The plans on the right were drawn from numerous photographs that I took when THEODORE TOO visited Windsor, Ontario in September 2001. Sadly, it was the week of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, so THEODORE TOO flew her flag at half mast and few families visited the vessel while she was in town. Still, the vessel looked great with her simple color scheme of black hull with a thin yellow stripe, deep maroon decks, tan cabins and mast, gray life boat and cranes, and bright red ball cap. Since crossing the US-Canadian border was not encouraged the week that the vessel was in town, THEODORE TOO made a special cruise close to the Detroit side of the river to let the American kids get a good look at her.

The hull of this model requires a lot of carving since there are hardly any straight lines on it. Both ends are rounded and the railing is quite high. I used a block of pine for the hull. The curve of the deck is so exaggerated that I ended up us ing a coping saw to carve the curve into the block of wood and then sanded it smooth. THEODORE's hull took a lot more work than I had anticipated when I started. After shaping the hull without the railing, I drilled three holes through its sides and then cut it in half lengthwise. The three holes were used to position three wooden dowels for alignment of the two halves when I reassembled the pieces in the bottle. I glued on a piece of acid free water color paper for the deck and trimmed it flush with the hull and painted it deep maroon. I made the railing out of the same thick paper and glued it on after I painted the inside tan. Where the paper met the hull, I glued on cotton twine to serve as a bumper. The entire outside of the hull is painted black except for a piece of thin yellow thread that I glued on just above the bumper.

The cabins were made of scraps of wood with acid-free paper glued on to provide a good base for the acrylic paint. The maindeck cabin is where the actual vessel is steered from. The three portholes in the front are the "bridge" windows. To get the port holes painted evenly, I use the pointed end of a bamboo skewer. I dip the tip into black paint and carefully touch the tip onto the cabin. This results in nicely round portholes. The bottom of the main cabin had to be sanded as a curve so that it would sit flush with the deck of the curved hull. I drilled two holes through the main cabin into the hull and positioned little bamboo dowels on the deck of the hull to help position the main cabin when it was installed in the bottle.

The "head" of THEODRE is a wooden dowel covered with acid free paper. The top of the head is cut at an angle so that the ball cap will fit on correctly. The nose is simply a dowel that has been rounded with sand paper and glued into a pre-drilled hole. The eyes are painted paper glued on. The ball cap is a wooden sphere cut in half. Wooden spheres are available at craft stores. I hand cut the wooden sphere in half, then glued on three pieces of thread to highlight the triangular sections of the cap. I glued this half ball onto a sheet of acid-free water-color paper and then cut around the base; this added the bill of the cap. Then I cut a small piece of paper for the "button" on top of the cap and glued it on where the threads intersected. The whole hat was painted red and the bill is rolled up a bit. The hat is simply glued on top of THEODORE's "head" after the tug is in the bottle. The cabin aft of THEODORE's head is made of wood just like the main cabin. The fore part of this second deck cabin was sanded into a concave shape so that it would fit flush with the dowel-head. I simply wrapped a piece of sand paper around a dowel and sanded the concave shape into the cabin. Both pieces, THEODORE's head and the cabin, were glued together.

The smoke stack presented its own problems. After trying various ways to form it, I ended up using a scrap piece of mahogany, cutting it to the general rectangular shape, then sanding it into an oval shape. I sanded it again to give it the proper overall shape and then cut out a right angle so that it could be glued onto the top cabin. This isn't a simple round or square stack like other vessels have. The stack is painted white with a black top, The logo for the stack can be found on the Theodore Tugboat website -- I simply hand-painted it on the stack. Using Crazy Glue, I glued on a piece of copper wire for the mast along with thinner pieces of wire for the supports. These were painted tan. I drilled a hole into the back of the stack and glued in a small piece of wire to serve as a flag pole for the hand-painted Canadian flag hung on black thread. The lifeboat is carved from a wooden dowel and the two cranes are made out of bamboo and paper. The lifeboat and cranes were glued onto the stack so that so that the assembly could be handled as one piece when inserted into the bottle.

I was now ready for the finishing touches. I made a small hatch for the rear deck. It's a small piece of wood with acid-free paper glued on top. The tires are pieces cut from a small black tube and glued on to the hull with Crazy Glue. The ladders that go from the main deck to the second deck are made of copper wire and Crazy Glue. The life rings were made by cutting slices from a small plastic tube and then painted orange. The water tank at the rear of the stack are dowels with thread glued on them to imitate the seams and they are painted white. Finally the running lights were from small pieces of paper bent into the shape of an "L". The inside is painted black and the outside is painted tan. I cut small glass beads with a wire cutter and take the best piece to use as the "light". Remember: green for starboard (right) and red for port (left). This completed the tug.

Putting the hull into the bottle made me think long and hard, but I finally came up with a simple solution for putting the split-hull inside. I wrapped masking tape around the ends of wooden dowels and pressed the tape against the side of the hull. Then I could manipulate the hull halves inside the bottle. I added glue and pressed them together. I then taped the dowels at the mouth of the bottle so that there would be pressure against the hull halves as they dried. I let them dry over night and the masking tape came off easily and the hull was solid.

I prepared the bottle earlier. As usual, I etched my name and date and the identity of the vessel onto the bottom of the bottle. I mixed glazing putty, boiled linseed oil and oil paint for the water and added it to the bottle after swishing some rubbing alcohol around inside the bottle. The alcohol prevents the "sea" from sticking to the glass, but the alcohol evaporates in a day or two and the "sea" than bonds with the glass. I made two ring-bill seagulls out of paper and glued them to the glass so they are flying over the tug and I also added a buoy to the scene too. After the vessel was included and everything dried, I used a hair drier to blow hot dry air into the bottle; corked it; and put sealing wax over the cork with an impression of an anchor. A Turk's head knot finished off the model.

I hope that you try THEODORE TOO. It's an excellent model to give to a child and everyone who sees my model simply starts smiling back at THEODORE.