Klingon D7 cruiser

March 10th, 2024 - Here we are at the kitchen sink for the traditional parts wash and sprue inspection!
Everything has been soaped up, rubbed down, and rinsed off in warm water, so let's have a look at the parts. 

March 10th, 2024 - Everything in the box in one photo. What immediately strikes me is the curved metal rod for the dome base. Earlier versions of this kit had a chunky plastic stand with a base shaped like the Klingon symbol. This one is fun because it attaches to the rear of the model, instead of into its belly. 

March 10th, 2024 - Chrome parts! In every video of this kit that I've seen, the modeler cleans the chrome finish off and paints it with a silver or aluminium paint. I don't want to do that because it seems like a lot of fuss, I'd have to buy the chemicals to clean off the chrome, and buy the aluminium paint, and oy... Plus, chrome parts - fun! I will put a strong black wash on them to add some depth, but that's it.  

March 10th, 2024 - Nacelle parts, bridge parts, triangular grilles for making the Klingon version, and a tube to adapt the dome base to the rod. 

March 10th, 2024 - The smooth Romulan triangles and the engineering section that sits on top of the hull. (Looks like a Klingon Thule box). 😄 

March 10th, 2024 - The neck and the head. 

March 10th, 2024 - Nacelles. 

March 10th, 2024 - A tiny, clear, green part that I later found out sits inside the bridge dome part and pokes out the top - these are running lights of some kind, I suppose. 

March 10th, 2024 - The dome base and the 'Captain Hook' display rod. 

March 10th, 2024 - Look at those gorgeous, colourful decals! My mouth is watering just looking at them. I really, really want to build this kit again as a Romulan Battle Cruiser! 

March 10th, 2024 - Thinking about the road ahead and wanting to save myself some trouble (given all the paint troubles I had with my previous build, the Romulan Warbird), I begin by looking at the reference photos again and colouring the instruction sheet green and gray. Turns out that the kit is pretty much green below, grey up top.  

March 10th, 2024 - Looking more closely at the parts as I begin to assemble the engineering section, I'm fascinated to see that some of the parts have their part numbers on the part itself! I also see a massive amount of flashing, on the sprues and around the edges of some of the parts too. Everything is pretty easily removed just with my thumbnail though, or the back of a knife blade. 

March 10th, 2024 - I've decided that this time I will really try hard to assemble and then paint, mainly because there are lots of gaps in the fit of this kit and puttying the gaps before painting makes the most sense. Plus, I really need to get better at puttying and sanding. 😄

To that end, I've put the engineering section together, as well as the so-called boom - the neck with the bridge and officers' quarters. Now, this is three parts, so far: the two halves of the boom, plus a small torpedo tube that fits into the front of the bulb shape. What you do is lay the torpedo tube into a little slot in the bulb, lining it up with the hole cut in the front of the bulb. Then you attach the other half of the boom, trapping the torpedo tube into place. 

March 11th, 2024 - Well, as you can see in this picture and the last, something happened - I think maybe the tube moved out of place at some point as I was squeezing the two boom halves together, and this caused the bulb part to not fit together properly. Argh!

The thing is, I didn't realize that it was the tube that had done this, and just assumed it was a dodgy fit. Anyway, fair enough, I wanted to practice puttying, so this was a kind of bonus I suppose. 😄 

March 12th, 2024 - Here we are with Vallejo White Primer on most of the parts. I had a strategy here, about painting all the green parts and then all the grey parts, but my plans evolved a little, to the point that I decided to assemble more of the ship before painting. But puttying on top of the primer is okay I suppose. 

March 13th, 2024 - Here's the 'vomit green' as I call it - last seen decorating the interior walls of the Galileo shuttlecraft. 😄 The light washes the green out, but it is there. 

March 14th, 2024 - At some point though, I thought I should reinforce the connection of the boom to the main hull. This is a snap-fix kit, and so far the parts I've assembled have had good, tight fits. The engineering section, for example, went together really nicely, and I only used a bit of Tamiya Extra Thin on the pegs as insurance.

The end of the boom forms a tab and a clip, designed so that you poke the tab into the square hole in the main, lower hull piece, and then jam the clippy part in too. Partial dry fits seemed to indicate that this would be a very secure connection, but I decided to Dremel a small hole into the boom, squeeze in some hot glue, and then slide in a longish nail. 

March 15th, 2024 - I then clipped the boom into the hole, as it was designed to be. Well, I say that, but I had to file down the clippy part on the end of the boom to get it to fit without stressing the hull part. Very tight fit! Anyway, I then blobbed out a load of hot glue to secure the nail to the hull part.

This proves to be a bit of a bad move when I try to put the two big hull parts together, because the end of the nail stops the hull parts closing together properly (it's the torpedo tube all over again). 😄  

March 15th, 2024 - To fix the nail situation, I can Dremel out some of the plastic of the engineering section, which we see here attached to the hull upper, and already puttied around the join. (For that, I blobbed out putty onto a dish and then poked it around the seams with a kebab stick). 

