BonHomme Richard as a Ship-in-Light-Bulb Model..... by John Fox III Figure 1. I am on a mission to prove that shipin-bottle (or light bulb) models can be every bit as historically accurate, and to scale, as any other genre of ship modeling, to the point of being museum-quality in every respect. I have spent over thirty years on this mission, with varying results, building models of a variety of ships and boats, both historical and of modern design. The following article will explain the basics of the general category of ships-in-bottles, or light bulbs, and my efforts to raise the bar on this genre. Almost everyone has seen a ship-inbottle model at one time or another, probably in a nautical gift shop or local craft sale. The majority of these models are considered a craft, rather than an art, and usually categorized under the folk term in either case. NAUTICAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 131
The basic ship-in-bottle model is, or was built, for the most part, for the mystique value of just how did someone actually get that model into the bottle. The models themselves are often quite crude, and often depict just a ship type, rather than a particular vessel. Whether built locally by a craft person, or by some business shop overseas specifically for foreign sales, it is rare to find a model in this genre worthy of the term museum-quality. Over the years working at building ship-in-bottle models I have seen some wonderful examples of just what a such a model could be, and met some truly gifted model builders in the process. It started me thinking that there simply is no reason that anyone should have to stop at building such models for the mystique value alone, when so much more can be done to make them objects of respect and admiration by any ship modeler. To that end I started working on techniques and methods that can be applied universally to any ship or boat model, including those aspects specific to ships in bottles. My goal was to make the methods easy to use and apply, in order to encourage others to think more of their models as ship models first, and let the mystique thing take care of itself. There are a number of methods of building and finishing ship-in-bottle models, as one might guess. Note that I mention building and finishing separately, finishing in this case refers to the work involved in getting the model, or all its associated parts, through the narrow neck of the bottle, or bulb, and then rebuilding or erecting the model inside. The two most basic methods used are to build the model so that it comes apart into pieces small enough to fit through the opening, or building the model in such a way that it can fold down, or be knocked down to accomplish the same goal. The first method is most often used with non-sailing boats and ships, the sec- 132 ond with models that have masts and sails. Some builders choose to use a hybrid of both methods, the percentages of either method used varies as much as the number of builders. My particular techniques and methods use a minimal number of separate pieces; I attempt to design or engineer my models so that as little as possible has to be done from outside the bottle except for the vital tightening of the rigging lines. I have seen fine work by others who use methods with much more piece work, but I have found it much more difficult to get a good model finished using such methods. Personally, I find there are just too many things that can go wrong when a model has to be pieced together inside a bottle. I have had to do this on occasion, due to constraints caused by the neck of the bottle, but prefer to avoid many separate pieces needing to be put together after insertion if possible. I will be using the BonHomme Richard model in a light bulb that I built over a two-year period to illustrate my methods and techniques. The idea here is to show how they apply to a single instance of a ship-in-bottle model, but the methods can be used for just about any sailing vessel. (Figure 1) My BonHomme Richard model was built from information in the A.N.C.R.E. publication, John Paul Jones and the BonHomme Richard, by Jean Boudriot. I purchased the book along with an entire set of large-scale drawings for the vessel, also by Boudriot. At the time I was starting my work this information was considered the best available about that ship. I have since learned that Boudriot basically just shrank down his well-researched plans for the larger French East Indiaman Berlin, and that this could be an instance of not enough research being done to provide an accurate set of plans for my intended model. Vol. 57, No 3 AUTUMN 2012
My first task was to use a computer aided design (CAD) program to redraft the plans, which allows me total scale control of the model. What I found during this process reinforced the idea that it was simply a rehash of previously published plans for another vessel. I only mention this here so that anyone considering building a model of BonHomme Richard might do a little extra research to find newer material. I always encourage ship modelers to use CAD to redraw plans for a proposed model. Not only does it expand the knowledge base of what one is planning to build, but it also allows one to draft each piece separately and then literally construct the model virtually by copying and pasting the parts together. I can easily say that, for nearly every model I have ever built, I learned things from this method that made things easier down the road. The plans were drafted and double checked, each view against the others, for accuracy. The next step was to measure the inside diameter of the opening I had cut in the light bulb end, and to measure the exact dimensions of the inside of the entire bulb. The latter measurements determine the scale of the model I will build, which is why the scales of my models are widely outside what is considered normal. My BonHomme Richard model, for instance, was built to a scale of 1:459. In all