Ready The Long Boats!

I stumbled across a new technique while digging through the photo's on the Yahoo forum.  I won't mention which one since SIB builders on the forum are a humble folk and don't usually take a liking to drawing attention to them selves and this blog is very public.  Did I just say take a liking?  Wow too much study for my up coming talk like a pirate day post.  Any way if you want to find the inspiration for this post dig into the yahoo forum photos and you'll find it.  As well as a lot of other inspiration, the yahoo forum files and photos have a lot of good stuff.  

So this post is all about turning a match stick...

...into a long boat small enough to fit on a dime.

Long boat's, dingy's, life boats what ever you want to call them they are a fun accessory to ships in bottles.  Trouble is making one small enough to look the part.  Here is a fairly quick and easy method.  I say fairly because lets face it your dealing with super small parts and it can get tricky.

First take your match stick and mark out the size you want your boat.

Then sand the end.  It is important to leave the boat on the match stick at this point since it gives you a place to hold on while you cut and sand.

Next use a dremel to cut the spaces between the seats.  I usually use three cuts but do what you think looks right.  

The end result should be something like this.

Once that's done sand down the middle seats so they're just a little bit lower.  This makes it look like they are seats in the bottom of the boat.  

Now get out a separate match stick.  This one will be used to create the side of the boat.  Use a razor blade to cut a paper thin strip of wood.  This may take a few tries.  

Cut out two small strips.  

Cover the whole side of the ship with glue and glue the strips onto the sides.  This is important since you'll be sanding on the boat and if they aren't glued tight they can come off.  Also glue the strip so it sicks up a little above the top of the match stick.  You want it to look like you can actually sit in it.  

Now sand the boat into shape.  This is one of the hardest parts since it is so small so be patient with it.  

It is finally time to cut the boat off the match stick and do the final touch up sanding.  You may need to add another strip of wood to the back as well to match the height of the sides.  

Once the boat is off the match stick it will be much harder to handle so try to do most of the sanding while it's on.  As far as the back of the boat goes I like to taper up the bottom and sides just a bit to give it a good shape.  Pretty much just make it look like a boat.  

Congratulations your done!  From here it can be painted stained or just glued onto the ship.  

Thank you for reading and have fun building!