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…