cases, I wish to build the model to the largest scale possible in order to fill as much of the bottle, or bulb. Unless the width of the hull at the largest possible scale will not fit through the neck opening, the largest scale is what I use to build my model. If the hull width is too large, which happens only rarely, then I have to decide if I will shrink the overall scale so it will fit, or engineer the hull to split along the fore and aft centerline. The latter is an absolute last resort for me; as mentioned previously, there are too many things that can go wrong inside the bulb using that sort of piece work. When I print my plans to scale, I print out the half-hull outlines from the body plan, one for each station. I include only the outline of the hull, the waterline extending beyond the outline and the centerline for each paper template. I also print out scale plans of the maximum hull width at any given point, and another for each of the decks. With all this material in hand, I head out to the workshop and begin actual construction. The first of my particular methods comes into play when making up what I call a hull block sandwich, carved to make the model s hull. I use the same basic principle for every hull I make, even some much larger scale models, simply because it makes it easy for me to carve very accurate hulls. The basic hull block sandwich comprises a solid piece of basswood for an upper hull, a thin sheet of styrene plastic to represent the waterline, and a lower hull made up of three pieces of basswood glued together. The lower hull has two outer pieces that are glued to a very thin center piece; together their width matches that of the upper hull piece. All pieces are as long as the longest portion of the hull, with the upper hull piece made as thick as the maximum height of the hull above the waterline, and the lower hull pieces as thick as the maximum depth below the waterline. BonHomme Richard had many decks, so instead of simply carving them from a solid upper piece, I shaped a thin piece, from the waterline to the gundeck, to the proper sheer on its upper surface and then added several more thin pieces for each of the vessel s other decks. If the model had been to a much smaller scale, I would have retained the simple hull block sandwich and carved in all the decks. The key feature of my hull block sandwich technique is that only the lower hull pieces are glued together, all the other parts are pegged together tightly. The pegs NAUTICAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 133
Figure 2. Figure 3. Figure 4. have to be tight enough to allow carving the hull without the pieces shifting. The principle is that, no matter where or how I carve into this block, I have a readymade waterline the styrene sheet and a dead straight keel line the center of the thin piece glued between the two outer pieces of the lower hull. One does not have to use much imagination to see how much easier this makes the carving process compared to having to re-locate and re-draw in the keel or waterline while shaping the hull. Figure 2 illustrates how a typical hull block sandwich is made. Figure 3 shows the layered upper hull parts as well as the entire hull carved to the profile shape. The printed half-hull templates were used to check the shape of the entire hull as I worked, placing them against it while aligning them with the waterline and centerline of the block. The station locations were marked along the center of the keel of the lower hull, which, once shaped to profile, would not change during the rest of the carving process. One of the really nice things about making up hulls in this manner is that, after they are carved, one can fairly easily take them apart again into separate upper and lower hulls. Nearly all of the hulls I make are separated in this manner only; it allows me to air brush the finished hulls more easily since most are differently colored above and below the waterline. It also allows me to build a slightly larger scale model, as the two hull pieces can pass through the bottle neck separately. Though this may seem to go against my ideas about piece work inside the bottle, it is a simple matter to marry to the two hull parts together inside the bulb, using the pegs for perfect alignment. Figure 4 shows two fully carved hulls for my BonHomme Richard model, plus another that has been separated into its component parts. I actually made three models, only two of which I have fully completed as of this writing. From this point onwards, all the upper hull pieces were glued together, making it a single piece for insertion. One of the crucial benefits of having the hull split at the waterline has to do 134 Vol. 57, No 3 AUTUMN 2012
with the differences between my ship-inbottle models compared with those usually associated with the genre. Most ship-inbottle models have hulls that only go a little below the waterline and are set into a putty or clay medium shaped to form a fake sea. This particular technique has several advantages for ease of finishing, as any lines that must be operated from outside of the bottle can be glued, cut off, and simply pushed down into the fake sea material to hide them. My finished models are much simpler in one respect, I only put the model itself and a stand to hold it in place into the bottle or bulb. I tend to think of them as static display models that just happen to be inside a container. Since nearly every sailing ship model will have some rigging that must be operated from outside the bottle, mine being way beyond the exception in this point, and since I have no fake sea to hide my rigging lines, I developed a technique of carving a cavity in the underside of the upper hull piece to run my lines through. I exit my control rigging lines through the hawse holes, for the most part, and then can cut them off and hide the excess in the cavity after they have been glued. Perhaps it is time to talk a bit about rigging ship-in-bottle