How to Build a Ship in a Bottle

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/magazine/how-to-build-a-ship-in-a-bottle.html

Version 0 of 1.

“Start with the right bottle,” says Greg Alvey, a builder and restorer of ships in bottles who has owned some 800 since he started collecting them in the late 1990s. You want clear glass without visible seams, flaws or raised lettering. The classic version is the Haig Dimple whisky bottle, with its short neck and flattened sides. “It can’t roll away,” Alvey says.

Beginners should consider constructing what’s known as a waterline ship, which sits atop a sea usually made of modeling clay or plumber’s putty, thereby saving you from having to make a full hull that needs to fit through the opening. For dimensions, find a plan online or in a book. Alvey suggests a schooner whose sails will seem impossibly tall inside the bottle. The point of this type of folk art is to evoke a sense of bewilderment in the viewer. “It’s a puzzle,” Alvey says. “How is it possible to get that in there?”

Shape a hull from soft basswood. Using toothpicks or wooden sticks from cotton swabs, make masts, booms and the spar extending from the vessel’s front prow, which is called the bowsprit. Attach your masts to the hull with a piece of wire that will serve as a hinge. Glue the sails (made from tea- or coffee-soaked paper for a seaworn-canvas look), the masts and booms and rig them all with strings that go through the bowsprit. Place a few drops of glue atop the putty sea inside your bottle. Loosen your rigging lines and bring the sails and masts down alongside the hull. Insert the boat into the bottle stern first, using a bent metal coat hanger or a surgeon’s tool called polypus forceps. Hoist the sails up by pulling your strings. Glue them to the bowsprit. Let the glue dry for a few days. Cork your bottle.

Some people refer to curious miniatures like these as “patience bottles,” but Alvey says the virtue doesn’t need to come naturally — “You can learn patience doing this.” Beginners should expect a level of exasperation when trying to drill holes in toothpicks or whittle miniature anchors. “When things start going wrong,” says Alvey, who once put a project aside for seven years, “it’s usually best just to walk away and come back when you’ve calmed down.”