March 15th, 2024 - Looking underneath, the engineering section is already recessed somewhat, so I think that eliminating those two parallel tabs in the middle there will make enough room to accommodate that nail head. 

March 15th, 2024 - Here we see the boom-hull join taped off and ready for puttying. It's a strong join now, but whatever you do, that gap will probably need some putty. 

March 16th, 2024 - Munch! I used a generic grinding wheel to scour away those tabs in the middle, which - I realised only after I'd done this - were there to give the end of the display rod something to sink into. 😄  

March 16th, 2024 - I then did a test-eyeballing and on a whim decided to try and grind through the end of the nail - and it worked! 😄 It was super fun too, with sparks flying around everywhere. Kind of made up for my short-sightedness in grinding off those tabs. 😄 

March 16th, 2024 - I snapped the two hull halves together without any glue. Again, super tight fit of the pegs and receiving tubes. But, as you can see... 

March 16th, 2024 - ...the general fit around the edges is not great. Putty, putty, putty! 

March 16th, 2024 - I glued the rear corners and the tabs with some nice thick Revell Contacta gel glue, just to help it along. 

March 17th, 2024 - So I am now committed to the puttying and sanding phase of this build. It's probably the simplest kit in terms of building and painting that I'll ever do, and so why rush? It has lots of great straight edges and crazy seams that can be fixed, so that's what I'm going to do!

I started to fill the gaps this evening using the Vallejo Acrylic putty. Now, this is the second tube I've had of this stuff. The first one actually was a metal foil tube with a long, slim, plastic nozzle that made squirting the putty into tight gaps very easy. But when that ran out and I re-ordered it (using the same product code), it arrived in a typical Vallejo paint pot. Under the cap there is a kind of nozzle-shaped applicator, but it's quite clumsy in comparison.

So I was sitting there and trying to squeeze some out onto a dish, to apply it with a kebab stick. And suddenly - GLOOMPH!! The pressure made the nozzle burst off and a big blob of putty jump out. 😄 

March 17th, 2024 - Well, as best as I can, really. I've done some puttying on the nacelles, which I didn't really talk about much before now. Basically, the first nacelle didn't go together very well, mainly because I thought I could do it better by putting the large square chrome panel in place first, then attaching the second half. Apart from that, the seams just didn't seem to meet up very nicely, and the end cap didn't sit right either.

In contrast, the second nacelle ended up being about a 90% good, tight, fit, so I don't know really. Anyway, they could both do with a bit of filling, so here we go. 

March 17th, 2024 - The fact that I've primed everything already is, I feel, kind of small compared to the better end result I could achieve by taking my time and filling up the gaps nicely. 

March 17th, 2024 - One thing I also did was glue in the grilles for the Klingon version to the sides of the hull. Another nice, strong fit, but with a big gap all around. Here you see them masked until I'm done painting everything. 

March 17th, 2024 - Lotta fancy talk, I know. 😄 We'll see how it goes. 

March 19th, 2024 - Okay, so I did two days of puttying and sanding, mostly around the edges of the main hull. I don't know how good the end result will be, but I do think that taking my time with the whole process was super instructive and helpful. I started to get a much better feel for how much putty to apply and how hard to sand, and so on. I also used more masking tape to protect from unwanted mess - a lesson I learned on that Romulan Warbird. 😄 Anyway, after all of that I wrapped the whole thing in Citadel White primer - it almost glows under the phone camera flash. 😄

I also did a second coat of vomit green on the nacelles and sprayed the Tamiya AS-7 Neutral Grey (USAAF) on the two bridge halves. Here you can also see where, this evening, I masked the upper bridge half and sprayed the domes green. 

March 21st, 2024 - This morning I sprayed the AS-29 all over the neck and belly of the little beast. I also assembled the 'head' and attached it to the neck. The chrome parts that fit either side of the head piece had a really nice tight fit, no problem at all. The two halves of the head then went together really nicely too, except for one corner. I slipped some Tamiya Extra Thin (ahaha) into the gap and then clamped it shut. 

March 21st, 2024 - It occurs to me, however, that painting and assembling the head means that I never had a chance to sand down the seam. 😄 Oh well. Perhaps I am a little bit careless because I have a kind of fundamental dislike for the 1:1000 scale. Really, it's all the smaller scales I'm not crazy about. Weird maybe, but I'm working on finding the love for them. 😄 

March 22nd, 2024 - Eh, so actually keeping this kind of diary here on Scalemates, and thinking about what I was saying about taking my time, encouraged me to go back and sand that seam down. 😄 I didn't do it too much and I didn't putty it, buuut, it does look a bit better. Here we are, taped up and ready for more paint.  

March 23rd, 2024 - With the head and neck as good as they're going to get (meaning, I'm tired of futzing with them), it's time to paint the body! Here it is masked up for the Tamiya AS-7 Neutral Grey (USAAF).  

