Monthly Archives: December 2014

Ship in a Bottle: Traditional vs. “Modern” method…

Every since I was a young lad, I’ve been fascinated by miniatures and model building. Like many of my obsessions, I did more reading than actual constructing. In particular, I remember reading several books about building “ships in a bottle”, and for some reason, this particular interest has cycled around and is again at the top of my brain. Since I have some vacation coming up over the holiday, I thought that maybe I’d give it a whirl, and see how well I can do.

But of course, all I’ve done so far is just reading and research.

Oddly enough, there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of information on the web. Sure, you can find some pictures, and even a video or two, and some instructables, but compared to many other endeavors, the information and instruction seem a bit thin. Part of this is no doubt that this is due to the subject matter itself: many traditional crafts aren’t as well represented on the Internet as other, more modern activities. Still, it carries over into other media as well: the number of books dedicated to building ships in a bottle are quite limited as well. And, while there are several national organizations for ship building, they seem rather cagey about what it is they do.

One is no doubt some carry over from the “secret knowledge” that so-called Impossible Bottles are shrouded in. While it isn’t too hard to get some basic description about how ships in a bottle are made, in general it is considered rude to reveal the secrets of putting stuff in bottles. It just doesn’t seem to be a community that revels in sharing techniques.

But anyway…

The traditional scheme of putting sailing ships in bottles consists of the following elements:

  • the model is constructed outside the bottle, with the masts hinged to fold back along the bottle
  • square sails are generally mounted on the spars, and twisted to lie parallel to the masts so they can fold around the body
  • spankers and jibs are mounted loosely on strings that can be pulled to be drawn into their final position
  • the model is folded flat, and is inserted tailfirst into the bottle
  • once inside the bottle, the various strings are drawn tight to pull up the masts on their hinges, and others draw the spankers and jibs into place.
  • once everything looks nice, small drops of glue are used to fix the threads in place, and the excess can be cut off with tiny bits of razor blade on a long wire

Some visuals will help. Here’s the traditional method demonstrated, which gives some hint as to the complexity.

Seems straightforward enough, if not exactly easy. But I was wondering: are all ships in a bottle done this way? The existance of other “impossible” bottles shows that many things can be disassembled and reassembled in bottles using techniques that are rather different than this scheme. Are other techniques used?

The answer is “yes”. For instance, many ships have hulls which are too large to fit through the bottle’s spout. These are sometimes created in layers, which are inserted one by one into the bottle and glued into place, with a rather thin “deck” which holds all that traditional masting. But, I wondered, couldn’t all the rest be assembled outside in pieces and inserted through the neck? Are these kind of techniques being used?

The answer is “yes”, while the traditional method is far and away the most popular, there are model makers who use other, “modern” methods to build ships in a bottle, but descriptions of the techniques they use are rather sparse. The first I encountered was this page by Ralph W. Preston on the “Modern Method”. He writes:

Towards the end of the Great Depression, a new approach to building ships in bottles appeared. This new approach is one that I call the “modern” method. By this method the ship is disassembled outside, then reassembled within. Long tweezers and similar tools are used. I am a member of the modern school. It would be tempting to say that my method is better, but much traditional work of superb quality is around.

He doesn’t seem to enumerate the principles he uses, but he does have some intriguing information as part of the documentation of various works he created. His Viking ship shows some of his “non-traditional” techniques at work.

Cool stuff, but it didn’t tell me the information that I wanted.

Artem Potem has this webpage, somewhat clumsily translated from Russian to English that talks about other techniques that could be used. For instance, his Method 3 eliminates the need for a mast hinge, which could be interesting.

The only other bit of innovation I found was this Youtube video (sadly, in Portuguese, I think) which shows assembly of a ship using something like what I expect Potem was describing. The ship is actually inserted bow first, and the masts are loose,,, Very nice ship model, and some great photography.


I’m prepping a more lengthy set of links and resources, which should show up in the next week or so.

Addendum:

Here’s another “bowfirst” construction video, this one of the HMS Beagle…

The opposite of Pinterest Fail: The Alinea Project

One of the more interesting online communities that has sprung up in recent years is Pinterest. It serves as a kind of Internet inspiration board: people clip pictures of projects that interest or inspire them, and post them as a sort of pin board that can be shared. I recently found several boards on ships in a bottle which are serving to inspire me to my first such project. One of the most popular topics is food: people pin recipes and pictures to serve as ideas for their creative cooking endeavors.

