U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit) AMT 1:537

December 28, 2022 - Hello hello! So, after a wee break from modelling for the Christmas and New Year 2022>2023, I'm back at my bench. Technically, I started this one in the last days of December 2022. I think that one of the exciting things about finishing a kit is planning your next one! It was either this or the Excelsior, but I feel like I want to stay in the 'big-saucer' movie-era of 1:650 kits, and build a companion for my lonely Reliant. 😄 

December 28, 2022 - The traditional washing and inspection of the parts. As stated in the album and project descriptions, I won't be using any third-party detailed parts, just using what came in the box. I'm sure that I will build another one of these one day, and then I'll go to town on it. But, I will be lighting this one, which means thinning the plastic behind the inboard nacelle grilles and the deflector dish too. So that will be a new and exciting experience for me. XD 

December 28, 2022 - I'm excited to build this kit again, because it was the last kit I built years ago, as a teenager. Also because, for a Trek modeller, it's just an exciting kit to build. I imagine that it's like a Spitfire or a Panzer for aircraft and armour builders - a primal design that excites just thinking about it. Plus, this moulding feels nice and thick and strong. In my research for this kit, I have seen that lots of people putty over the moulded-in panelling (the so-called Aztecing), in order to apply aftermarket Aztec decals. That's going a bit far for my taste and skill, so again -- fingers crossed, this will be a nice, simple job. 😄 

January 2nd, 2023 - Started by drilling out the windows in the neck and engineering hull, and tidying the window holes in the saucer halves. I then taped over the gluable edges and now I'm going to go downstairs to the garage and lay in some Vallejo Black Primer on the insides. 

January 4th, 2023 - One coat of Vallejo Black Primer was not quite enough, so I did two, and also a coat of Citadel Grey Seer on the outside (the light on my phone makes it look white, but it is indeed grey). Fingers crossed, we should have near-total light blocking on the neck and 2ndry hull now. 

January 6th, 2023 - I spent a couple of days masking off other bits and pieces and doing some preparatory work. Today I sat down to glue the window inserts into the saucer. While I had the saucer out, I did a test fit of the bridge dome and planetary sensors. Wow! It's shocking how badly they line up. The default bridge dome has two tabs, one large, one small (weirdly), and nesting the dome into its tabs reveals how off centre the placement is. Look at the difference from port to starboard! 😄 

January 6th, 2023 - These are the tabs. I ended up filing them off completely. Fingers crossed we won't get a repeat of my Reliant bridge dome catastrophe! 😄 

January 6th, 2023 - Underneath, things are bad too. The pins that line up the sensor to the saucer (gap A) are wider than the holes they should poke into (gap B). Again, filing off the pins is the easy solution. I'm just glad I test fit everything before getting there with glue all over the place and a load of wonky domes. 😄  

January 6th, 2023 - The next little job was the now traditional first-gluing moment! In other words, gluing the back of the bridge module onto the actual bridge module. That's the little semi-triangular piece with the docking port on it. Made me smile when I realized that this might always be the first thing I glue on movie-era ships. 🙂 

January 6th, 2023 - Aaaand finally today, I glued the window inserts into the saucer rim. Again, none of them fit seamlessly. I'm not upset about any of these things, because I feel like some amount of bad fitting is to be expected with any kit. The dome placement was surprising, but I can see how these window inserts not filling up their holes completely could be an understandable thing. Anyway, I will have to putty the gaps tomorrow I suppose. 

January 8th, 2023 - So, yesterday I puttied the gaps around the window inserts using Tamiya White. Inside, I put a bead of Vallejo Acrylic putty around the seams of the inserts too, to help with the light blocking there. A helpful modeller in the Trek modelling Facebook group I'm in advised me that the saucer is particularly prone to leaks, so I'm being extra careful here. I also sprayed the inside of the neck, engineering hull, and pylon connection plates with Humbrol Silver 191. With two coats of black and one coat of silver inside, and one coat of grey on the outside, all parts passed the light blocking test! 

January 8th, 2023 - Alright, I took all those aforementioned parts off the sprue and started test fitting everything together. (In this photo you can see the light-blocked bridge dome and planetary sensor wedging the engineering hull upright). 😄 So here are the two hull halves with the pylon plates just sitting together, chilling out. At this point, I discovered the source of the Mysterious Broken-off Triangle of Plastic that was floating around inside one of the bags... 😄 Fortunately I still have it. 😄 But oh boy... Not a sight anyone wants to see really. 😄 

January 8th, 2023 - As they say, "the adventure continues!" Let's see what happens when we check the fit of the deflector dish. So, here we see the secondary hull, with two 'holes' at east and west and a 'blob' at the south position. The deflector dish piece, shaped like a cup, has three 'blobs' at east, west, and south that line up with those three shapes. 