models. When working on my type of model, it is necessary for the masts to fold backwards; the top of the masts must move aft and downwards to allow the entire upper hull assembly to fit through the neck opening of the container. For this to work, all but the shrouds and backstays of the rigging must be control lines that can be operated from outside the bottle (the shrouds and backstays simply fold down and double over, so they do not need to be workable lines). The stays of each mast must be control lines to allow proper movement, of course, but all of the running rigging lines also must be control lines, since the yards and sails also fold down with the masts. All of this is accomplished by having the normal rigging end points allow passage of the thread used for the rigging to run through either the bowsprit assembly or pin rails and then through holes in the deck beneath them into the cavity within the upper hull piece. These normal end points are where the lines are glued after erecting the model, in most cases from above but occasionally from below at the point the lines exit the holes through the upper hull into the cavity. Getting back to work on the model s hull, once fully carved and sanded, the hull was separated and upper and lower hull sealed with a thinned sanding sealer. They were then reassembled and sanded again; this process was repeated until the entire outer surface of the hull was well sealed. This hardened the soft basswood outer surface, and prepared the raw wood for attachment of detail and paint application. Much of the detail work on my hulls, and spars is made from varying thickness of sheet styrene. I use styrene because it retains a clean edge when cut into thin strips and small pieces, paints easily, and can be applied to the hull quickly and fairly easily using cyanoacrylate glue. This is one reason the hull must be sealed well, it keeps the thin glue from simply soaking into the wood. Styrene is also very flexible and, therefore, can be used where wood is quite difficult to bend without breaking. Where pieces are larger, or strength is needed, I use hardwood instead to make up small detail parts. The lower gun ports on my Bonhomme Richard model were simply shallow cutouts of the proper dimensions and locations. The closed gun ports were engraved into the hardened surface of the basswood. Painting the inside of the port depressions with dark gray paint and adding pieces of black insect mounting pins to represent cannons made them about as realistic as one could achieve at NAUTICAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 135
Figure 5. this scale. Figures 5 and 6 show the stern and bow detailing, mostly accomplished with styrene. Once I had completed the major detailing of the exterior of the hull, work continued with drilling holes through the hull for rigging. The majority of the exterior hull holes allow the addition of the chains. At this scale, the chains are thread and are not attached in the usual manner; Figure 6. 136 Vol. 57, No 3 AUTUMN 2012
instead the thread ends run through the hull into the interior carved hollow. Initially, this space was 1/16-inch deep, with a 1/16-inch perimeter. All of the chain holes are rather high up the hull, so the outer edge of the hollow needed to be carved much deeper so that the holes could reach it. (Figure 7) Holes then had to be drilled through the decks into the hollow for all the running rigging. In order to locate most of these holes properly the fife and pin rails were added prior to drilling these holes. Quite a few running rigging lines were going to put considerable pressure on these belaying points, so all the fife rails were made from thin brass, since styrene or thin wood would not have withstood the strain. The rail stanchions were made from pieces of insect mounting pins, glued to holes in the deck and the rails with cyanoacrylate glue. The pin rails at the very bow were made similarly; the styrene cap rail was replaced with a brass copy in order to give it a solid foundation against the strain of the many lines that would pass through it. Figure 8 shows the fife rail for the fore mast and the many closely spaced holes drilled through the deck at the bow. I should note here that each of the many hull holes for ship-in-bottle models must be distinct and not run into, or through, any other hole. This is critical when running the rigging lines through them later because all the lines are working lines. They have to move freely in both directions, upwards during the knockdown process and back downwards again during the erection process. Should individual holes not be distinct, it almost always is the case that one line will run through another previously installed line, which will limit both lines movements. For this reason, all the holes at the very bow were most difficult to drill. For this model, limited space made it necessary to limit the number of holes Figure 7. for the lines, even in the fife and pin rails, since there simply was not enough room to drill an individual hole for each line. Many of the holes had to be used to run two or three working lines. This, of course, led to problems with lines running through each other as they were added. This complicated the rigging process as, after each line Figure 8. NAUTICAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 137
Figure 9. was added, all the lines passing through that particular hole had to be tested for movement in both directions to correct any problems at that point. In some cases it required considerable repetition of threading before all the lines would operate properly. The hulls of my BonHomme Richard models were then masked off and airbrushed. At this scale using an airbrush is necessary in order to apply as thin a layer of paint as possible. I always use flat paints on my models; I find that they produce a thinner layer than gloss paints. In anticipation of all their subsequent handling during construction, the hulls also received an airbrushed clear coat but, even with this protection, things like the chain plates and bowsprit ends eventually lost both paint and protective coat and had to be touched up at the end of the construction work. The final detailing work was a rather interesting experience for me. The figurehead on most of my ship-in-bottle models is usually so small that a crude rep- Figure 10. 138 Vol. 57, No 3 AUTUMN 2012
