Queen Anne's Revenge with Greek Fire by Glen McGuire - 1/400 - BOTTLE

[KennyH78]

Truely amazing work, Glen!  This has me wanting to attempt a SIB build although I probably won't be able to achieve anything is spectacular as your build.

[Knocklouder]

Yes , Very amazing  work Glen, just awesome   

Bob .M

[Keith Black]

1 hour ago, Glen McGuire said:

But it wasn't quite finished.

 I guess it wasn't quite finished..WOW! 

[Ian_Grant]

She looks fabulous, Glen!

[BANYAN]

A tribute to your patience and 'left-of-field' solutions Glen, quite the outcome you have achieved.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Glen McGuire]

23 hours ago, KennyH78 said:

Truely amazing work, Glen!  This has me wanting to attempt a SIB build

Thanks, Kenny!  If you want to try an SIB, you might consider Amati's Hannah SIB kit.  It's how I got started making SIBs 4 years ago.  @Landlubber Mike has a great build log for the kit, which helped me tremendously.

[SaltyScot]

Meticulous intricacy.......... AND a bucket full of patience. Fantastic work there, Glen, really. Your eye for detail is certainly inspiring. What you did with the bamboo strakes from that fan was mind boggling sir!

[Glen McGuire]

Crazy weekend in the shipyard.  It started out nice and calm with making a grate for the ship's deck.  For the grate I cut a small piece of a window screen, painted it, then glued it to a piece of black paper for depth.  It is certainly out of scale, but I think it gives the right impression. 

 

 

 

After that, it was time to start on the rigging.  First, the upper shrouds. 

 

 

 

Then the backstays.  And that's where things got crazy.  As you can see in the pic below, there's a mess going on with the mizzen mast (I think @Keith Black would call it a dog's lunch).  I channeled my inner @Knocklouder and somehow broke off the mizzen mast while handling the ship.  I know Bob specializes in doing that to bowsprits, so I thought I'd one-up him.      

 

 

 

After fixing the break, I somehow managed to do it again!!  🤬🤬🤬     So this time, I decided to replace the hinge completely and splice the mast above the hinge.  I did NOT want to have to rebuild and paint the entire mast.  I also reinforced the splice with a stiff piece of music wire as a dowel.

 

 

 

Here's how the mizzen mast looks after a few hours of friendly-fire rework.

 

 

 

And with the stern structure dry-fit in place.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited Monday at 03:14 PM by Glen McGuire

[Coyote_6]

Glen!  The window screen grate is inspired!!  Wow.   And amazing work - end result was worth the troubles.

[Keith Black]

 Upon hearing the mizzen was saved, everyone starts to happy dance. 

 

 

Edited Monday at 04:15 PM by Keith Black

[BANYAN]

Glen, looks good and the grate certainly gives the right impression.  

@Keith Black where do you find those pics - love it. If you can, can  then ...

[Ian_Grant]

22 hours ago, Keith Black said:

 Upon hearing the mizzen was saved, everyone starts to happy dance. 

...even as far away as the Galapagos...........

[Canute]

Wow, 2 blue foot boobies!

[Ian_Grant]

4 minutes ago, Canute said:

Wow, 2 blue foot boobies!

Yes, they were one of my favourite species during our Galapagos tour. We were walking on the designated path on an island where they breed and females were sitting on eggs on the ground everywhere, even sometimes in the middle of the path where we had to tiptoe around them.

 

Plus they were busy doing their mating ritual which involves showing off their blue feet.

[Canute]

Fascinating animals out there. Got a high speed tour one weekend, way back when. The giant tortoises were very cool, as were the marine iguanas.

[SaltyScot]

You have the patience of a saint, Glen. Nice save. If that had happened to me (twice) I would be replacing a window about now.

[Glen McGuire]

My build logs are never complete without penguins and boobies!  

 

With the shrouds hung, next up are the ratlines.  Soooooo much easier and quicker than real ratlines on a full-size ship model.  I have not discovered a better technique than fly tying thread and fabric glue so I continue to stick with it.  First I cut the fly tying thread into random pieces ranging in length from 1/4" to 3/8".  Then I grab each one with my finest point tweezers, drag it thru fabric glue, and place it across the shrouds.  Rinse and repeat all the way up each set of shrouds.  After the glue dries, I snip off the overhanging ends with cuticle trimmers.  What takes a couple of weeks for regular ship models takes only a few hours here.

  

 

 

 

I do have one small variation in the process for this particular ship - another challenge caused by the high-rising stern structure.  The channels for the mizzen lower shrouds attach near the top of the stern structure.  Because the stern structure will be added after the ship is in the bottle, I cannot secure the channels yet.  So they will dangle loosely and I will have to attach them to the stern structure inside the bottle.  I'm not exactly sure how (or if) I can pull that off, but I'll worry about it later.

 

To add the ratlines to the dangling shrouds, I looped a thread around the middle shroud and weighted it with a small clamp.  That provided enough tension to get the ratlines in place.

  

 

 

 

Here's how she looks before getting her whiskers trimmed.

 

 

 

While waiting for the glue to dry, I went ahead and made the yards.  I use a cow hitch knot around the center of each yard to secure it to the mast.  The cow hitch allows the yard to be twisted around in different directions.  This is necessary when I lay the masts down and wad everything up to get it in the bottle.

  

 

 

 

The Revenge also has a sprit topmast which I've never had to deal with before.  Of course with the angle of the bowsprit and the height of the little mast, it won't fit thru the bottle opening.  Sigh.  One more thing to add after the ship is in the bottle.  To help facilitate the installation, I figured I'd drill a small hole in the end of the bowsprit and have a small wire protruding from the bottom of the sprit topmast.  The only problem was that my thinnest music wire and thinnest brass wire was too thick.  Hmmmm...walk around garage and house looking for ideas...hmmmm...AHA!  The high G string on my 5-string banjo looked very thin!  I clipped off a small piece from the end that wound around the tuning key and measured it.  A tenth of a millimeter.  Perfect!!  So I drilled a tiny hole into the end of the mast, inserted the wire and bent to the correct angle.  

 

 

The sprit top mast and yard fit nicely.  Now I just have to be able to do it inside the bottle!

  

 

Edited Thursday at 11:04 PM by Glen McGuire

[Keith Black]

Oh my, Glen. This is gonna take hours of open bottle surgery. 

[Glen McGuire]

2 hours ago, Keith Black said:

Oh my, Glen. This is gonna take hours of open bottle surgery. 

I'm afraid you are right, Keith.  This hole I've been digging for myself keeps getting deeper!  😛

[KennyH78]

But the model looks great!  Looking at your past builds, I am confident that you will be able to pull it off.