January 8th, 2023 - Now we see the actual deflector dish, and we see that is has two, like, 'snap-fit' pegs. (I goofed up and took the photo after already snipping one off). Anyway, it looks like the idea is that you could glue the rim and then 'snap-fit' the dish to the hull in those holes at east and west. Buuuuuut, as you can also see, those pegs are not aligned. However, inside the rim of the hull halves we can see a kind of small, 2 mm groove on opposite sides of the 'holes', implying that you poke the deflector dish in at an angle, and then turn the array to 'lock' it in place. Buuuuut, in practice it just does not work. It's a very bad fit and if you glued the dish in place, it would be crooked and you'd have a huge, crescent-shaped gap on one side. So, out came the sprue cutters and the file.

Note: See A.J. Madison's excellent comment below for the actual explanation of all these pegs and slots! 

January 8th, 2023 - Last thing today (I'll continue light-blocking this evening, for the deflector dish, the fan-tail doors, and the stand peg cut-out-thing), I used the Dremel to file down the inside of the deflector dish, to help the light out a bit more. I mean, in my imagination this was a beautifully gradiated circle that would create a smooth, diffused effect. In reality of course, it's a horrible mess. 😄 But, it's more even than it looks. 🙂 

January 12th, 2023 - So I finished blocking and priming all the little bits and pieces. Only the nacelles, pylons, and saucer are unpainted. And as I'm working on this thing, and looking at more videos and stuff, I'm seeing that the order of assembly given in the instructions is not exactly what I'm going to need to do. This is because a) I need to put a little framework inside that will hold the LED tape, and b) thanks to the absolutely brilliant million-part YouTube series by Motion Picture Miniatures, I realized (like, Duh!) that it would be a GREAT idea to reinforce the pylons' connection to the hull. Seriously, the tabs on those pylons are tiny and don't look that solid, especially if I want them to hold up nacelles full of wires and LEDs. 😄 Sooo, here I'm carving up a little block of some kind of construction foam - it's a chunk of tile that builders use to insulate building walls. 

January 12th, 2023 - Anyway, I'm going to do like this YouTube guy* does, and reinforce the pylon connection. For that purpose, I looked and I looked and I looked... and finally I hit upon some old electric jigsaw blades! I'll need to modify the pylon halves a bit, but not too much. The idea is (acc. to the YouTube vids I saw), to poke them out the bottom and into a blob of modelling or plumbers' putty. In this way, we end up with pylons and upper engineering hull halves all fixed together into one new sub-assembly, which then glues onto the top of our main, light-filled hull. That's the plan anyway...

* Youtube Video 

January 16th, 2023 - So, progress is a bit slow, because I started this project without having enough black and silver (or gloss white) for light blocking, and without any kind of white for the top coats. (Actually, I don't have any grey or duck egg blue for the details either). Because I started at the beginning of the month, that means I have to wait until the end of the month to be paid, and so buy the stuff I need. However, as you can see, there is still lots that can be done! In this photo, you can see my new solution (instead of the foam building tiles) for the interior LED-bearing framework for the secondary hull... LEGO! This bench shape is a better idea too, because it allows the main wires to come up and out of the stand hole in the base of the ship. 

January 16th, 2023 - The foam was messy and a bit difficult to work with, so I dipped into our big box of LEGO and worked out a good shape and combination of bricks to make this framework. Then, in an act of total heresy, I glued the bricks together and stuck some really, really, crazy-strong double-sided carpet tape (by Scotch), to the long part of the frame (previous photo). I had tried just using the sticky tape that comes on the LED tape, but it was not strong enough, even with little splits in the rubber cover over the tape - if your LED tape does not have that covering, it should be fine as it is. Anyway, I cut the tape to the size of the brick so it's nice and neat, then added a couple of tiny, white zip ties to keep the tape nice and secure. 

January 16th, 2023 - I then cut a good long length of red and black wire to run all the way down the stand and into the base, soldered it to one end of the tape, and (eventually, after testing), added a blob of hot glue to protect the solder. Tested and working! Anyway, this morning on the bus I was looking at these pictures and I realised that of course, there are going to be 6 more wires coming into the secondary hull here - 4 from the nacelles, and 2 from the saucer - and that they would all need to bundle up and join the main trunk wire in the stand. So, one of the next things that I do will be to snip the long wires close to the framework and arrange them so that everything can join to them later. 

