Sovereign of the Seas Mantua 1:78 Greatly Enhanced - Vince P. [COMPLETED BUILD]

Constructing the cannon port doors and preparing the hull ports for hanging them. Once they are hung, the gun barrels are placed.
I only hang the doors and place the gun barrels on those ports that will get covered by the shrouds and anchors. The rest will placed at the very end of the build, as they tend to get in the way during the rigging and often get damaged along the way.

Vince P. Ship-1

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Placing the foremast chain wales. Note the little wood support brackets on the top of the chain wale. The kit does not include these, but they were proper to the ships of the period. I made them out of walnut strips from my stash.

Vince P. Ship-1

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The mizzen mast chain wale. The wales could not be placed flush with the hull because the decorative trim protrudes from the side of the hull. It was necessary to cut out grooves to accommodate this.

Vince P.

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For hoisting the lower yards, the kit uses jeers. According to "The English Treatise of Rigging 1625", ships of the period were using ties and halyards since jeers did not fully replace them until about 50 years later. The SOS however was built around 1637 and was in the transition period and actually used both. The halyards were fastened to the deck at the base of the mast with knights. The photos show the ones I made out of 6x6mm walnut stock.

Vince P. Ship-1

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Working on the rudder. The base plywood cutout was cracked and badly warped. I had to cut it and straighten it out and then splice it back together. Since it will be planked over with walnut strips, it will look fine.
The rudder has to be indexed with slots to accompany the hinges. The 1st. photo shows the dimensions for cutting them out.

I also made a change to the sternpost. I had it planked with horizontal strips like the instructions called for, and got a lot of feedback from other modelers that it should be planked vertically. I did some research and found ships with it planked both ways. On a real ship, the base stern post was constructed with heavy pieces of timber joined vertically. Some ships however planked over this horizontally to match the planking of the hull. The SOS however did not, so I changed it to match the rudder which runs vertically.

After the rudder was mounted I installed the stern gunport doors and guns. This should complete the stern.

Vince P. Ship-1

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Next up is the small boats. The kit does not include them but for sure the real ship had them. I bought 2 plank on frame kits from Model Expo that were very close to what the boats were probably like. Working with such small boats was more difficult than the ship itself. I added features such as water barrels, oars, oar posts, boat hooks, and fore and aft hoisting and mooring lines.

Vince P. Ship-1

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The boats were mounted on the main deck over the gratings in a double decker fashion. I also installed the capstan and lashed the arms to the deck beside it. The cradles for the boats were made from scrap lumber from the boat kits. The cradles were in 2 sets. One set for the bottom boat to the deck, and one set between the 2 boats.

Vince P. Ship-1

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It is now time to start on the masts. There are 9 crowsnests (mast tops), and 13 tree assemblies. After assembly, I finished them in a walnut stain. The floors of the tops did not have the reinforcement ribs, so I added them using 2x2mm walnut stock.

Shown is the crowsnest for the spritsail top mast. The others are similar but in different sizes.



Vince P. Ship-1

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