Texas Ships in Bottles

The Process

You get some interesting looks from people at Total Wine, when you grab bottles off the shelf, turn them sideways, and just stare at them.

Following are highlights of the build process.  For a detailed look at trials and tribulations of each project, hit the links on the Build Logs page.

Chicken or the Egg?

I’m often asked what I choose first – the ship, the bottle, or the display?  The answer is all of the above!  For the Independence project, it was the bottle.  When I looked at a bottle of Cruzan rum sideways, the idea of a cannon barrel hit me.  The Aurora was a ship I chose because of my fascination with Sir Douglas Mawson and his miraculous story of survival.  The bottle choice and idea of mounting on a sledge came later.  With Captain Kidd’s Adventure Galley, I wanted to do a pirate ship, but the idea for the treasure chest display came first, before I chose the ship and bottle.  

Before I start building anything, I want to have those three things figured out – the ship, the bottle, and the display.  Then I go to PowerPoint and make a crude picture of the final project along with rough dimensions for the ship, trying to ensure it will fit inside the bottle.  The dimensions of the ship come from the actual ship plans if I can find them.  If not, I measure them from pictures.  I try to make the ship as historically accurate as possible (with occasional artistic license). 

Ship Building Materials

When building the ship, I try to keep things simple and traditional.  My primary materials are:

   - Wood – basswood mostly with occasional use of thin oak veneer and coffee stirrers
   - Wooden rods – bamboo skewers, standard dowels, toothpicks 
   - Brass – rods and sheet from Hobby Lobby along with leftover sprues of photo-etch from my Alabama and Amati kits
   - Wire – music wire, copper wire, and other assorted scrap wire of varying thickness
   - Thread – mostly Gutterman and Uni fly tying thread but I will sometimes buy cordage from model supply websites

   - Fabric – typically muslin or shirt cloth from Joann Fabrics for the sails

Ship Construction

Hull
I use a laminating process to build my hulls.  The first step is cutting basswood into small, rectangular strips a little larger than the dimensions of the hull, penciling the hull's shape on each strip, and labeling them in their stack order.  Next, I glue them together with carpenter's glue.  Then I sand, file, sand, file, sand, file into the final shape.  The bottom is flat with no keel because all my ships will rest on "water" inside the bottle.

For some ships, I will add bulwarks at the top edge, leaving the laminated/layered look on the sides to resemble planking.  For others, like the one below, I carve a piece of thin oak veneer to cover the sides of the ship, extending above the edges to form bulwarks.  After completion, I drill holes for the masts.

Most ships I've done so far have been 1-piece hulls.  The example below is a 2-piece hull split down the middle.  This was the Zheng He treasure ship and was way too wide to fit thru the bottle opening as a 1-piece hull.  Each half was inserted into the bottle and then glued together once inside.   

Paint
Since I'm not much of an artist, I keep my painting pretty simple.  I use acrylic paint on all the wood surfaces and enamel on brass and any other metallic surface.  All painted surfaces are brushed with a satin varnish after drying.      

Deck Fittings
At this scale, there's not a lot of room for deck fittings.  Shelters and other structures I will make out of basswood scraps.  Life boats are carved from a laminated 2-layer piece of basswood.  Vent pipes are copper wire bent to shape.  Anchors are pieces of music wire soldered together.  Cannons are music wire for the barrel glued to two small laminated pieces of basswood for the carriage.  My favorite deck fitting so far was making tiny corrals with a herd of longhorns for Zheng He's main treasure fleet.  The herd matches the five longhorns I have on my ranch outside of Austin.


Masts and Yards
Masts are the crux of ship construction.  Their height is the reason we all wonder "how in the world did that ship get in the bottle?"  So how in the world do we actually get the ship with those tall masts to fit through the neck of the bottle?  My masts on my first kit build, the Amati Hannah, had a hinge at the base of the mast.  With hinges, the masts can be folded over to where they lay flat above the deck and then raised after the ship is in the bottle (see the Ship Insertion section below).  I copied that idea for my first few scratch builds, drilling a tiny hole in the mast, inserting a piece of music wire through the hole, bending the ends of the wire down, and inserting the ends into the deck (see first two pictures below).

For the Zheng He build, I found a much better hinge from a fine craftsman on the Model Ship World website.  He made what he called a "hidden hinge" that did not require the extended ends of the wire to be inserted into the deck - see third picture below.  It's much more difficult to make, but the end result is worth it.  Plus, it frees up more space on the deck.  This is the method I will use going forward unless I need to stagger the sideways position of the masts to make them lie flatter against the deck.  The masts are made from bamboo skewers sanded down to a thin diameter on my low-budget drill lathe.

