How to Make a Ship in a Bottle
The cliché camera shot of a film about sailors shows a mariner's living room with a ship in a bottle on the mantle above the fire. Building your own traditional ship in a bottle is a challenging experience. It requires focus, attention to detail and an extremely steady hand.
Things You'll Need
- Bottle
- Ocean scenery
- Ship model
- Tweezers
- Needle
- Glue
- Long, thin paint brush
- Paint
Instructions
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1
Lay the scenery for your bottle inside first. Put the ocean on the floor of the bottle before you move on to Step 2.
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2
Assemble the hull of your ship. If you decide to do this outside of the bottle, you need to make sure it will fit through the neck fully assembled. If it won't fit, find a bottle where it does. Otherwise, use your tweezers and needle to assemble it through the neck in your bottle. Prop the ship up on top of your ocean scenery.
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3
Put the sails together with the masts, but rig some pulley's to keep them closed. Place the masts inside the bottle and use your tweezers to hold them upright on the deck of the ship while you glue them in place with the other hand.
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4
Paint the hull of the ship and any other part you're ambitious enough to try. Cork the bottle and start breathing again. The process is unnerving, but don't let it scare you. If you like detail work, you'll enjoy the finished product.
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Tips & Warnings
Try building other models in bottles too. There are spaceships, cars and airplanes. So long as all the pieces fit through the neck of the bottle, and once assembled it's smaller than the inside of the bottle, it works.