January 17th, 2023 - No soldering today, but I did glue the secondary hull halves together. I also ran a bead of Vallejo acrylic putty along the inside seam, to help with light blocking, and did the same around the little mounting post block. The fit of these two big pieces was actually very good, so hey, that's something. 🙂 

January 17th, 2023 - With the two hull halves firmly cemented together, the final bit of work today was to fix that broken part. For this, I got a small square of good old-fashioned duct tape and stuck it underneath the gap, to make a kind of hammock for the broken part. I then glued the edges of the hull and pressed the broken part into place. The duct-tape hammock gave me the flexibility to line the broken part up perfectly and then dry into place. The Starfleet Corp of Engineers would be proud! 😄 

January 22nd, 2023 - A small but joyful bit of work today, with the bridge dome and planetary sensor module glued in place. Also... 

January 22nd, 2023 - ...I'm getting closer to pay day, which means getting closer to paint! 😄 I have been thinking about this Milliput blob for the last few days - the one that I'm going to use to hold the nacelle pylons+hull top pieces together. The way I saw him do it in the video (Pic. 17, January 12th) is that he had both halves stuck to his blob. But I can't work out how he did that and kept the correct angle and alignment of the pieces too. Unless (as it occurs to me just now), he placed the top pieces into their gap, and then slid the blob of putty in through the deflector dish space in the front on the ends of his fingers and pressed it up. Anyway, I managed to sneak some Poxilina 2-part plumber's putty into the shopping basket the other day, and what I'm going to do is putty the parts separately, i.e. one pylon to one top piece and one pylon to one top piece. That way, I will get the strengthened connection for both pylons, without having to worry about the overall fit. (And, as he points out in the video, the bit of extra weight at the back of the ship helps balance it out a bit). To that end, I'm about to go down and prime the pylons. 

February 1st, 2023 - Yooooo, big steps forward today my friends. First of all, I got paid last week, so I ordered all the paint that I need as well as some more switches and 12v DC power adapters. Over the last week I was fiddling with the wires on the LEGO lighting 'horse', tidying them up, and so I began by hot-gluing the horse into the hull. Here you can see a quick lighting test - light leaks are all taken care of because last week I squeezed out the very last of my black primer into the inside and all over the outside of the hull there. Oh, I also stuck the deflector dish housing to the front with two blobs of poster tack, just to see how my plastic-thinning endeavours have panned out. Looks good if I do say so myself. 😄 

February 1st, 2023 - Right then, down to business - reinforcing the nacelle pylons! This has been bothering me for ages. When I ordered the paint, I also ordered some carbon fibre strips from an RC airplane store, which have perfect dimensions. Unfortunately, what I didn't realize is that they're floppy -- not rigid. 😄 Sooo, back to my original plan of using old, short, 5mm jigsaw blades (fine toothed). This is why I hot-glued the horse in already, for better or for worse, because I need to judge how much space I have for the blades to stick out into the hull interior and blob them with the plumber's putty. To begin with, I cut off the moulded tabs and then used the Dremel to scrape away as much plastic as I could from the 'mouth' of the area at the bottom of the pylon halves. (That took the most time, with constant careful checking and dry fitting). In this photo you can see it at the point of having juuust enough space to fit the blade and two wires. 

February 1st, 2023 - With the blade super-glued (I finally understood what we mean by "CA glue" 😄 ) and the wires taped down and into place (still using the stiff wires), and after several dry fits, I ran a generous trail of the ol' Revell thick gel glue around the edge and fitted the pylon halves together. They fit together very nicely via three small pegs and sockets. 

February 1st, 2023 - Securely taped, I gave it a quick test fit with that hull plate and was reminded that the angle of the interior sides of the plastic slot would not allow the blade and wires to go into the slot and have the bottom of the pylon sit flush to the slot, as it should do. Sooo, I Dremeled the inside edges of the slot to accommodate the steeper angle of the sticking-out blade. With the wires, that meant shaving and scraping and drilling that slot quite a bit. The plastic is quite thick around the inside of that slot. Hopefully my little diagram there illustrates this a bit better than I've explained it. 😄 

February 1st, 2023 - And finally, wrapped in tape and laid to rest for the night. Here you can see the final test fit (no glue). Overall, this whole procedure took me about 90 minutes. The scraping of the plastic was probably the most nerve-racking part, both on the pylon halves and in the socket on the upper hull plate. 

February 2nd, 2023 - That's the second pylon done! Fun fact: yesterday it took me about an hour and a half of cautious fiddling to make the port pylon. Today, starboard pylon - about 20, 25 minutes! 😄 (The thing about Star Trek kits is that they tend to be symmetrical, which means there are lots of things to do twice. And that can be tedious, buuut, it also means that you a chance to work a process out once, then perfect it on the second go). 😄 

February 5th, 2023 - With both pylons firmly cemented, it was finally time to assemble them with the hull plates. This has been on my mind since I saw that video weeks ago, and the last few days were especially tense in the build-up to actually doing this bit. 😄 I got out the Poxilina brand 2-part epoxy and rolled two small eggs. In the end, I only needed one egg cut in half. 