March 24th, 2024 - Through over-spraying I ended up creating a couple of blobs of paint, which I then sanded down and touched up. Tomorrow morning I'll remove the bandages and see about gluing the nacelles on, and then... gloss, decals, gloss, matt, bingo! 

March 25th, 2024 - Woo hoo, I went mad and jammed the nacelles on! Here she is, sitting on her stand on the cool hooky display rod. 😄

When I say "jammed", I really mean it too. Like every other part in this snap-fix kit, the nacelles were super a super tight fit, and I didn't bother with glue tbh. I also took the opportunity to attach the rest of the chrome parts. 

March 25th, 2024 - As tight as that nacelle fit was though, there is still a visible gap. 

March 25th, 2024 - Here I've taped the gap up, both sides... 

March 25th, 2024 - ...and applied the ol' Vallejo Acrylic putty. After about 400 years, it will be dry enough to gently sand down. Tiny bit of paint, let it all dry finally, and *then* gloss, decals, gloss, matt, bingo! 

March 27th, 2024 - So, here we are, 2 days later, bandages off. My filling and sanding here is still not perfect, but even as such it's 100x better than leaving those mad gaps. 

March 28th, 2024 - As much as I could see the imperfectness of my puttying work unpainted, it's only painted that I can really see where I should have gone over it again. I've made a mental note of this though. Learning every day! 😄  

April 4th, 2024 - A long Easter weekend has just passed, during most of which I didn't have much time for modelling. But I did manage to gloss and do some black ink washes on the details, including the chrome parts, and yesterday evening I put the decals on too. There are three window decals for the bridge/head; two tiny window decals for the neck; three logos (one on the upper side of the port wing, one on the lower side of the starboard wing, and one on the Thule Box 😄), and two 'words' (one for each nacelle pylon). You also get a bunch of tiny arrows and red rectangles that go in various places. tbh I did not bother with most of them, applying only two of the red ones - above the torpedo tube, and behind the tallest blob on the bridge part.

All decals went on perfectly, without breaks or any weirdness. Putting the symmetrical window decals on the 'bulb' part of the head was a bit tricky, but if you line them up just either side of where the seam between the two neck halves is, you should be fine. Plus, of course, some Micro Sol or similar product to help them lie flat. As a final touch, I blobbed some Vallejo Orange Fire (72.008) into the impulse engine recess, and some Vallejo Bloody Red (72.010) into the torpedo tube, 

April 4th, 2024 - After all of that, I sprayed gloss over the decals and weathered parts, and then late this evening, I gently scratched off some of the decals where my weathering hits them.

As always, most of my weathering is there to cover up mistakes. 😄 In this case, some obvious paint lines from the edge of the masking tape from when I puttied the wings. Now, they look kind of like phaser burns. 😄 Anyway, tomorrow afternoon I can put the matt varnish on and voila, it will all be done! 

April 6th, 2024 - Final beauty shots (1/7) - Another typically overcast Spring day here in Poland, although we have been having some nice sunny days too. Just not today. 😄 

April 6th, 2024 - Final beauty shots (2/7) - I found a black blanket in the back of the car; gave it a wash and hung it over a bench in the back garden, and here we are. Outer space! 😄 

April 6th, 2024 - Final beauty shots (3/7) - I thought and talked a lot in this build about taking more time to putty properly and file things down, and try to eliminate the seams. I think that on the neck I did that quite well, and the gap between the wings, whilst not that smooth, is also not too bad. But I can see from the photos that the head/bridge part could have done with some more work in that department. 

April 6th, 2024 - Final beauty shots (4/7) - The weathering - this is my second use of crayons to apply something like weathering, and this time I mixed in some of the Vallejo black wash on some of those marks. Not a very subtle effect really, and perhaps a bit too much brown, making them look rusty. But, to my eyes it's not displeasing or too out of place on this 'vintage' Klingon D7. 😄 Seems almost appropriate really. 😄 

April 6th, 2024 - Final beauty shots (5/7) - I like how that orange turned out. It's kind of a surprising, hidden burst of colour. 

April 6th, 2024 - Final beauty shots (6/7) - The little odd-shaped squares on those large chrome wing parts should be painted gold, but I decided to skip that. I could always go back and dab some on, but, eh. Maybe one day.  

April 6th, 2024 - Final beauty shots (7/7) - Overall, I think that it's a very nice kit. Everything fits together very securely, with few pain points. Of them, the biggest was probably the alignment of the torpedo tube inside the head, so watch out for that. I think the best plan there is to line it up properly in one half of the head-neck, then glue it in so it doesn't move around, and *then* attach the second half.

I also like this kit because it's very low on resources - 2 colours of paint, plus a bit of red and/or orange for the engines and torpedo tube, and that's it. And again, it is a very good kit for practicing puttying and sanding, so that's a nice bonus.

Long life and prosperity, Scalemates! See you next time!