DIY [1:250] Model Sail Ship(Very Easy)

Building miniature naval seals and preserving them in glass bottles was a Maritime art. First emerged in late 1800's, the sailors or deck workers used to carve out a ship from wood and set sails of cloth with no tools other than their pocket knives. This inspired me to try. Now I am very new to this and my goal is: Can anyone with no experience with wood working whittle a boat out of a piece of wood? This is a documentation to this endeavor.

I am writing this in as detail as I can, hoping nobody would repeat my mistake and break into new experience territory at their first go.

Before going in, please use your tools safely Always follow these instructions:

• Keep your fingers away from the motion of Scraping
• Wear a thick glove so as no cuts are made on your skin
• Do not get rage when something goes wrong, it is not the way to go. Calm Down, take a walk and then think what can you do now which may use the thing which went wrong. Raging around tools may cause injuries.

Failure to do so can result in minor injury to hands, fingers or other

Okay, I need to confess, this seal was supposed to be kept in a bottle but due to the lack of perfect size glass bottle, the boat will be kept in a box until a suitable bottle is found, I will add the steps where the mast should be hinged to hull so as to push the ship through the bottles mouth, but I will fix the mast to the hull temporarily so as to get my closure.

NOTE: Before heading, find yourself an image or draw one yourself to what it may look like, get a compass(the geometrical equipment) to get proportionate lengths and widths of the masts and the boom, the thickness of waist of the ship to the length of it and use the height of the entire build smaller(not counting masts, only keep to bowsprit) than the mouth of the bottle, keep the boom smaller then the length of the diameter of the mouth.

Try to familiarize yourself more with these basic ship terms. Its useful jargon as it helps to pinpoint where and what I am talking about.

So when the time comes you won't really have to rely on me for all the details and data. This way you will learn about ships and their constructions then I could ever tell you.

So I will divide supplies you will need in making it and the tools that I used:

Supplies:

• A piece of dry wood. I chopped a branch and got mine. The wood I used is Neem wood{Azadirachta indica}
• a spool of elastic string, preferably fine
• any piece of cloth or paper, I used old paper for its texture
• (if you feel lazy) toothpick and ice cream sticks

Tools:

• Metal File
• Sand Paper(80-Grit)
• Exacto Knife
• Razor blade or sharp pocket knife(If you may, you can use chisel to whittle)
• super glue
• wood glue
• some wire(if you want anchor(everyone wants anchor))
• compass(geometry tool)
• scale(ruler)
• tweezers

I had a chopped branch which was drying for quite some time, so I used it, basically I am using Hardwood, a distant mahogany wood so as nothing splinters at the last moment. One can Use chisel as well if they want. I have explained my reasons for using pocket knife:

1. I took a 2cm wide and 4cm long cylinder of this wood
2. stripped its bark away without digging in the wood itself to do so

Find the exact dimensions of the mouth of your bottle. Preferably find a wine bottle; with very wide mouth if one wants to build a bottle ship;

1. Now draw a rough diagram the deck from top view and cross sectional shape of the hull. Doing so would help you remember to stick to the design and not get mislead.
2. Chop the cylinder of wood in Half so that you only need to carve the hull and not care about what happens with the deck
3. Usually all the ships follow the same basic design. Tapering bow(front of the ship) and semicircular stern(end of the ship), mine does too, So I carved the tapering bow, I shaved it to look like an arrowhead which is wider than its long. For stern, I just carved it in a semi Circle

The Most basic shape of your sketch and ship should match(only for the deck); we shall now start with the hull of the ship(Keep the Margins a bit thicker than your drawings, this will help when you are detailing/filing the ship):

1. Start scraping away the wood slowly from below the bow. The goal here is to make a rough cone(vertically split half, cone) with the same length as that of the arrow we made in the previous part of this step.
2. Now the shape of the bow of the ship must somewhat resemble a real ship when looked from ahead, so keep that in mind before heading to stern. Scrape ever so slowly so as you can keep an eye on progress.
3. Just remove the edge of the cylinder. Use your knife/chisel and not sandpaper or file, this will ensure a homogenous curve of the stern.

Now the wood should look like a very rough ship.