Figure 11. resentation is all that is possible or necessary. My BonHomme Richard models were large enough that the lion rampant figurehead was going to have to be more detailed. I attempted carving lions from both wood and styrene, but had poor results. I then tried making up the figurehead from layers of styrene, each cut to the contour at a given distance from the centerline. Using my CAD software made this fairly easy to draw up, print to scale, and glue to sheet styrene. The individual parts were then cut out and glued together before attaching the assembly to the bow. A little carving and sanding rounded out the lion figurehead. Figure 9 shows the lion parts and Figure 10 the finished figurehead on the model. The latter also shows the brass rail at the bow of the fore deck, along with the replacement brass cap rail to hold it in place. While waiting for the paint to dry, I started working on the spars for my models. The masts had to be constructed to allow them to fold down for insertion into the light bulb. There are two main methods for accomplishing this; the simplest and easiest is simply to drill a hole through the mast near its base from port to starboard and pivot it on an inverted U -shape wire with the two ends glued into holes drilled in the model s deck. This works quite well, but is unsuitable where there are decks above and behind the mast, or when a cabin or some other deck structure is immediately abaft it, since the obstruction will not allow the mast to be lowered enough for insertion. There is also the issue that it is nearly impossible to hide the wire. I prefer to make my masts break for folding down some distance above the deck in this situation. I use what is commonly called a Hinkley hinge, named after a ship-in-bottle modeler who popular- NAUTICAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 139
Figure 12. ized this technique. The advantage of this type of hinge is that when the upper portions of the mast is raised to its upright position, the hinge itself is almost entirely invisible. The basic hinge is made by cutting a mast blank at a 45-degree angle at the point above the deck that one wishes the mast to break. The bottom end of the upper mast section then has the outer third of its diameter carved away on each side, leaving the center third as a sort of tine. The top of the lower section of the mast has the middle third removed, leaving two outside portions, making it into a fork. The areas are removed at an angle opposite that of the original cut dividing the mast parts. A bamboo peg is then inserted into a hole drilled through both mast pieces while holding them their assembled straight position. Figure 11 shows several examples, one of them before assembly in order to show the parts. One important point when working on models at the miniature scales I use is that keeping in mind the qualities of various materials. This is very important when making up spars. Solid wooden spars below a certain size become too weak or brittle. In many cases, spars for ship-in-bottle models have to have holes drilled through them, which weakens them even more. For this reason I make all of my wooden spars by laminating together thin sheets of maple veneer. The glued seams of a twopiece veneered spar make it much stronger, and holes drilled at 90 degrees to the run of the seam usually do not split the spar. I use the same basic process to make up all the wooden spars for my models, varying the number of layers of veneer to match the final diameter of the spars. I cut slices from the laminate and spin sand them down to their maximum diameters, using a Dremel tool and various grades of sandpaper pinched around the rotating blank. I then hand sand any tapers, drill any necessary holes, and sand any required flat areas to get to the final shapes. This laminated spar method also really helps when making up Hinkley hinges. I use a 140 Vol. 57, No 3 AUTUMN 2012
Figure 13. three-layer veneer, making it easy to determine the one-third divisions for making the hinges. All the wooden spars were sealed and sanded, for the same reasons as for the hull exterior. Almost all the spar detailing was styrene, including the mast caps and tops. The mast banding, for instance, was from 1/64-inch wide strips of.005-inch thick sheet styrene, wrapped around the mast and glued with cyanoacrylate. Figure 12 illustrates a complete mast assembly for my BonHomme Richard model and Figure 13 shows all the smaller spars for one mast on all three models I constructed. The smallest spars on my BonHomme Richard models were simply too thin to be made even from wood veneer, so I used insect mounting pins of the appropriate diameter instead. Often, it was possible to cut sections from a pin so that the natural taper of the pin formed the Figure 14. taper for one end of the spar, but the other end of the spar had to be tapered by hand. These pins come with a black enamel coating, of course removed when tapering for a spar. I used black magic maker to blacken NAUTICAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 141
