Sea Installer by Javelin - FINISHED - 1/2000 - BOTTLE

[Javelin]

An old idea of mine was to put a Ship in a bottle, but I didn't (and still don't really) have any idea about old rigged sailing ships. 

So the idea was to put a modern vessel in a bottle, however due to their generally large lengths and slender shapes, they would become so narrow and low that they'd fit through the neck of a bottle without any manipulation. 

 

Recently however I found a vessel with acceptable measurements and a good challenge to put in a bottle. During research I never quite found a good guide around the net, but recently I discovered this board and Glenn McGuire's (as well as IgorSky and others') build logs. Their ideas gave me the right input to start my first own SIB. So here it comes. 

 

As the title says, the ship is the Sea Installer from the DEME company. She is a jack-up wind installation vessel used for installing foundations on the seabed, mounting transition pieces on top of installed foundations as well as complete windmills on top of those transition pieces. She is one of the rare versions of these vessels that jacks herself up on cylindrical legs (= like ship's masts) rather than lattice legs, which makes her suitable. 

 

 

 

Following Glenn's builds my idea was now to put a seafloor of acrylic gel mixed with sand on the bottom to have a solid floor. Then I'd install the vessel on her legs and pour transparent epoxy to simulate the water layer. 

 

I was warned by Glenn's posts about the extremely slow drying times inside bottles, so I tried several things to solve this issue. Since the acrylic-sand-water mix is basically hardening by evaporating the water, I put it on one of my central heating heaters and when droplets started forming on top, I inserted a styrene tube and blew with my airbrush compressor through that tube. This way you insert relatively dry air inside the end of the bottle and the moist air is pushed out through the neck, around the tube. Once the droplets were gone again, I stopped and let it sit untill droplets formed again. Here is a picture of that process. The small diameter tube is inside. 

 

 

Since I never tried anything like this before, I decided to invest in a full size prototype to trial the engineering behind my build. 

 

This gave me an idea of the size I'd be dealing with and the issues I might have. Here she is standing next to the original leg design (based on the hinging mechanism for sailing ships I picked up over here. The idea was to hide the hinge by pulling the hull over them. Although I had a tight fit around those hinges, I was affraid the leg would drop out while inserting it into the bottle or pushing the hull unevenly over the four legs with no room for correction inside the bottle. 

 

So I decided to make a reduction in diameter around the hinge with smaller holes in the hull. This way the leg would not be able to fall down during inserting, and the hull would not be pushed to deep on any of the legs, since it would rest on the larger diameter lower section. 

 

Edited November 24, 2023 by Javelin
Title fix

[Knocklouder]

Whoa, this is going to be cool to see. And yes keep Mr. McGuire close he's one of the best, among many that are here. So good luck  on your journey     

[Glen McGuire]

What a fascinating idea!  I am on board to watch how this concept comes to life.

[Javelin]

Since this build was already started before I started posting here, here's another update to get you up to speed. 

 

Due to a lot of uncertainty on epoxy (never used it, but was always curious about it), I also made a prototype bottle. I put a small styrene rod, which was actually a windmill foundation that was too short, as well as some copper wires of 0.1mm and 0.3mm diameter in it. The wires aren't for this project but perhaps for future reference, so how the bottle and epoxy would distort the view of such wires. 

I'll probably add something floating as well, just to see how that works. 

I'm also not sure whether the sand-acrylic would mix well with epoxy, perhaps create bubbles due to its own structure, so that will be tested before I sacrifice my big bottle... 

 

Then of course it was time to start the real ship. She'd be too wide for the neck, so she'll be split it 2. Additionally I didn't want to split the bridge, and even if I did, with the offset helicopter platform, she'd probably still be too wide. The idea is to actually put it in with the helicopter deck to the end or fore part of the bottle and then rotate it 90° inside the bottle to mount it. 
This way it will also cover part of the seam between the halves. Additionally I'll be putting some deck cargo on it to cover as much as I can of the seam. 

 

I saw the wedge shaped fore and aft on a build over here I believe, and I figured it would be useful to make the bulbous bow easier as well as the longitudinal positioning of the two hull halves. 

[Glen McGuire]

Looking good so far!  How long did it take your acrylic gel/sand seafloor to dry with your very clever air flow setup?

[Javelin]

Hi Glen, 

 

well it's difficult to say. My first layer was very thick, up to about 1cm in height I think. I also added too much water, around 25% I estimate, which meant the water layered above the sand-acrylic mixture in the end. I didn't really think of tools before I started this, so I made it liquid to make everything flow smooth by itself, so I'd have a flat bottom. It didn't really work out that way. However, that took around 1 week, of which the first 3 days were without the "clever method", then I started thinking about that solution. 

