Flying Dutchman / Black Pearl by Glen McGuire - 1/700 - Bottle

[Glen McGuire]

If you have been following my Constitution build log, thank you for taking a detour over to this one.  If you are just tuning in to this one, thank you for being a part of it.

My short attention span and ever-dwindling brain cells do not usually allow for simultaneous projects.  But I had to put Connie on a brief hold while I wait for delivery of some parts that I ordered.  So I figured I’d get started on another bottle project I’ve been mulling over for the past couple of months.  

When I was working on my Kraken SIB, @O.B.one made a reference to one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  So I did some digging on the movie series and came a cross an image that caught my eye and has been sitting in the back of my mind ever since.  It’s a scene from the third installment of the franchise, At World’s End.  Calypso summons a maelstrom and the Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman do battle on opposites sides of the whirlpool.  Here’s the pic:

 

 

 

Last month, I was wandering through the woods of my ranch, trying to find an ornery steer, and I spotted an interesting branch sticking out of the base of a cedar tree.  The branch had a sharp curve and grain that swirled around.  It reminded me of a whirlpool.  Then the lightbulb flickered in my head and I thought the branch might make the perfect backdrop for a project – recreate the scene from At World’s End with the Black Pearl, Flying Dutchman, and a whirlpool inside the bottle.   Here’s the piece of wood.  It was dead but had weirdly grown upward from the base, made a u-turn, and dove back into the ground.  Never seen anything quite like it.

 

 

 

To have room for all the action going on inside the bottle, I needed a bottle that was more wide than long.  A Paul Masson bottle of brandy had the perfect shape and it fit almost naturally into the piece of wood. 

 

 

The last bit of planning was finding good images of each ship to fashion my build after.  I decided to take on the Flying Dutchman first and use this pic as a basic guide.  I certainly won’t be able to match all the wonderful imagery and eerie ornamentation at my scale, but will do my best to give a good impression of it.

 

 

The biggest challenge I think will be figuring out how to make a realistic looking whirlpool inside the bottle.  Not sure how I'm gonna do that, but I'll build the ships first and give myself time to figure that out.

     
I will likely be bouncing back and forth between this project and the Constitution.  Hopefully I don’t get confused and try to put some of those humongous Connie parts inside the bottle here!
 

Edited 7 hours ago by Glen McGuire

[BANYAN]

Great project idea Glen.  Now I fully expect to see the motley crew, especially Jack Sparrow, as part of this one

 

Look forward to seeing this one develop.

 

cheers

 

Pat