Artem Popov

Some details of a sailing ship

Before we go further, let us explain the purpose of some sailboat gear. At first glance, it seems that the sailing ship is entangled in a completely unnecessary web of all kinds of ropes, cables and ropes. But that's not true. Over hundreds of years, the creators of sailing ships have perfected their design. It’s hard to believe, but in the sailboat’s rig there is not a single extra rope, not a single extra detail. Each tackle performs its own important role and has its own name. Don't be afraid, we won't talk about everyone. Let us dwell only on the gear, the names of which will often appear in the narrative. If you still come across an unfamiliar term, take a look at the maritime dictionary.

So, the Sailing Ship has:

Spar(pic. 1) and Rigging. There is a mast standing(pic. 2a) and running(pic. 2b). Of course, this is not all. However, it is these elements that most hinder (and sometimes, on the contrary, help) putting the ship in a bottle.

Rice. 1 Spar of a sailing ship.

Rice. 2a Standing rigging.

Rice. 2b Running rigging.

Ways to put a ship in a bottle

Every business has its own professional secrets. Craftsmen who create ships in bottles also have a lot of them. And of course the main one is how the ship model gets into a bottle with a narrow neck. An uninitiated person may come to mind the most fantastic ideas, starting with a bottle split in half and glued back together and ending with a team of trained ants hardworkingly assembling a ship under the strict guidance of the owner. We hasten to reassure you: everything is done honestly - through a narrow bottle neck.

The most surprising thing is that there are quite a few ways to place the model inside the bottle. Moreover, each master brings so much new to the seemingly long-known traditional method that it turns into something else - into a SECRET.

What is good about this or that method? It all depends on your experience, skill and patience. One does not require complex manipulations when assembling the model inside the bottle, but limits the master in choosing the design of the ship, not allowing him to work with complex models. The other, on the contrary, does not interfere with the choice of ship design, but greatly complicates the assembly inside the bottle.

We will describe several ways to assemble a sailing ship model. This will allow any reader, even a beginner, to choose an option according to their own abilities.

What is needed to produce such a toy? First, it's important to find a nice bottle. It is best to use a small transparent container for foreign whiskey, liqueur or vodka. It should be a non-standard shape, but still look like a classic bottle. If you assemble the ship and insert it inside in parts, then you need to prepare materials for “construction”. It is convenient to make the body for folding models from a wooden ruler; masts are suitable for toothpicks. It is better to make a sail from paper rather than fabric. To assemble the model you need durable glue. If you want to use a ready-made ship and assemble a bottle around it, you need to buy a suitable toy from a children's store. You can insert a boat into a bottle in different ways. Most of the methods for building a ship and placing it in a vessel are collected in a book called “Ships in Bottles.”

Method one

You need to make a folding boat, insert it inside the bottle in parts and glue it inside. Such a boat can be put in once and cannot be pulled out. First, the boat is assembled flat and placed in a bottle, then the masts are lifted by the ropes and the entire model is straightened. To successfully build a folding model, you need to hide a hinge at the base of the mast, this will allow you to fold it neatly. First, place the hull and keel inside and glue them together. After this, coat the bottom of the bottle with glue and secure the base of the ship in one place. Glue the right and left sides and the stern, then the masts. At the end of the work, attach the sails to the masts. Folding can be done in two ways: make the parts separately and assemble them inside, or make a self-expanding boat like an umbrella. A significant disadvantage of this method: it is unlikely that you will be able to make a very beautiful model of the ship yourself. Therefore, many people prefer to buy ready-made and put it inside, sawing the bottle.

Method two

You can saw off the bottom of the bottle, insert the toy and carefully glue the glass back. Most bottles almost always have raised circular marks on the bottom, so the “seam” will not be noticeable.

Method three

When making souvenirs, the boats are inserted inside during the glass blowing process. First, they make a bottle with a wide neck, then insert the vessel inside and change the shape of the neck to a narrower one.

What types of ships are there?

A clipper is a small, fast ship that is compared to a cloud flying over the waves. It was he who romanticized the image of a fisherman.
A sloop is a combat sailing ship of the British Navy.
Tartana is a Mediterranean fishing boat with a triangular sail.
Felucca is a small deck merchant ship.
Shebeka is a three-masted armed ship with a triangular sail.
The Luger was a small English cargo ship that was used to transport goods across the English Channel.
A brig is a two-masted ship with straight and oblique sails. Often mentioned in romantic literature about the sea. In Russia, brigs were actively used during the Russian-Turkish War.