 

Because that first layer was so liquid, or at least had liquid at the top, and me making the mistake of handling the bottle, some smudges occurred on the edges of the sand layer. The acrylic stayed there. I was rather convinced I'd be able to scrape it off as I sometimes tear off complete layers of acrylic when I don't like the result. In this case of course I couldn't scrape it off, so I added additional layers. 

 

Here is an additional layer being applied. Learning from my mistakes, I made it a lot less liquid, and made a few handy tools to spread it along the way. This layer applied about 2mm thick took around 1 day to become hard and I'd guess around 2 days to fully dry, blowing the bottle around 3 times a day with air.

 

 

I do recommend not to put full air flow inside when things are still liquid. It'll probably blow stuff around, so in the future I'd start with very low flow/velocity and only apply full flow when things are hardened. 

 

The funny thing is that I could follow the drying process quite clearly since the sand goes from dark/wet to light/original colour/dry. 

Edited February 10, 2023 by Javelin

[Glen McGuire]

3 hours ago, Javelin said:

made a few handy tools to spread it along the way

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?

[Javelin]

Hi Glen, 

 

You got that right. I made a sketch especially for you, as I normally don't really make any drawings of what I have in mind (so later I can't say it doesn't look anything like what I had in mind in the beginning 😁).

Since I didn't feel like making some of its normal deck equipment, like the blade holding rack, I decided to picture her with a deck cargo of Transition Pieces (like big yellow mushrooms), which will also help to cover the seam between the two hull halves. 

Then of course the idea grew further to add a foundation, that's the dark object between the legs of the ship. It'll double as a good level indication while pouring the epoxy. I'll first "glue" it, as well as the ship, to the bottom with some acrylic gel or acrylic-sand mixture. For the vessel this will make sure that all 4 legs rest on the bottom, while it will also make sure the vessel doesn't start floating and topple over. It's quite a top heavy structure, which isn't a problem as long as the four legs are resting on something, but I'm afraid it might fall over in the epoxy. 

Another issue is that I won't be able to apply waves with acrylic on top of the epoxy layer, I'd have to work between the legs to get behind etc. so that wouldn't be feasible. On the other side, in 1/2000 scale, waves would be tiny after all... 

 

Here a very early shot of the prototype in a cut-off test bottle. I used a wine bottle, which wasn't a good choice, since the long, slender neck presented some issues, which, in the real bottle, weren't an issue. It did give some valuable info on the leg construction and assembly sequence inside a bottle. 

 

And the tools I've developed up till now. I also use a small 0.8mm brass rod with a 90° angle at the end, much like your tools. 

The lowest tool in the picture was the first one, where I discovered a few things, which then developed into the styrene tool right above it. That is my most handy tool together with the long tweezers. 

 

One of my main issues for now is that I can't really think of a surrounding for that bottle. I love your Kraken as well as the treasure chest etc. on your builds, but can't really think of a theme decoration for the stand of this one. Was thinking of a wind turbine nacelle, but can't really put huge blades around the neck of the bottle 🤪

 

[Glen McGuire]

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!

[Javelin]

Hi Glen, 

 

I was saying somewhat the opposite, that the nacelle idea would be difficult due to the blades, but given your comment, I actuall thought about it again. A small tower on the bottom would indeed be a nice stand for the bottle, while the tip could actually be a nacelle without the blades. This vessel builds the towers, puts the nacelles on top and then inserts the blades into the nacelle, so an unfinished windmill is a possibility. If I'd leave the blades out and leave 3 large holes, it would allow more light to enter the front of the bottle and give some visibility to the bottleneck, which would otherwise be nearly invisible... I'll have to draw it out. 

It would take a long time to build that hub though, not sure if I want to invest this much time in it. I don't really have much of a connection to the vessel and I'm having trouble considering it a real project. It remains a prototype in my mind for the time being. 

Now on to the vessel itself. I continued the hull, losing quite some time with a nasty seam in the middle. Again I was in doubt whether to give it a better finish or leave it as it was, about 0.5mm in between the hull halves. I decided to try to fill it and give it a better fit. 

It'll always be visible of course, but I'll try to hide it with deck equipment and a lot of it is already covered by the accommodation block as well. 

As you can see in these pictures, the hinges, which will be retracted into the hull, are made invisible by these blocks around the legs (where I assume the jacking mechanism is located). 