Now to give a more precise shape to the wood. Got the body, now we must tone it. So, first we shall use Exacto Knife to get a bit more precise, we can do this without exacto knife and use our normal pocket knife but I am using it because it gives me confidence:

1. Now this step is about giving the hull its shape. We cut a tiny 90 deg at the bottom of the stern(rudder post). This is where the rudder is supposed to go. Don't cut shallow or go very deep. I made a 0.15 to 0.2 cm cut, one can chose the dimension themselves. Keep the layout of the ship in mind though.
2. Now remove the wood and rub it on metal file. I used the file because of its perfect 90 deg, but if you have any other alternative to smoothen this ridge and maintain the 90 deg angle you are free to choose.
3. Bring out the file again and start giving sharp edges to the sides of the hull, this will help drawing out the keel, now the keel must me visible roughly and the rudder post should be perfect

The waist deck before was plain, now we carve out fo'c'sle and captain's cabin, that is adding small stairs and barrels, which will be added later. But for that we must build the main deck first.

1. Use the metal file to shape the wood at the center of the vessel(making waist deck), metal file would ensure the 90 deg and would work beautifully.
2. Now shave any irregularities in the waist deck with exacto knife, rub sandpaper until everything is smooth

Use the sand paper all over the hull to smoothen all the splinters. This is very important. Now Your ship should be smaller than the mouth of your bottle.

Clean out the Area. It is time for a Break.

This section can either be the most difficult or the easiest part yet. For me it was difficult. Here are some tips if you are breaking new territory:

• use the finest forceps/tweezers you can get.
• Use super glue, I didn't but next time I will, 100 percent.
• Use water resistant wood glue
• Don't have any preconceptions

Also I need to differentiate why I used wood glue at places and recommend using super glue at others.

• Wood glue takes time to set but super glue is instantaneous
• The residue for wood glue is clear vinyl rubber like substance, soft and flexible(at least mine had that texture)
• I recommend using wood glue for hinge joints at the bottom of the pole and (If you need to) at intersection of boom and mast pole.
• Super glue must be used for rigging knots, boom and mast intersection of wood and wood kind.
• Wood glue must be used for joints, rigging and sails, it doesn't harden and ruin the strings/sails

Bowsprit

NOTE: I used Ice Cream Sticks and then chopped them and didn't sand them for worn and ancient look, but you can use toothpicks:

1. According to your diagram, cut a proportionately long beam of wood and sharp it from an edge and flatten it on the another
2. keep the flat edge at an angle such that it can stick to the bow's blunt nose while maintaining that angle of rise

Bowsprit done. Lets first make each pole and then we will Glue them in place after its done. Now strictly use superglue and Do Not (I wanted to test so you don't have to) use wood glue at Intersections of wood and wood kind:

1. Set poles and booms on your workspace. Cut small slits where you want one to go in another, this will look neat when installing sails.
2. Now is the time for you to install a Crow's Nest(the platform atop main mast positioned for lookouts), I didn't
3. Set every piece in place according to your reference material and drop little drops of superglue. Don't over load it, keep everything minimalistic
4. this really shouldn't be a point to make but if you are using wood glue like me, over load the slits with wood glue

In the order of assembly I put rails first and then attached the masts, but to me it really didn't make any difference, so its your choice if you want to put rails in and then add masts.

Foremast, Main mast and mizzenmast:

1. According to your Diagram punch a shallow hole for your foremast(Second tallest and at the bow), Main Mast(the tallest and at the center) and the Mizzenmast(over captains cabin and the third tallest).
2. Now place the poles in the similar order of heights in each holes as your diagram says and DO NOT superglue anything yet.
3. As everything is placed, carefully glue(USE WOOD GLUE ONLY) only the stern facing sides of each pole except the foremast, if you intend to make jibs then wood glue the bow side of the pole, if you do not want jibs then no exception.
4. This way when you put the ship in a bottle, the wood glue won't cause a problem and wood let you bend the pole to the deck and then you can put it inside a glass bottle.

Rails

Note: I would recommend you use wood shavings from an Ice cream stick so that the height of our would-be fence be similar:

Bow:

1. take 2 shavings of equal length so that they are rectangular in shape, nip 2 triangles diagonally opposite so now the rectangle becomes a parallelogram.
2. Now place them, such that it fits snuggly with bow sprit and gives a sense to the handrail of stairs leading atop fo'c'sle.

This all was actually the easy part, the difficult is here now.

