Columbia 1835 by Glen McGuire - 1/400 - BOTTLE - Steam Packet

[Glen McGuire]

13 minutes ago, Paul Le Wol said:

I couldn’t find if you mentioned it but what did you use for the lettering on the wheel covers?

What, you don't think I free-handed that lettering?  LOL.  I laser printed them on paper and mod-podged the paper to the wheel cover.  The letters for "STEAM PACKET" are font 4 which is .06" tall.  The "COLUMBIA" letters are font 5.

[Paul Le Wol]

Hahaha! They look so good.

[Glen McGuire]

4 hours ago, BANYAN said:

you never know what those pesky penguins are planning.

NOOOOO!!  DO NOT wake up the penguins from their winter nap!!  

[SaltyScot]

Wow, that was some intricate work, Glen and you pulled it off with alacrity, sir  It is actually quite exciting seeing this come together.

[Glen McGuire]

On 1/27/2026 at 3:05 PM, SaltyScot said:

that was some intricate work, Glen and you pulled it off with alacrity

Thanks, Mark.  I've been thinking about asking @Keith Black if I could subcontract some of that intricate work to him since he is doing some amazing small-scale stuff on his riverboat collection.  I think he's a closet SIB builder!

 

For this build there's one thing that's certain - it will require some (or maybe a lot of) assembly that must be done inside the bottle, starting with the funnel and main cabin structure.  The main cabin structure will straddle the split in the hull but not be as wide as the deck.  I see people in the painting standing between the windows of the main cabin and the bulwark, so I know there's a walkway.  Their looks to be a deck on top of the main cabin (again, more people walking around in the painting) and the funnel appears to go straight thru that deck.

 

So to pull that off, once the hull is in the bottle I will install the main cabin structure first and then install the funnel into it.  The funnel has guy wires which are a distinctive look that I don't want to omit.  I don't think I could add them inside the bottle.  The only thing I could think of is to cut out a small portion of the main cabin deck and add it to the funnel now, along with the guy wires, and add that subassembly to the rest of the main cabin deck inside the bottle.  That probably makes no sense.  Hopefully the pictures below help!

 

Here are the pieces.  From left to right - Artwox decking sheet, toothpick for funnel guide pin, deck cutout for the funnel, brass funnel (it's brass despite its appearance in the pic), guy wire (.015" music wire), and the main cabin structure.  

 

 

 

 

Here's the funnel subassembly with guy wires, vent pipe, and guide pin dowel.  The main cabin structure has the windows added.  The windows added a complication that I did not think about beforehand.  Below the funnel, the deck cutout would split the windows horizontally.  So I added the side pieces which make a nice slot for the funnel/deck cutout to fit into.  

 

 

Here's how the main cabin structure looks with the funnel in place.

 

 

Here's how everything looks dry fit:

 

        

 

       

Edited Thursday at 04:09 PM by Glen McGuire

[Knocklouder]

Fantastic work  Glen, don't worry about the Penguins,  they have all gone home to the Artic, where it is warmer, lol.

 

Knocklouder 😁 

[Keith Black]

1 hour ago, Glen McGuire said:

I think he's a closet SIB builder!

 And he ain't comin' out! 

 

 That's nice work, Glen. 

[BANYAN]

Nice work yet again Glen.  I will be most interested to see how you get that funnel into the bottle (and don't tell me its 'magic' .

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Glen McGuire]

38 minutes ago, BANYAN said:

I will be most interested to see how you get that funnel into the bottle (and don't tell me its 'magic' .

The funnel will fit quite easily into the bottle.  Now getting it in place on that main cabin deck?  I'm borrowing an empty swear jar from @Knocklouder for that exercise!

[Javelin]

Pretty sure you've tackled worse challenges.... I remember watching the movies of you other famous PIB (paddlewheeler in bottle). 

 

The only other way to solve this issue that I can think of, would be to drill a hole in the funnel, connect the stays to the ship, insert the ship with long rope ends staying outside of the bottle. Then slide the funnel over the ropes to its position. Once glued, you tighten the ropes and cut off the long ends close to the funnel. 

This is a technique I used on the Scheldt River build. I do believe you chose the easier option 😄

 

In any case, marvellous paddles. Love the way you did that text on the sides. I don't think my printer would manage something that small. 

[Glen McGuire]

6 hours ago, Javelin said:

The only other way to solve this issue that I can think of, would be to drill a hole in the funnel, connect the stays to the ship, insert the ship with long rope ends staying outside of the bottle. Then slide the funnel over the ropes to its position. Once glued, you tighten the ropes and cut off the long ends close to the funnel. 

This is a technique I used on the Scheldt River build. I do believe you chose the easier option 😄

I agree that your method is more difficult, but you pulled it off nicely on Scheldt River as I recall.

 

I used a yet another method for the funnel on the SY Aurora.  It was my 2nd scratch-built SIB, so I was still trying to figure a lot of things out.  I put a wire hinge thru the funnel near the base and used pull threads for the forward guy wires to raise the funnel once inside the bottle.  It worked ok, but I decided later that I liked using metal wire for the guy wires a lot better.  Plus, I've gotten a lot more comfortable doing assembly inside the bottle.

[SaltyScot]

Building something like this (and on this scale AND in a bottle) certainly requires some grey matter let me tell you (and that swear jar  ). I am excited to see how the funnel fitting comes along, Glen. Fingers crossed mate.