 

She has a very unusual triple Voight Schneider propulsion, which is something normally used by tugboats. This propulsion is basically a modern paddle wheel, with the blades standing upright and rotating. The angle of the blades varies during the rotation, creating a forward motion. I made the base for this propulsion in form of 3 circular plates at the bottom, but decided to wait with the tiny blades until the last moment before bottling, since they will be too fragile to handle during the build.  

In the back you see the three propulsion circles, the central one was also the reason for splitting this hull this way. The bow seam I solved (after several attempts) by covering one half of the bow with vaseline, while applying Milliput epoxy filler to the other half. This way I got a good fit and the filler would stick only to one half of the hull. The back was eventually done in the same way. You will also see that on the top deck, the split is straight in the back. This allows me to align the hulls easier inside the bottle. 

[Javelin]

Next step was to measure the inside of the bottle, to see how much height I'd have to raise that crane. The inside of the bottle is conical, so I have more height towards the neck than towards the bottom of the bottle. 

On the model itself I painted the legs in the "new" color as if the ship were brand new, but I'll try to weather them with rust as the really are. 

The banded appearance I achieved by stacking small disks on top of each other, some 0.3mm thick, were painted red around the edge, while the others, 0.5mm thick, were painted white. I didn't really see another way to consistently paint such fine stripes, yet they were very important for a realistic impression of the vessel. I then clipped the legs in height to compensate for this stack of disks. 

 

Then it was time for the crane. I know from the start it would be difficult without making my own PE. I decided on a "solid" version as you see in some 1/700 kits. I'd also have to handle it inside the bottle, so it should be quite sturdy. 

I used a styrene base with 0.3mm steel wire on the corners and 0.1mm copper wire (from dismantled electronics wires). Copper wire cuts easily at length, which is something impossible with the very strong 0.3mm steel wire. 

 

I then raised the crane, using the measuring stick from the bottle for a good height. I did leave some open space, as I have to bend the legs and lower the hull over the hinges. Also the sandy bottom is not entirely flat. 

 

It still needs some more paint and rigging, but I think it will do. 

[Glen McGuire]

Looks fantastic!  What did use for the lattice on the boom?  Is that the 0.1mm copper wire?

[Keith Black]

 I'm a bit late to the party but I managed to get a seat. Interesting subject, Javelin. Its tasking shape nicely. 

[Javelin]

Thanks for joining in and all the likes up till now. 

 

Yes Glen, the lattice is the 0.1mm copper wire. I made a small jig of a plate (cutting board) and a small beam on top. I'd put the long length of wire with one end against the beam and then cut to length. Later on I'd keep doing that, using the first cut as a length measure. This way I had a more or less consistent length for a lot of these small parts. 

 

For the "hub cap" I made a drawing of what I'm toying with. 

The more I look at it, the more the top idea is losing out. The blunt cap is perhaps even more frequently used at sea, but still I do believe it is more abstract and would be more difficult for people to figure out what it is. 

The sharp cone at the bottom would be nicer, but more work to build. I'm also not sure on its position, close to the bottle gives a more faired and realistic view, while further forward (like the blunt cap idea) gives the better view of the neck. I also drew the holes for the blades that would allow light to enter and give visibility to the bottleneck. Let me know what you guys think.

 

[Glen McGuire]

2 hours ago, Javelin said:

The sharp cone at the bottom would be nicer, but more work to build. I'm also not sure on its position, close to the bottle gives a more faired and realistic view, while further forward (like the blunt cap idea) gives the better view of the neck. I also drew the holes for the blades that would allow light to enter and give visibility to the bottleneck. Let me know what you guys think.

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!

[Javelin]

Thanks for the input Glen. As you could have guessed the last post was the point where I was. 

Now I'll continue the build. The target for now is getting that ship ready to bottle and assemble it inside the bottle. Everything else, the epoxy, the bottle dressing itself, is a plus and considered optional. 

I've continued with some tiny platforms and the rescue boat as well as some painting. I've ordered some fly fishing binding wire (thanks again Glen!) for rigging of the crane. Since I don't have any experience with such wires, I've ordered several types and sizes to see what works. 

The wire should arrive in a couple of days. In the meanwhile I'll continue with the deck outfitting and further painting. Need to hide that ugly seam as much as I can. 

 

Currently also figuring out how to get windows on that superstructure. Without them, it would be bland, but getting them on in a decent size is going to be a challenge... 