As might be imagined, not everyone who is inspired succeeds in duplicating the source of their inspirations. Some people lack the experience or expertise to turn out the creations they imagine. These are somewhat comically chronicled on a number of blogs, such as the Pinterest Fail blog, and the Epic Pinterest Fail blog. For instance, this isn’t one of mine, but it easily could be: I’m a miserable baker.

Cupcake Fail

But today, I received a Kickstarter prize in my mail which is illustration of the diametric opposite of the Pinterest Fail: Allen Hembergers Alinea Project. I’d describe the project, but Allen is much better at describing the project himself:



I work with a lot of talented people, but Allen is off the chain amazing. I only became aware of his project a couple of years ago, and didn’t really even know who he was at work (our circles/projects don’t overlap) but I became amazed at his passion, his writing and his glorious photography. The problem with food is that at its best, it is a very transitory art form. But through his photography and writing, Allen could allow you to experience at least a part of what cooking at this level was like, not only as a consumer, but as a creator. I found that incredibly appealing. His photography immortalizes dishes, and are done with such amazing technique, such amazing lighting…

One of Allen's many amazing photographs

It was with great pleasure that I backed Allen’s Kickstarter Project to turn all of his photographs and writings into a book. Along with 510 other backers, I ponied up my $75 to get a copy, and it arrived in my mailbox today.

It… is… amazing.

It is without a doubt one of the most beautiful books on food that I have ever seen. I’ve only had a few minutes to briefly skim it, but I’m sure that over the Christmas holiday, I’ll be reading it from start to finish. The quality of the binding and the color reproduction is incredible, a level of quality nobody has any right to expect, but which is entirely keeping with Allen’s obsessive compulsion to do everything at the highest level.

I’m in awe.

It almost seems unfair that one individual could be as good at as many things as Allen is. And yet, he’s obviously also very humble, very self-critical and is struggling every step of the way. Even if you do not aspire to become a great chef, I think there are lessons to be had and inspiration to be taken from his creative march.

If you weren’t in on the KickStarter, I don’t know how you’d get a copy, but you are missing out if you don’t have one. Incredible.

Addendum: It looks like you can order a copy of his book from his website.

A pair of geeky Advent calendars…

Advent is the season observed in many Christian traditions that is a time of expectant waiting and preparation for Christmas. When I was young, we’d have an Advent calendar, which counted down the days to Christmas, and would gift us with a little chocolate or candy each day.

While I am no longer religious, the idea is kind of cool: to take a little time out of each day and enjoy a tasty treat of some sort, and think of the upcoming holiday. A couple of cool examples have crossed my desk…

I like to experiment with embedded controllers, machine emulation and operating systems, so I am of course familiar with QEMU, but in case you are not: QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer. It allows you simulate machines and run code written for one machine (say, an ARM board) on your PC using virtual hardware peripherals. It also serve as a “virtualizer”, which basically means that if you have an x86 Linux box, you can run a different x86 operating system on the same hardware, at very nearly native performance. In short, it’s pretty awesome.

If you like this kind of thing, you should check o ut The QEMU Advent Calendar 2014. It presents a new QEMU disk image each day until Christmas, enabling you to play with new operating systems, programming languages and graphical goodies. For instance, Day 6 is a tiny image that generates Julia sets.

Screenshot-QEMU

Other days allow you to boot ancient versions of Slackware Linux, run an Atari ST emulator inside QEMU, and even play Zork. Awesome.

But even greater than that is the offering by Alan, VK2ZA7. Back in 2011, he did a series of 24 Youtube videos that each described a small electronic circuit that he tinkered together during the Christmas season. Many of them had to do with generating small bits of test equipment or illustrate some cool little circuits. Ones that I liked were his LED based transmitter/receiver:

and this nice little crystal radio, very traditional, with a cobweb style coil wound with Litz wire, but with a polyvaricon variable capacitor instead of the traditional 365pf variable cap.

What’s awesome is that after a hiatus of a couple years, Alan is back in 2014 with new projects. Very, very cool.

I particularly liked this one on building variable capacitors (a laser cutter would be helpful). I hadn’t seen this kind of geometry in one before, and Alan’s patter is very interesting.

A particularly useful little bit of tech for us radio tinkerers:

I’ll be checking back each day until Christmas. Thanks Alan!

Orion Launch!

I didn’t get up early enough. But here’s the video of the launch. Is it just me, or is this rocket tossing off a lot of debris? Anyone else notice this?