Sovereign of the Sea - Mantua vs Sergal

[cole]

Good morning, 

 

I would like to get advice from the group, I am thinking of building the Sovereign of the Sea. I would consider myself an advanced builder as I have built 17 ships with 3 of them being scratch builds. Just finished the Caldercraft HMS Agamemnon. 

 

I would like to get anyone's feedback on which route I should take:

 

1. Build the Mantua Sovereign of the sea, I have built the Mantua HMS Victory and Constitution. Don't mind Mantua just worried with all the carvings on the Sovereign that they may be to "bulky" and not look realistic. 

 

2. Build the Sergal Sovereign of the Sea, I built the Sergal Victory (Actually Panart, are they not the same?) 

 

3. The most ambitious plan, Buy Mckays book on the Sovereign build the ship from scratch.....The problem is all the carvings, that is above my skill level. Maybe buy a 3D printer and somehow printout the carvings (maybe I am dreaming).

 

Anyway, if you have built either kit let me know your thoughts. If you are into 3D printing also let me know how steep the learning curve is and would printing out that many decorations even be feasible. 

 

Thanks, Cole

[VTHokiEE]

I don’t have any first hand experience to offer but have you looked at the following build log at all:

 

 

Your query made me think of it as the builder went out of their way to find a specific version due to the decorations. If you’re concerned about the decorations maybe see if there are any models on shapeways (or maybe thingiverse?) that might work for either kit.

 

Good luck!

[ccoyle]

A big consideration is the question of whether you want a historically accurate model or just an awesome-looking one. Neither of the two kits you mentioned is historically accurate, particularly with regard to the stern carvings -- compare images of the kit sterns to the SoS stern seen in the well-known Peter Pett painting. Don Dressel spent ten years building his SoS based on (if I recall correctly) the Mantua kit, but basically using only the hull formers and scratch-building everything else. As I recall, besides the carvings there were significant issues with the armament and rigging.

 

 

[cole]

Thanks for the replies both are helpful! I will look at the build log. 

 

Cheers, Cole