[Glen McGuire]

3 hours ago, Javelin said:

Currently also figuring out how to get windows on that superstructure.

What about pieces of glitter?  Would they be too big?  They would give the windows a bit of a shiny effect sort of like a glass reflection (maybe).  

[Javelin]

Hi Glen, 

 

not sure what you had in mind. I do believe it would be too large as well, or at least difficult to cut to shape. For now I settled on marking it with a very fine tip marker. Only later on I figured out I should have used masking tape to keep at least straight lines on top and bottom. I tested that, and it worked, but it was difficult to keep the lines horizontal and not angled one way or the other... 

I had this solution in mind, but it's not my favorite as it's only waterproof when applied on an absorbent surface (paper). I currently touched some of the windows and left some smudges on the white afterwards... 

Not all windows are on yet, but looks good enough for now. I'll see on the next build if I find any better solutions. 

 

Also continued on deck with the equipment. Lucky for me that equipment is off-centered, so it can be used to hide the seam! Forward part will be largely filled with lots of containers in different colours. 

Proceeded on the deck cargo as well. Decided to dress her up once more to see how she looks. Eventually she has to be easy to assemble as I'll have to do it in the bottle after all... I'm testing to see if the deck cargo can stay in place with the legs in bent position to pass through the neck, that way I could avoid mounting the yellow mushrooms (Transition Pieces) in the green circles inside the bottle (which for sure is going to result in them toppling over etc.). 

 

Next to the bottle you can see a cardboard template for a possible base for the bottle, resembling the wind mill tower. I noticed the bottle is very heavy at the back, so I'd have to mount it in a weird after position. I'll see where this goes. I'm fairly happy with the dimensions and angle of this mock-up. 

 

[Glen McGuire]

39 minutes ago, Javelin said:

not sure what you had in mind. I do believe it would be too large as well, or at least difficult

Now that I see where you put the windows, I agree.  I think you did a good job!!

[Javelin]

Made some serious progress, almost time for putting in the bottle I think. 

Time for some test fitting. Luckily the deck cargo, the transition pieces, can stay on deck, so I can glue them before inserting the ship in the bottle. 

 

Although initial tests with my prototype bridge seemed ok, I made another test of the actual bridge, with the helicopter pad and mast in place, to see if it would really fit. Seems to be ok for now. Still some work to do on that helo pad and crane boom rest. 

 

For the larger grills I did use masking tape to paint them on. Since I can't cut the masking time consistently in this small size, I decided to make a large opening and seperate tiny strips to separate the grills. 

 

 

And some more small platforms in the making. Basically I use 0.1mm copper wire, bend them to shape, cut them to size and glue them to the platforms. Luckily those platforms can then be glued to a larger structure rather than resting on 4 of these tiny legs. 

 

[Javelin]

Lots of progress now. At this point I'd say we're at 99% of the model itself. 

- Gave her the auxiliary cranes on each leg and around the deck (you don't want to move a pallet with that big crane)

- Dressed her up with her deck cargo of transition pieces, since they'll pass the bottleneck

- Gave her additional containers all around as these vessels carry around a lot of stuff. Still considering if I'll add some reels as well. All in all I'm already happy with the seam camouflage 😁

 

- Almost completed the accomodation, crane jib rest, helo deck etc. 

 

Some small paint jobs remaining. 

 

- Crane was rigged with Uni Caenis thread. I also bought Uni 8/0 as well as Veevus 16/0, but the Caenis is clearly the thinnest. Surprisingly the Uni 8/0 appears thinner than the Veevus, although the Veevus is claimed to be smaller (or I'm just cross eyed, which is possible after this rigging job). 

 

 

She's of course a lot smaller in reality than on these pics. 

I've also ordered some glass etching cream and intend to etch the company logo on the bottle. (yes stole that idea from a pirate ship on this forum somewhere as well). Of course I'll first test that on a test bottle. 

[Javelin]

So I did get my etching cream already, so I did a test. Went nicely, now we have a DEME pot of carrots. 

Unfortunately, the actual etch went wrong (somewhat). You can see the mask on the bottle in following picture. However, it didn't want to straighten out, which, with a mask from the same material, it did perfectly with the pot of carrots. I believe the bottle isn't as smooth or straight as it's supposed to be. So the mask in the picture was discarded, since I didn't want to take any risk. I made another one, stuck it to the bottle with more success, it still wrinkles, but they were located outwards of the logo. During etching however, one of those wrinkles spread out towards the logo, my conclusion is that the vinyl I used, is probably to stiff for this application. If it would have been more flexible, it wouldn't have straightened during etching... All in all there was only a small bleed and since it's in the back of the bottle, I'll proceed. 