With the yards, the challenge is attaching them to the masts while allowing them to rotate horizontally and vertically.  This is crucial for folding everything up as tight as possible for insertion into the bottle.  I've found that clove hitches tied with button thread work pretty well. 

Sails
I typically make the sails from off-white muslin.  With the Zheng He treasure fleet, I used red shirt cloth because I could not find red muslin. 

Bolt ropes are button thread (a little thicker than standard thread) glued to the sail edges with Aleene's fabric glue.  For the vertical seams and horizontal reef lines, I have used thin silk thread glued on with fabric glue.  I have also tried sewing these as well.  I have not decided which method I like better.  But with my sewing skills (or lack thereof), gluing is a lot easier! 

Rigging
The rigging is the second most important part of the construction, and probably the most difficult.  Sagging lines look sloppy and lines that are too tight may prevent the masts from standing upright.  I use button thread for the stays, standard thread for the shrouds, and fly tying thread for the running rigging and ratlines.

If the masts are multi-part, the first thing I do is install the upper shrouds and ratlines, before the masts are stepped into the deck.  The top of the shrouds are tied around the mast or to a small eye hook.  The bottom of the shrouds are knotted on the underside of the mast trees.  The ratlines are glued onto the shrouds with fabric glue, then the edges trimmed close with a cuticle trimmer (essential tool!). 

Next, I add the stays.  The stays are critical because they are used to raise the masts once the ship is inside the bottle.  Foremast stays run thru the bowsprit while main and mizzen mast stays run through holes in the masts then the bowsprit.  The stay thread is very long because it must extend out the neck of the bottle.  

I add the lower shrouds and ratlines after the masts are secure in the deck

For the running rigging, I like to use fly tying thread.  It's super thin which means I can fit quite a few lines thru a single hole in the bowsprit.  It's also waxed, so it pulls smoothly.  In the last picture below I've circled all the running rigging thread (12 lines) funneled through the bowsprit. 

Water

I always like to have my ship floating in "water" inside the bottle.  For my first couple of projects, I tried simply using acrylic paint.  The result was near disaster on the first and marginal success on the second.  On my third project, I discovered epoxy resin and have been going that route ever since. 

Now, making the water is a 2-part process using epoxy resin and acrylic paint.  First, I mix and dye the resin.  Then I rig up a contraption to pour the resin into the bottle.  After the resin dries, I mix up some acrylic paint and gel gloss medium (adds a glint to the water).  Next, I put a mock hull on top of the smooth, hard resin where the ship will rest.  Then I dab the acrylic paint around the mock hull to give the water some texture/waves.  Finally, I will touch the edges of the waves with white paint for white caps.       

Ship Insertion

Now it's time for the moment of truth!  I'm anxious throughout the whole process because I know it's all going to come down to this.  Can I get the ship inside the bottle without breaking it?  I've definitely experienced the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat - ships that sunk in the water, broken masts, snapped lines, ugh!

The key to success is pretty simple, build a ship that fits inside the neck of the bottle!  Unfortunately, I tend to make the hull too large, add too many deck fittings, fly too many sails, etc.  I continue to work on my design process up front to make this step less nerve-wracking, but I've got lots of room for improvement.

When things work, it's actually a pretty simple process.  The first step is dabbing some slow-drying epoxy inside the bottle where I want the ship to reside.  The epoxy is workable for only about 15 minutes, so that's how long I've got to push the ship inside the bottle and place in its proper position.  No pressure!  I fold the masts down and turn the yards sideways while carefully furling the sails as best I can.  Then, I gently (sometimes firmly) push the ship in stern-first, hoping I don't hear any gut-wrenching "pops" (always a bad sign).  I push the ship far enough to where the ship is resting in an upward position with the stern just touching the front edge of the water.  From there, I use 8" tweezers or sometimes a custom made hull-grabbing tool to lift the ship and place it on top of the epoxy.  Then I breathe a HUGE sigh of relief and go get an adult beverage. 

I give the epoxy 24 hours to fully dry.  Then I start carefully pulling the pull threads to raise the masts.  It always takes a lot of gentle wrangling to get the lines untangled, the masts fully upright, and the sails unfurled.  Once I get everything oriented correctly, I'll glue and snip the pull threads at the bowsprit holes.

WOOHOO!!!  The hard part is done!. 

The Presentation

Ship in Bottle projects give you the opportunity to get really creative with the display.  What I try to do with most projects is make the bottle an active part of the presentation rather than just a static object that holds the ship.  Some displays I build from scratch, like the sledge for the Aurora and the cannon carriage for the Independence.  Others, like the Zheng He treasure fleet, I buy pieces, modify them as needed, and assemble the final presentation.