February 5th, 2023 - Too much poxy here and the parts would not have fit into the hull (because of the LEGO lighting rig). But, the two small blobs are nice and strong and cover everything nicely, and still fit in the hull. Today (Monday the 6th), I masked the gluable edges and the wires and gave them both a nice thick coat of black primer, on top of the exterior grey primer and interior silver. I wasn't going to, but I had a tiny tiny bit of black left in the old can, so I thought let's just do it anyway and then we can chuck the can. When the black is dry, I'll acrylic putty the join between the pylons and the plates. 

February 5th, 2023 - Also today (Sunday), I masked and primed the nacelles too. The masking took forever and I realized later that I didn't want to mask the outboard nacelle, because to the interior of them I would stick the LED tape. Well, perhaps it wouldn't matter, but I did a test and there was some perceptible light through the single coat of black on either side of the nacelle half. So, I removed the masking and gave all four halves another good coat of black. Tomorrow, the outside will get grey or white primer.

However, before I masked and painted, I had to use a little drum-shaped high-grit sanding bit (which came by default with my Dremel) to smooth down the 3 injection moulding 'stubs' in the middle of the inboard nacelle halves, which I'm sure would have cause dark spots in the lighting. You can see here how prominent those stubs are. 

February 5th, 2023 - Here they are again, after sanding. I will smooth them off completely once the paint is dry and the tape is off. The blue pen marks show, of course, where the actual grille moulding is on the exterior sides. That's where I'll stick the LED tape on the outboard halves, to shine out through the inboard halves. 

February 8th, 2023 - With the bonus coat of black primer on the pylons, the nacelles and Bussards dry with two coats of black on both sides, I'm getting closer to another gluing phase. In preparation for that, I thought it was time we sorted out the base. So, today, I drilled out a 4 mm pilot hole in the dome for the DC socket, then expanded it up to 10 mm. I didn't have an 11 mm bit handy, so I just scraped the hole out a tiny bit more with an X-acto knife. (I used wood bits, because I have a new set of wood bits that are still sharp). The DC socket fit snugly but was still a bit loose. Then I drilled two holes with a 3 mm bit and poked the prongs on the back of the switch through the holes so that the switch sat flush with the dome, and drew around it with a permanent marker. Then (almost there), I used the drill to just eat through the plastic, like a lightsabre. 😄 Of course, the drill ate a tiny bit too much on either side, but the switch has a lip around the top that mostly covers them up. I hooked up the wires and tested them - let there be light! No problems there. Finally, I hot glued the switch and socket into place and soldered on the wires. 

February 8th, 2023 - There's the wiring underneath. Fortunately, everything juust fits inside, when you mount that stuff high up, close to the centre. You can see from the way those radial spokes don't quite meet the edge of the dome. 

February 8th, 2023 - Thar she blows! Whilst I had the iron out and hot, I tinned the main bunches coming off the LEGO lighting rig too, which you can just about see poking up out the top there. 

February 8th, 2023 - Finally today, I masked off the gluable edges on the two saucer halves, including the round spot for the impulse deck. As I did with my Reliant's impulse engine spots, I used poster tack to cover the mound on the exterior surface. But the problem with that is that you get an uneven edge and correcting it by hand just makes it worse. So this time, instead of trying to push the gummy crap out and make a neat edge, I pushed it further than it need to go, and then looked around for a bottle cap or something with the same diameter as that spot to cut out the excess tack. I looked and looked for a while, and finally found the perfect-sized hole right under my nose -- the clear half of a Tamiya 6 mm masking tape case! 😄 

February 9th, 2023 - The moment of truth! I needed a way to have the main power bundle line up with the two pylon bundles, now twisted together into a pair of red and a pair of black wires. This kept the two halves together too, helped by some tape. My first idea, pictured here, was to hang the pylons over the hull with a crane-like assembly, such as mechanics use to hoist engines in and out of cars... 

February 9th, 2023 - Lights still working! (This will be important soon...) 

February 9th, 2023 - Well, that was a bit too fiddly and I couldn't get the exposed wires to line up nicely. So, I abandoned the crane idea and lay everything on its side, and kind of wedged everything together to keep those wires in place. At this point, I realised that I still needed some wires to go up the neck and into the saucer, so I added them in too. 