Figure 15. the spars throughout. All the wooden spars and the appropriate sections of the masts were airbrushed black and then clear coated to protect them. Most of the detail work on the decks was added to the models next. Nearly all these details were made from sheet styrene, sometimes laminating it to get proper thicknesses. Very small diameter electrical wire insulation was used for the barrels of the guns on the upper decks, mounted on styrene carriages. I added wooden side rails, using insect mounting pins for stanchions. The gratings used on the models were made using thread and a special jig I constructed for the purpose. It consists of pieces of fine toothed razor saw blades, with their kerfs filed off, attached to all four sides of a block of hardwood so that the teeth aligned evenly above the top surface of the block. (Figure 14) Threads of various sizes were wrapped around the block, and over the blades, on opposite sides of the block at any spacing desired. These threads then were saturated with cyanoacrylate, using a fine piece of wire to apply the glue along their lengths almost to the point they passed over the saw blades. Another wrapping of threads then was wound on at 90 degrees to the original threads. Cyanoacrylate again was applied to the top threads, and at the crossing points. It was painstaking work, but I was able to make some very fine grating material with this method. I used the jig to make all sorts of items for my models, including tiny railings, such as that around the stern balcony, and to make up the deadeye lanyard arrangements for the shrouds and backstays. One of the really fun things to work on for miniature models are the ship s boats. I am constantly attempting to find ways to make the tiniest boats as realistic as possible, and to make it relatively easy to make many nearly identical examples. I developed a system for making my boats that seems to work well, and have used it in a number of larger scale ship-in-lightbulb models. I started out by carving a solid wood blank of the hull shape, sanded and sealed multiple times. This sealing process is critical for later work with the blank. An extremely thin brass plate was epoxied on top of the blank,, and cut down to the outside edge of the top. A hole was then drilled 142 Vol. 57, No 3 AUTUMN 2012
Figure 16. through the brass and into the top of the blank, and the end of a toothpick glued into this hole. The boat blank was then mounted in a spring clip clothes pin so that the toothpick was holding the blank upside down. About one half of a cigarette paper was soaked in a half-and-half mixture of water and wood glue, then draped over the inverted blank. A wetted toothpick end was used to carefully flatten the paper onto the blank s outer surface down to the brass top. A rolling motion was used with the toothpick tip, and very light pressure, continually pressing the paper as tight to the surface as possible. Near the ends the paper was folded over to one side or the other and flattened. After leaving it to dry overnight, the hardened paper was cut off at the brass plate; the paper is fragile, so great care was taken during this process. A second piece of paper was then applied in the same manner, with the folds at the ends on the opposite sides from the first layer to minimize the additional thickness. For the BonHomme Richard boats, I used five layers of paper. After the last layer of paper had dried, the ends of the hull were sanded very lightly, to even out the overall thickness of the paper by removing the added thickness where it was folded over. The entire outside of the boat hull was then saturated with cyanoacrylate. This hardened the surface, stiffening and sealing the outside of the hull. I than very carefully pried the hull from the blank and saturated the interior surface with the same glue. The resulting hulls were very strong considering their thickness. Figure 15 shows the finished basic hulls for one model, along with the blanks used to make them. I added much detailing to the two boats for each of the models. All of it was made from various thicknesses of styrene plastic. Ribs were added, keels and thwarts for the upper boat, plus.005-inch thick styrene cap rails. I have not mentioned this previously, but I always make extras for almost everything when building my miniature models. The larger and more complex the parts, the fewer of them I make as extras, but they allow me to pick and choose the best examples for the final models. The ship s boats were no exception to this, though, due to their complexity, only a single extra of each boat was made. Figure 16 shows all four of the fin- NAUTICAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 143
Figure 17. ished smaller boats for my three BonHomme Richard models. The boats were hand painted before placing them on the models. The final bit of ditsy detail work was now begun, making the deadeye and lanyard parts for the shrouds and backstays. I wanted to include them in an attempt to make the models as realistic as possible. At this scale, though, one cannot make them as one might on a larger scale model, one has to fake them to some extent. I did this by using that grating jig I mentioned earlier. I started out by drawing up a paper pattern giving me the spacing between the deadeyes and placing it on top of the jig s bed. I punched the deadeyes out of cyanoacrylate-soaked construction paper, using the sharpened barrel of a veterinary hypodermic needle of the proper diameter. Dark brown thread was wrapped around the jig 144 in one direction, in closely spaced pairs, and saturated as noted previously. Then, drops of glue were applied to each deadeye location and, very carefully, deadeyes were picked up, using the very tip of a Number 11 blade, and set in position on the closely spaced threads, repeating the process for all the deadeyes. Then, a second layer of threads was wound on the jig over the top of the deadeyes. This last layer was saturated with glue, paying special attention to the points it pressed down on each deadeye. The threads were cut from the jig at the edges, and each deadeye and lanyard unit was trimmed so that its threads ended at the outside edge of each deadeye. It was tedious work, but the process yielded many nearly identical items, nicely detailed for their size. Figure 17 shows a number of the deadeye and lanyard pairs on the jig used to make them. To be continued. Vol. 57, No 3 AUTUMN 2012