Few people know that building model ships is a very ancient art. The history of ship modeling goes back thousands of years. What about ships in bottles? It is believed that this art originated in Europe in the 17th - 18th centuries. It is from this time that models of ships in bottles, stored in some European museums, date back. At that time, not only models of ships were placed in bottles, but also scenes on religious and everyday themes. Today, building ships in bottles is a popular hobby all over the world.

Most likely, this hobby appeared during the period of great geographical discoveries of famous navigators. Sailing ships often found themselves in “dead calm”, and in order to somehow combat melancholy and boredom, the sailors began to make small models of sailing ships and somehow place them in empty bottles, there is more than enough such goodness on the ship. In addition to ships, skilled craftsmen created religious scenes, scenes from life, various mechanisms and much more in bottles. Perhaps this type of creativity appeared even earlier than ships in bottles themselves. However, the term “ships in bottles” itself should include everything that a person manages to build in a bottle through a narrow neck.

Typically, bottled models are divided into three main types:

Ships in bottles. The bottle contains a model of the ship. The main focus in such models is on recreating the details as accurately as possible. The model inside the bottle can rest on a special stand or “float” on the sea surface, skillfully made by a master.

Dioramas. Dioramas depict scenes from life (often maritime). It could be a seaport with a large city on the shore and ships in the roadstead, a naval battle, a sinking ship and much more.

Curiosities. This group includes everything that the master’s wild imagination gives birth to. These are scenes from biblical life, various mills, mechanisms, figures of people, cars, airplanes - in general, everything that cannot be called a ship.

Despite the rapid development of technology, the construction of ships in bottles remains, as many years ago, a purely manual task. Achieving success requires great patience and skill. And just like many years ago, the model surprises viewers. This is why many people are passionate about building ships in bottles, using modern materials and never tired of coming up with new assembly secrets.

Most often, a sailing ship is placed in a bottle. This is due to the fact that the design feature of the sailboat makes it easier to fit into the bottle. There are many ways to put a ship in a bottle. So how does a ship model end up in a bottle with a narrow neck? An uninitiated person may come to mind the most fantastic ideas, starting with a bottle split in half and glued back together and ending with a team of trained ants hardworkingly assembling a ship under the strict guidance of the owner. in fact, everything is done honestly - through a narrow bottle neck.

The most surprising thing is that there are quite a few ways to place the model inside the bottle. Moreover, each master brings so much new to the seemingly long-known traditional method that it turns into something else - into a SECRET.

I'll tell you about the most common method among modellers. The work does not require complex tools and skills. All you need is accuracy and patience. The best place to start is by making the body of the model. It is cut out of wood, painted in the desired color, masts, spars, rigging and all the necessary parts are installed. Don't be alarmed, all this work needs to be done on a workbench and not inside the bottle. It is only necessary to check from time to time during operation that the fully equipped model fits freely into the neck of the bottle. Now let's move on to the masts, because they are where the secret lies. At their base, the masts have a miniature hinge that allows them to easily fold along the ship's hull.

The hinge should be as little noticeable as possible. That is why the main efforts should be directed to finding a way to hide the hinge from the eyes of the uninitiated. You can, for example, paint the mast, along with the hinge, in a dark color or put a small piece of tube on the mast, which, moving freely, will close the hinge after the mast takes a vertical position. Having installed the mast in place, attach the shrouds and forduns. A sailboat, with its masts folded back, easily fits into the neck of a bottle! However, the stays, if secured tightly, will prevent the masts from folding back. To avoid this, the lower ends of the stays are not permanently glued or cut, but are left long and, passing through specially prepared holes (on the bowsprit or on the deck of the model), are brought out of the bottle. Of course, the stays must be long enough so that by pulling them, the masts can be installed in a vertical position. These threads are cut, having previously secured them with drops of glue, at the very end of the work.

We must not forget about the sails, and before placing the ship in the bottle, you need to attach the sails, along with the yards, braces, sheets, and the rest of the running rigging. For a novice modeler, for his first job, it is better to choose a simple schooner with only oblique sails. Then installing the sails and assembling the ship in a bottle itself will not cause any particular difficulties. Things are more complicated with sailboats carrying a large number of straight sails. After all the tackle is stretched and secured with drops of glue, the excess threads are cut and removed. The model is almost ready, all that remains is to secure the ship's hull inside the bottle. Many modelers like to depict the sea by pouring tinted epoxy resin into a bottle, or imitate waves using various plastic materials. “Sea” allows you to make the model’s hull only up to the waterline, which reduces its dimensions and makes it easier to penetrate the bottle. However, when building an exact copy of a ship, especially a modern one, it is important to also show the underwater part of the model. To do this, the model must be installed on a special stand, glued inside the bottle directly to the glass. The simplest stand can be a wooden plank with small pins for precise fixation of the ship's hull. That's all. Isn't it quite simple? The main advantage of the traditional method is, of course, its simplicity - the entire model is assembled on a desktop, which does not require complex manipulations inside the bottle.

