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

I noticed that you have footrope and stirups. Footropes only came in use after 1640 and only on the lower masts. for the topsail after 1680 and the rest after 1700. Flemish horses only on the main mast started in 1670.
Are these the Mantua Sails for this ship? Nice job of rigging them on the yards.
The rigging plans for Mantua contain so many errors. I am building the "Le Soleil Royal" and the rigging plans are wrong in so many areas. If you want to see my comments on the corrections I have made so far, it is on the ships of scale web site.​
Hi Gary,

The sails are the kit I bought from Mantua. I am using the book by R. C. Anderson for the rigging. The SOS was built around 1637 and modified and redesigned several times after that. It mentions using footropes on the lower and top masts. There are some great websites with photos of completed models. I am taking some info from them as well.

Thanks,
Vince P. Ship-1
 
Hello Vince,
I must say, those sails look great and the stitching is very neat. Do you have a seamstress on board or did you buy them? On a side note, I could not help but see the Armadillos on your shelf so I must ask, are you by chance from Texas?

Raymond
 
ziled68 said:
Hello Vince,
I must say, those sails look great and the stitching is very neat. Do you have a seamstress on board or did you buy them? On a side note, I could not help but see the Armadillos on your shelf so I must ask, are you by chance from Texas?

Raymond
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Hi Raymond,
I do have a seamstress on board, but these sails came from Mantua. They had an extra sail kit and they did a very nice job of sewing them. I believe I paid about $100 for the sails. Mantua does have sail kits available for most of their kits.

We are not from Texas, but lived in Florida for 20 years. Armadillos are all over the place down there. My wife collects them and the whole house is full of statues, and wood carvings. The one you see in my photos is actually a stuffed armadillo that we bought in Virginia City here in Nevada.

Vince
 
Fore topgallant sail set and rigged. As you can see, the amount of rigging lines going down to the deck is getting impressive and I have not even set the royal yet. It is a good thing I increased the amount of belaying pins and cleats from what the kit recommended. There is no way there would have been enough and I may even get close anyway.

Vince P. Ship-1

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The fore royal yard mounted and rigged. After hanging and rigging the sail, comes a big part of the build. The mast will be set on the ship and all of the standing rigging for it and the bowsprit will be completed.

Vince P. Ship-1

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Completing the blocks and lashings on the bowsprit prior to starting the standing rigging and placing the foremast. There is quite a bit of rigging in this area and it will get congested, so I will have to figure out just what order to do each line in order to make access easier.

Vince P. Ship-1

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Rigging is not my favorite part of the build...however, it does add to the model charm and fascination. Your rigging, Vince is just great! You must have a lot of patience, though. :)
 
Jimsky said:
Rigging is not my favorite part of the build...however, it does add to the model charm and fascination. Your rigging, Vince is just great! You must have a lot of patience, though. :)
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Hi Jim,
It just so happens that the rigging is my favorite part. Strange huh. It does take more patience, like tying 2000 clove hitches for the rat lines. :oops:
Vince
 
I have started with the standing rigging. The lower forestays for the foremast and a hand rope along the bowsprit. The addition of the hand rope is a nice touch and came from some photos of a museum model that I saw. The heavy rope for the stays only comes in tan, so I colored it using black beeswax. That great idea came from my fellow modeler Denis Pink from New Zealand. He is known as DenisR on this site.

Vince P. Ship-1

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I don't think there anything strange about what your favorite part of the build is. it just a matter of preference. Some like to build from wood, while others from plastic. but they are both models!
 
The fore topmast stay rigged in place. I made some little rope coils for where it belays to the bowsprit. I took some suggestions from modelers of this forum for making the coils and they came out great. I never had much luck with them before. I mixed some wood glue and water to make it real thin. Then wound the coils on a tapered wood dowel, soaked them in the glue, peeled them off the dowel and let them dry. I put a weight on top of them to keep them flat . Perfect.

Vince P. Ship-1

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