February 9th, 2023 - With all the wires twisted gently together, I soldered everything together. This solder job was far from neat and tidy, but it did the job, as you can see here - the lights are on and we're all at home! In this photo, I am using my little battery sled to check the connection from the neck side of the wires, to make sure the saucer will get its share of power too. 

February 9th, 2023 - At this point, I unplugged the power and started to gently press the plates into place. Now, because I'm using solid-core wire, and because these solders were quite chunky, this had to be a very delicate operation. Solid-core wire likes to snap. For example, you might be used to bending your wire back and forth to break the cut on the sleeve when you're stripping it, and on normal wire that's fine, but on solid-core wire, it weakens the wire which can then break. So I was very careful as I closed the 'lids' and pushed the wires into the interior space. As I was slowly doing all this, a voice in my head said, "Why not plug it in again, so you can see whether and when anything breaks?" Did I listen to that voice? Nope! 

February 9th, 2023 - Disaster! After gluing both plates into place and taping them down, I plugged in the power and - nothing! I spent some time checking the power source, checking the connections in the dome base, examining everything carefully and patiently, until I finally found... this! Some strange, phantom wire that seemed to go nowhere and do nothing. I counted the wires, I counted the connections, everything added up. What was this damn thing? 

February 9th, 2023 - Finally, I remembered. It was a kind of bridging wire, from the LED tape on the lighting rig over to the main power line coming up the stand in the dome base. I had put it in because the red wire on the main line ended up being a bit too short, so this was a kind of mini extension. So! I panicked a bit, then decided to try and replace it. What you see here in this photo, is that attempt. On the right, under the big black blob (the plumber's putty, now with some black paint on it), you can see where I carefully knifed back the hot glue that I had blobbed onto the connection from the LED tape to the main power lines, exposing the join where the little bridging wire had been soldered on and then popped off. As carefully as I could, I re-soldered a bit of yellow wire to that place.... 

February 9th, 2023 - ...aaaaand, unfortunately, it was too small and too awkward to do a proper, clean job, and despite several attempts, I could not get her powered up again, captain. I sat and steamed for a moment, then decided that it was not worth compromising the entire model for the lighting. If I was quick, I could clean off the edges of the upper hull plates, which I did, and then glue them again to the hull. Just before I did that though, I snipped out all the wiring so there would be no resistance. A shame, especially because everything had been going so well until then. But it's not the end of the world. I will carry on with this kit, unlit, and then do another refit Enterprise one day in the future with lights. And SOFT, MULTI-STRAND WIRES! 😄 😄 😄 

February 11th, 2023 - Deflector dish attached! The LEGO lighting 'horse' is now sealed inside, waiting for future archaeologists to uncover one day and think their futuristic "WTF?" 😄

Downstairs, the saucer halves, the neck halves, and the four nacelle halves are all drying with a coat of Tamiya TS-26 Pure White. I've decided to paint this one as though it is fully powered down. I thought long and hard about how I was going to paint the deflector anyway, which really dictates how I'm painting the nacelle grilles and impulse engines, etc. My original plan was to paint the deflector a shade of orange, so that with the bluey-purple nacelle grilles it would be a combination of The Motion Picture and Wrath of Khan+. The actual orange/blue deflector colour on the studio models is a whole long, inconsistent story in itself, so my first plan was kind of a fun compromise, neither one thing nor another.

However, without working lights, I don't feel great painting light onto a large-scale model like this. For those cadet-scale ships, sure, even maybe 1:1000, buuut 1:537 it would look weird however I did it. So! My solution is, a light grey/light blue mix on the dish and impulse engines, and all black on the grilles. I don't have any orange paint at the moment anyway, and although I don't have any glossy black either, I think I can fake it a bit with a Vallejo wash and some Tamiya TS-13 gloss lacquer. We'll see.  

February 12th, 2023 - Before we can do any more painting, however, we need to fix the current job on the saucer and nacelles. The nacelles are nicely painted. But the Tamiya TS-26 Pure White on the saucer halves looks terrible. There are two reasons for this, one my fault, and one my fault. Okay, so they're both my fault. 😄 Reason one is that the TS-26 Pure White is too glossy and shiny. It's a beautiful shade of white, but it looks naturally like a gloss lacquer. I wanted my ship to look clean and new (for once), but this is too much. 😄 Reason two is even more stupid. Originally, I did a thick coat of Vallejo Black primer, and then - because I had a brain fart at the time - I added a layer of Vallejo White primer, because I thought the black would show too much through the white top coat. So when I then put the TS-26 on, I couldn't really see what I was doing, and I ended up overpainting and, really, yuk, bad job. Bad job. 