Model of the Russian battleship "Slava Ekaterina" before "bubbling". Note the “pigtail” of the rigging in the bowsprit area. Thanks to it, the sailboat's rigging is stretched inside the bottle like strings

First, the lower part of the body is placed into the bottle

The body is glued to the stand inside the bottle

The most important part is that the masts on the deck fold neatly back

Jewelry work - masts with sails squeeze through the neck one millimeter at a time

Masts are most often broken at this stage

Subsequent assembly steps

Ready! No need to glue the bottom of the bottle

"Azov" - perhaps the best sailboat model in a bottle in all of Europe

“This art is five hundred years old,” says Lev Aleshin, the most eminent ship modeler in Russia and an international judge, “and it originated in the era of great geographical discoveries. The sailing ship would sometimes be calm for weeks, and in order to somehow combat boredom, the sailors made models, intricately placing them in empty bottles, fortunately there was no shortage of the latter on the drifting ships.”

Through the neck

In general terms, the technology for making a sailboat in a bottle is quite simple. First, the model is built on the table, taking into account further division and assembly and disassembly. After this, the sailboat is disassembled and the final assembly inside the bottle begins using a special tool. This very tool is a proprietary know-how that masters are not willing to share. In its modern interpretation, it is usually a flexible shaft with a collet at the end. And long medical needles are used to apply microscopic drops of glue. The assembly of the model itself begins with the element furthest from the neck, so that during the manufacturing process the old parts do not obscure the newly installed ones. The longer and narrower the bottle neck, the more fully the volume of the bottle is filled with the model, the more elements in the design of the sailboat - the higher the model is valued both in competitions and at auctions. If the assembled hull of a sailboat passes through the neck, such a model is worthless, says Aleshin.

The problem for Russian modellers is the poor surface of domestic bottles. It distorts the details of the sailboat. With the advent of imported drinks on our market, the situation has not improved much. Foreign craftsmen prefer special bottles, made to order from optical glass, sometimes rivaling light bulbs in wall thickness.

Therefore, Vladislav Babkin, the author of the Azov sailing ship model, placed it in a laboratory bottle. Lev Aleshin, evaluating the model, claims that at the next European Championship “Azov” will fight for 12th place. Such models are built extremely rarely in the world, so even holding them in your hands is a great success. Filming the process of their production is simply an unrealistic task for a magazine: “Azov,” for example, took more than six months to build.

Aerobatics

Anyone who often uses the Moscow metro has probably noticed advertisements for “Bouquet of Moldova” vermouth on the walls of the cars. On it, in an empty wine bottle, is a beautifully crafted model of a sailing ship. Finding a master was not difficult: in Moscow, 34 people can do such things. Vsevolod Gladilin assembled a sailboat in a bottle especially for Popular Mechanics, revealing some professional secrets.

“There are at least 14 basic technologies for assembling, or, in professional jargon, “bubbling” a model into a bottle,” says Gladilin. “Each master has his own.” Submarines, for example, are cut into slices and then assembled inside the bottle, carefully sealing the seams. But the highest aerobatics are sailboats. Ships completely assembled from the smallest parts inside a bottle are very rare due to the months-long assembly process. A more widespread technology involves tilting the masts of a sailboat back to make it easier to pass through the bottleneck. The main trick of this scheme is the hinges with which the masts are attached to the deck. The second know-how is the gear used to lift the masts inside the bottle. In addition to performing the lifting function, the gear must correspond to the actual rigging. On a well-made sailboat, the rigging is taut like a string—only then is the feeling of wind in a bottle created.

If the masts can be raised at the same time, great. On complex models this is not always possible - then the masts are raised slowly and one by one. After tensioning the rigging, all the threads on the bowsprit are cut with a special wire with a piece of blade attached to the end. After which the final finishing of the ship begins: with the finest tweezers, guns, boats, pennants and other small parts are installed on glue. The main thing is not to get glue on the inside of the bottle, then the work is considered a waste.

It usually takes an experienced craftsman about a week to make a good commercial (which can be bought in showrooms) sailboat. No master will fully reveal all his secrets. But none of the Russian craftsmen saw off the bottoms of bottles. Popular Mechanics guarantees this.