Next thing is putting the ship in the bottle. 

 

Be warned, etching stuff is kind of addictive, I want to etch all kinds of stuff on glass now 🤪

[Javelin]

Time for the last preparations for bottling. 

I did a test with the hull parts to see if my sequence was feasible without too many damages to my detailed model. I used my opened-up test bottle for that. I had some issues with the dangly legs, they'd tangle a lot and weren't sliding in their sleeves too well. I made some adjustment to those parts of the legs with a file for easier deployment. 

 

 

Next up were the Voight Schneider propellers. Basically horizontal paddle wheels. This ship has 3 of them. I used some fine Evergreen strip, cut up and glued to a 1mm central hub/disk. 

The brown part on the masking tape is the central disk, the small strips were cut to size after lining up on masking tape. 

 

Here is one of the VS props assembled. When the glue was dry, I pried it off the tape by simply inserting my tweezers under the tip, this lifted the edges of the prop free and I insert my knife tip underneath to pry it loose without damage. 

I made the separately because I was affraid of handling the model if I were to glue the strips separately on the model. Once they were assembled, I glued them on the disks that were inserted in the hull at the start of construction. 

 

 

Time for bottling, epoxy testing and developing that hub for the bottle (yes, I did decide to give it a try). 

 

One question for @Glen McGuire, do you reuse your hose and funnel for pouring the epoxy, or do you use a new one each time? 

 

[Glen McGuire]

Those tiny propellers are amazing!  Nice work.  Almost time for the exciting moment of truth!  Good luck with the bottling process!!

 

To your question - yes, I have reused the hose and funnel several times.  As soon as I'm done pouring the epoxy resin, I take a can of brake cleaner and liberally spray the inside of the hose and funnel.  After that treatment they are good to go again!    

[Javelin]

Thanks Glen, good to know about the brake cleaner. 

 

So, attempt 1 (you know what that means...) 

First part in the bottle (still yay)

 

Second part attached to first part pretty well, resulting in leg-spaghetti though... No stress though, insert my "spoon" tool underneath and deploy legs by using a small 0.8mm hook made of wire. 

 

As you can see in the bottom of the picture, one leg detached. The pin flew out of the hinge, I assume by filing the legs a bit thinner in that part, I probably took off the glue with which it was glued inside... Well, we'll fix that right? Right? Let's continue and fix it later with the long tweezers.

 

That's where the second leg came off. I tried to push down the hull with 3 legs deployed, but somehow the aft one got blocked. After several attempts, the leg detached. I assume the blocking was on a partly detached pin, since there is nearly no clearance between the leg and the "sleeve" in the hull. 

 

Luckily I had the presence of mind to take out the crane and split the hull again by putting the tweezer tip between the leg casings forward and aft and pushing it open. The glue hadn't set (that's exactly why I didn't use CA, but using the normal plastic glue instead). I could take out both parts of the hull with only minor damage (one small detail came off, but I could still use it. 

 

Conclusion of the ordeal:

A. Those pins are a problem

B. Those pins are a problem

C. Tweezers are ok, but if your ship is not centered in front of the bottleneck, they are much less useful. Under some angles, they block and you cannot open them. You can also rotate, but not move up or down anymore under certain angles. "Fixing" that one leg when it came off, would probably have been a very difficult task if those 3 other legs had deployed properly. 

D. Whatever sequence I use in the future, I will try to fix the ship in place as soon as possible before continuing any additional construction. Working with 2 tools through the neck is possible, but difficult nonetheless.  

E. Whenever things go wrong, try to get back to start, don't push ahead

 

[Keith Black]

 This is the exact reason I'll never attempt SIB's because I know full well what the outcome would have been had this been I......'broken bottle isle nine, cleanup, isle nine" 

 

 Javelin, I'm rooting for your success because it's a neat little model and a unique idea. 

[Knocklouder]

I'm in the rooting section  as well, I know what it is like to try and move things in the bottle. We are behind you buddy, great work. 

[Glen McGuire]

Oh man, been there done that!  Very nice save on your part to get the hull pieces separated and back out of the bottle.  Sounds like you have a good plan for round 2 by fixing the ship in place before additional construction.  I am anxious to hear how it goes.  Like Bob above, I am also in the rooting section!

[Auger]

Insane patients brother. 
keep going…

[mtaylor]

I'm with the fans in the stands and rooting for you also.