February 12th, 2023 - Long story short, I got a big plastic storage box that fit one saucer half at a time, dropped in a bottle of denaturated alcohol that I'd been cleaning brushes in, and left if for about 20 minutes. Now, ideally, I would have used isopropyl alcohol, but it being Sunday today, all the shops are closed. Anyway, nothing really happened, so I watched another YouTube video, and this English bloke used acetone-free nail polish remover, which I did not think would work. So, after 20 minutes and no results, I grabbed a bottle of nail polish remover that actually does have a small % of acetone (I had experimented with cleaning parts on my Reliant build, so I knew it was safe), and squirted it in -- and as soon as it hit the saucer, boom! Paint be gone! I only had a small bottle so I was not prepared to get in there and properly clean it, but I did manage to run a toothbrush and a cloth over the top half, and this is the result. Tomorrow I will get some more chemicals and finish the job. I have to say though, it looks pretty nice like this! 😄

(For reference: the impulse dome is the raw plastic (it was hiding under masking tape the whole time); the whole bridge 'mound' in the middle still has untouched TS-26 Pure White, and the rest is mostly 'clean'. You can see a swirl of half-cleaned paint from about 11 o'clock to 7 o'clock round the middle). 

February 14th, 2023 - Yesterday, the 13th, I went out in the evening to buy some more nail polish remover. Now, one important fact about this stuff that I think I forgot to mention: the product I used, that had the acetone in it, was designed specifically for hybrid nails. Google says "With hybrid [nails], each layer is hardened under UV light, so you don't have to wait for the nail polish to dry." Cool, so it seems that only good old Auntie Acetone can take those things off, which makes her capable of taking off acrylic paint too.

Anyway, I grabbed two 100 ml bottles, came home, and got to work. Rubber gloves, a scarf over my nose - because yuk, what a stink - and a small Brillo pad (sponge with a rough side). Because of the relatively huge size of the saucer halves, I couldn't submerge the parts and let them sit, the way that people put their armour parts in zip-loc bags full of the stuff. But, again, the magic worked and I managed to get both halves and both neck pieces even cleaner than in the last photos. Then, this morning, I just went around with a few cotton ear buds dipped in a bottle and cleaned the gnarly paint blotches around and on the bridge dome. Everything was still quite dirty and smeary because by the time I got the pieces back to a sink to give them a warm water + dish soap wash, followed by a slightly warmer water rinse, the smeary washed-off paint had dried again. I mean, it dries almost as soon as it touches air, so in future, the best way to do this would, I think, be to do it in or near a sink. (You're not supposed to pour out the crap into the sink though, which I didn't).  

February 14th, 2023 - In this photo and the last one, you can see the nice, fresh Vallejo Black primer that I patiently and methodically laid down using what I had thought were two near-empty cans. I mean, they were almost empty, but apparently had just enough for this job!

Pictured here are the re-painted saucers and neck halves; the secondary hull with its first coat of Tamiya TS-27 Matt White, and the nacelles still in their Tamiya TS-26 Pure White. I have to hit pause button now for a week or two until the next pay day, at which point I shall arm up with more TS-27 and carry on!

Until then, long life and prosperity...  

February 17th, 2023 - Briefly back again, just to record the fact that today I carefully removed the switch and DC socket from the dome base. I then stuck a good thick piece of duct tape underneath the two holes, and filled them with some more of that 10-minute plumber's putty that I used to secure the pylons. After I'd pressed it into the holes, I let it dry a few minutes, then turned the dome upside down and gently just rolled the puttied parts on a hard surface (the kitchen counter in fact), to make them nice and smooth and conform to the contour of the dome. Unfortunately I can't spam you with a picture of the puttied holes, because I didn't have my phone with me. 😄 

February 17th, 2023 - Anyway, part 2 of this cunning plan was to hide the holes using one or more of my magic Star Trek stickers. The only refit-related stickers I have left now, apart from some gigantic name-and-registry labels, are these picture stickers. 

February 17th, 2023 - A close up. I made a small incision on the right, 'top' side of the sticker after this photo, to remove the crease. For the record, this is the sticker book I have (bought it decades ago probably, and the stickers are all still fresh as new): memory-alpha.fandom...ar_Trek_Sticker_Book

You can still buy it too, from Amazon, and I just saw some on eBay.

