Saturday, December 15, 2018

Slide of the month Extra - Ship in a Bottle


December 2018

Time to make: 3 hours

Original design: Mike Ward 

Find it here



Going only on a picture and knowing it was built in a small hand sanitizer bottle, I sought out as many instructional videos I could find on YouTube and How to sites. The journey was a fascinating odyssey as I learned how to make a ship in a bottle. The ship you see here is a variation of a fishing boat in the early 1900's before many converted to powered sailing.

The ship was carved from a piece of scrape maple and painted using craft paints. The mast is a wooden skewer and the hinge is a bent pin.  I used some standard methods of hinging the mast, pulling the mast and sails up using long threads coming out the mouth of the bottle. The water is tinted EasyCast epoxy that I very carefully poured into the bottle first and let setup a bit before putting in the ship. Once the epoxy was hard, I pulled up the mast and sails and while holding them tight, I added a drop of super glue to areas holding the thread. One of the most challenging aspects of this project was cutting the unnecessary threads. To do this, I took apart a multi blade razor blade head and taped it to a skewer. (If you do this wear gloves during the disassemble of the razor blade head and attachment to the skewer.) Very carefully I reached in and cut away the excess thread using my cutting tool. Next, to hide the screw top, I tied a woogle and placed it on the neck of the bottle then added the cork to seal the bottle. Finally I glued a wooden loop to the back of the bottle.

EDIT 10/31/2020:Thanks to John Alexy for reminding me where I saw this slide so I could give proper credit!

Sunday, December 2, 2018

Slide of the Month - Snowman



December 2018

Time to make: 2 hours

Boys Life "Slide of the Month"

December 1993, page 67

Original design: Jeff Springer






The calendar said fall but Mother Nature say "Hold my coffee". Holy cow, was there even a fall this year as snow came before the leaves were raked (or even off the tree).

A fun little chip slide made of maple and it's lightly sanded so the texture would still be there when I painted it with hobby paint. The nose is a dowel that was sanded into a cone shape to look like a carrot. Its finished up with a wooden loop and a couple of coats of poly.