The rail for stern side of deck:

1. keep a shaving in water for 24 hours. Keep it so that it becomes soggy and very flexible.
2. Now my ship was the thickness of a pencil so I dried the shaving with a dry tissue and clipped it to a pencil and left it to dry for six hours. Should be good in three in dry and warm environment but it was very humid and wet so I couldn't risk it.
3. Now just super glue the shaving and it is set in place; just sand the edges so that it looks better when it ends for the stair case.

Rails for waist deck:

1. simplest installations. Just superglue inverted trapeziums of similar dimension to the waist deck.

Just as a tip for why I found it difficult:

• I tried cutting tangents and sticking them instead
• I tried gluing wet wood to the deck
• tried to bend wood with just 2 hours of soaking

Now you realize why I said be patient. The deck was slightly ruined but the sandpaper got me covered. Don't panic, sand paper and exacto knife can take care of anything(spoiler alert: they can't, I messed up big time)

Anchor:

1. Take small piece of wire
2. put one on the other, make it look like a cross but with only one axis of symmetry
3. curve the hands of the cross so now it resembles the anchor somewhat.
4. use soldering iron to put two together
5. done!

Rails are set. Masts are erected. Booms are positioned. Anchor is installed. Onto rigging

Note: I have tried molding the anchor, carving the anchor and using solder Iron to melt solder to make an anchor, nothing worked

Now as a major issue I found out, don't paint the ship if you aren't good at it. I am not good at it. I did it myself, I regret it, deck looks good but Idk something doesn't and I don't have the eye for it.

We can rig first and paint later or paint first, rig later and then paint again. I did the later one so as to get an Idea of what it might look like but as I said, it doesn't look good as I did the painting myself. I would still recommend to beginners to paint, rig and paint again so as to know what feels wrong when it is wrong.

I didn't take a lot of pictures while setting the rigging, hopefully you can get a sense by those pics which I have provided. Also its the part where you can't be guided, you can just go ahead and reference your diagram and glue and cut your strings yourself but remember, the masts are supposed to bend to put the ship inside the bottle, so Think before super gluing anything that isn't elastic string.

Setting rigs,

this may look difficult but it isn't, rigging is done to share the tension from masts, we need to make it such that the mast wont have to bear all the force of the wind and keeps it upright:

1. pass the first string over the highest boom in such a way that the mast is forced downwards.
2. Super glue the string to the symmetric opposite of starboard and on port sides.
3. Add 2 more rigs such that one bears it down and pushes it forward while the other bears it down and pushes it backward
4. Now all you do is to repeat this step on all the masts bearing booms

Setting a rig for jib:

one can add the other jibs as well.

1. make a very small knot on string and loop it on bowsprit first.
2. Then tie another knot to a point on foremast according to your diagram. I tied it to the mid section of the post.
3. Drop just a little wood glue on the knots and wait till its see through

One can Rig all the masts as well as bowsprit and the stern via similar method as described above, so that everything stays in line.

PAINT

This is the thing which I foreshadowed earlier. You can't take off paints without damaging masts and rails. So yeah, I did an oopsie I believe.

Yet again the pictures failed me, there weren't a lot of pics of sails being set mid process. So let me break it down to my best.

1. Use your sketch once again.
2. Draw the shape and size of the sail you want to put, on a paper.
3. take paper or light cloth would work as well, I used tea bag paper and dyed it orange to use as sail.
4. While referring the design made on paper, cut the cloth/paper just a bit oversized, so that you can fold it on the string and boom
5. Different sails would have different margins. For example, Main sail would have margins along sides for rigging but jibs only need margin on its longest side as demonstrated in the picture

You need some more glue and normal string to tie the sail's lower end to the rail of the ship. You can skip this part and just glue the lower ends of your sail to the rigging if that works for you or do not glue them at all or glue them to the rails themself.

Disclaimer: I haven't put the ship in bottle. It's a ship in a box for now. I don't intend to put this model in bottle anyways, but the trick to do so is on paper nicely and squarely. So, this part of the project is just theory and not put to practice.

Remember how I said the goal for rigging is to keep the mast upright and used elastic strings. Now you just down the masts with a little force, fold the sails a bit and now its ready to be put inside a bottle. Traditionally the top of the pole had a string tied to it which was pulled once the ship was inside the bottle, it erected the masts and then with the help of hooked wire they super glued the ends of the mast to the deck. Securing the mast and then cutting the strings attached to its top.

I haven't put it in bottle so I don't know if it will work or not, hopefully someone will try this method and enlighten me before I try myself in coming times.