Okay, back into hibernation mode until the first week of March when I get more paint in/on my hands! 😄 

February 28th, 2023 - We're back in business! I got paid on Friday, ordered paint, paint arrived late last night, and this morning I finished up the T-27 Matt White on everything. I had ordered two cans of T-27, but unfortunately only one arrived (along with paint that I ordered for the next project... 😉 Anyway, here is the neck, glued together. Looking ahead, I think I'll either paint the chiller grilles on the nacelles and the 'duck egg blue' on the Bussards and put the nacelles together, orrrr, I'll prepare the saucer halves, put them together and attach the impulse engines. Dunno. We'll see. Exciting! 😄

Also in this picture you can see the Formula 560, ready to fill up the window holes, plus - most pleasingly - a coil of 40-watt speaker wire, to replace the bloody solid-core wire that betrayed us so shockingly 11 photos ago. 😄 

March 1st, 2023 - This morning I sprayed the very last drops of T-27 Matt White onto the narrow sides of the glued-together neck. I did that because somehow, despite having 80 million coat of paint on it already, those narrow edges were blotchy and uneven and weird looking. So I sanded down the gluey seam and gave them a final blessing from Pope Tamiya XXVII. 

March 1st, 2023 - I then examined the nacellles again. There are two small places on the nacelles -- near the arrowhead-shaped end of the chiller grilles on the port inboard side and the starboard outboard side -- that had also dried a bit thin, or perhaps had been inadvertently sanded a bit. So I decided they were too conspicuous to just leave and would need painting again. But, the Matt White was all gone (if only my guys had packed both cans in my last order!), so I just gently hit those spots with some gloss white. Just enough to make them totally white again. It shouldn't really be noticeable, but we'll see.

In the corner you can see the Bussard collectors drying under a coat of Tamiya TS-29 Semi Gloss Black, which I will also use for the nacelle grilles. When they're dry I'll mask them and then give them some of my so-called Duck egg blue on the spars. 

March 1st, 2023 - And as you can see from this photo, I also decided to stop dithering about and commit to a bit of gluing! I had wanted to do the panel lining, paint detailing, and decaling on the two halves separately and then glue them together, but again -- like the neck -- the edge, or rim of the saucer, was blotchy and weird. In this case I can understand, since the saucer halves had a massive chemical bath earlier. But even after cleaning and repainting, the edge still looked horrible. So, rather than risk the edge decals not covering up that mess, I decided to glue, paint all around the edge again with the gloss white, as I had done with the nacelle spot-fixes, and then do all the deets and decs. I had test fitted the two halves plenty of times already but even so, with glue in play it became awkward and fiddly (of course), but I finally managed to get them in place. Here's the saucer then, sitting on that coil of speaker wire from two pictures ago.

You can't see them hiding under the clips, but I also painted and glued in the navigation lights. For that I used the trusty Vallejo Bloody Red and Goblin Green from their 'Warhammer' fantasy paint line. I had assumed that the beacons were hollow and that I would paint the inside only, so I used a tiny, narrow brush. But I discovered that in fact, either they're solid, or at least their base is covered over, so the paint went on the outside. It looks okay actually. You'll see. 

March 4th, 2023 - The last few days have been busy, busy, busy, and all about the painting. First of all, I took the clips off the saucer on Friday evening, sanded smooth the gluey seams around the rim, and attached the impulse engines.

Then, I masked the nacelles all around the grilles and laid down two coats of Tamiya TS-29 Semi Gloss Black. The first coat looked awesome, buuut, where I had spot-blasted the ends of the grilles with Pure White, I *think* the Semi Gloss Black reacted strangely and created a little 1 cm-wide spot of cracked-up paint at the pointy end of two of the grilles. Sooo, I just laid down some more black, and it was fine. Speaking of nacelles, I masked off the black parts of the Bussard collectors and painted the cross spars with Tamiya AS-5 Light Blue (Luftwaffe).

I also masked up the secondary hull in a plastic zip-lock bag, masked the pylons and painted the AS-5 on the triangular shapes. I think I mentioned this before (in photo 57), but the AS-5 is my solution to having a readily available equivalent to the legendary Duck Egg Blue. My research shows me that the Duck egg varies, quite radically even, by manufacturer. So honestly, I'm not bothered about the lack of any genuine duck eggness on this thing. And if we look at the next photo... 

March 4th, 2023 - ...we can see that the results are pretty good! Except, of course, for the slight leaks there. 😄 Don't worry about them though, a sharp knife took care of the worst of it.

Not pictured here is the saucer, which I stood on an old cup, on a piece of newspaper, on a Lazy Susan (i.e. a little turntable), and finished the rim with some more Matt White. (Another can of which I managed to grab this morning (Saturday)).

So the situation now is that some time tomorrow all the major paint work will be done, except for the top of the neck and the small, D-shaped chiller grille parts on the nacelles. I'll do all those things tomorrow, and hopefully also start gloss coating everything else in preparation for washing and detailing. 

