One problem these days seems to be that bottle necks are, I think, narrower? The addition of those plastic pourer jobbies hasn't helped I imagine.

[JerseyCity Frankie]

Your right Guillemot, the neck of the bottle is a huge factor.  I have seen some antique bottle models inside bottles with very long narrow necks in the collection of the South Street Seaport Museum in New York though. I avoid that if I can. And I do always keep my eyes open looking for new bottles.

[SpencerC]

Any progress lately?

[JerseyCity Frankie]

Thinking ahead to getting the creature AND the ship into the bottle and letting them exist in there when I seal it up at the end. I realized the ship and the creatures arms are an inch above the surface of the sea and I started to worry about the high center of gravity. All my other ships in bottles are seated IN the clay, not hovering above it, so I never gave much thought to keeping those other ships from rolling over onto their sides. But I can imagine a hot day in the summer and the clay softening and the ship slowly toppling over onto its side within the bottle. So before I put in the clay "sea" I determined to put in a foundation. I cut piece of brass strip and soldered a brass pin into it. Onto this brass pin I will glue the creatures body and with the brass strip under the clay "Sea" I hope I will have provided enough support for the ship and the Kraken arms raised aloft.

[JerseyCity Frankie]

I use plastecine to make the water. I put some effort into the color of the clay before I put it all in the bottle. You can buy "blue" plastecine clay but its a sort of neon blue color, far too bright and garish. I tone the color down by mixing in a little bit of red and a lot of green and grey and even a little black. I kneed the clay to mix the colors and then I roll them into "snakes" which are about the same length as the inside flat surface of the bottle.

[JerseyCity Frankie]

I put the brass foundation with its pin through the neck of the bottle and then I pile up the plastecine snakes inside. I no longer try to press the clay down smooth, instead I heat an oven to some point near 100 degrees and then turn it off. I put the bottle in there and HOPE I don't hear the glass shatter due to temperature change. The hot oven melts the plastecine into a liquid and when I see the transformation has taken place I open the oven door and wait a long while to allow everything to cool down and solidify. The finished sea is flat with just the brass pin sticking out in the spot where I want to have the Kraken.

[DSiemens]

I've melted Plasticine for my last two builds and it works out great.  I like how you lay the clay snakes over each other the blending of colors will look awesome I'm sure.  I may try that on a future build  

 

I actually found two methods of melting.  First in the oven though I put the bottle in as it's heating up since I think the slower rise in temperature will prevent the bottle from breaking.  So far so good.    

 

The other method I've used it holding the bottle over a hot burner to melt the Plasticine.  I did this because I had laminated a card with the ship name my name and date and wanted to display it under the clay.  I wasn't sure what the oven heat would do to the laminated card to I used a burner for more control.  Actually worked really well just make sure to have oven mitts handy.