March 5th, 2023 - Today I woke up and made a 26-point 'action list' of things I have to do to finish this build. These break down into several steps: detail painting; first gloss; panel lines/washes; second gloss; decals; third gloss and final matt, and final assembly (gluing the saucer and the nacelles on).

In terms of that detail painting, today I painted the 'hardback' AS-5 onto the top of the neck, and painted Tamiya TS-92 Metallic Orange onto the deflector dish. (In this photo you can see the masking job I cooked up for that). 😄

As I probably said before, my plan for the painting changed after the soldering break in the engineering hull. Essentially, the ship will be 'off' -- warp nacelles all black, windows all unlit, nav beacons painted red and green but not lit, and the deflector dish... Well, first of all I want this to be the TMP-era refit, i.e. not the "A" replacement. So orange for the deflector. Then, I was thinking about having the dish be some kind of grey colour, to indicate its 'offness'. But when it came down to it, this TS-92 is really nice (I chose it for the Bussard collectors on the next project...) and even a light dusting of it looks really strong and vibrant. Sooo, I went all-in and just sprayed it on good and proper.  

March 5th, 2023 - My long-term plan is to do this ship again as the Voyage Home+ replacement Enterprise, so blue deflector and "A" decals, and with lights, and in the larger scale (the PL 1:350 I suppose). And so, in that way, on my shelf I will end up with a Connie, this dodgy refit, and then the replacement Enterprise (I think it was the Yorktown that was re-named).

Here you can see the neck with its painted collar, resting gently in the neck hole prior to gluing, as well as that metallic orange deflector. Yeah, it doesn't really make *all* the sense technologically, compared to how we see it on screen, but lit up it would look different again, so who's to say this is powered up? 😄 

March 6th, 2023 - With all of the detail painting now complete (including the nacelle insets, the grey band around the bridge 'hump' and some light blue touches around the impulse deck), the next step is to glue the neck on, to complete this whole sub-assembly.

Here you can see the test fit, and as you can see, the neck does not naturally fit flush to the body. (And this is even after lots of modification). Why? Well... 

March 6th, 2023 - The neck features this latch shape (inset), to help anchor the neck to the hull and provide support for the weight of the saucer. It fits into a little arrowhead-shaped hole there, behind the inset strips that glue to the base of the neck. Because the latch prevents the neck from sitting flush, if you force the neck down you get a lot of mechanical resistance, and the latch part forces the seam between the pylon hull-plates up and apart (dotted line). And we don't want that!

To make the neck sit as flush as possible, I filed the arrowhead-hole, filed the latch part, shaved it with the knife, and swore at it extensively for about 15 minutes. Finally, I got the neck to sit not-quite flush, but I could see that the stress on the hull plates seam was not so great. So... 

March 6th, 2023 - ...the glue went on, some blue tape went on, and a big zip tie went on too (inspired by one of my Facebook modellers). I also poked my Revell Contacta gel glue through the gaps in the tape and laid in a bead of glue along the outside seams too. 

March 8th, 2023 - I left it a good couple of days to properly set. Once the bandages came off, I also put a bead of the Vallejo acrylic putty around the neck and in the glaring hole in the latch area. And here we are! Tomorrow morning, I'll lay down the first gloss coat, on top of which I'll do the weathering and panel lining. 

March 9th, 2023 - This morning I sprayed on the first gloss coat, in preparation for all the washes and panel lining and so on. It's touch-dry now, but I'm waiting the full 24 before I get the ink out. 😄 

March 10th, 2023 - Whilst I was waiting for the gloss to dry and a window of opportunity to open up for the washes, I remembered that there is still a little bundle of fun waiting in the box... a Type-5 Shuttle!

I've seen enough kits that have shuttle or other small ships bundled with them to know that the best thing to do (or at least, what I want to do), is stick 'em on a wire that pokes out of the base and have 'em fly around the big ship. 😄 The wire is garden wire, that you'd use to hold up long-stemmed flowers and plants to sticks and stakes, garden walls and so on. I Dremmeled a hole in the floor of the shuttle, super-glued the wire inside and then sealed the deal with a big lump of poster-tack. I haven't glued the wire into the dome base yet - will do that last of all.  

March 11th, 2023 - Wash on! It's the same bottle of Vallejo "Model Wash for Dark Vehicles" (76.518 Black) that I've been using since Reliant. 

March 11th, 2023 - You know what these things are. 😄 I watched a great video on YooToob with this guy who floor-waxed a Spitfire, and then just painted the wash on, left it half an hour, and then rubbed it off, with amazing results. So I figured this would work well on this kit, where the panel lines are not really etched lines so much as they're, like, little square bumps everywhere. Kind of. For the saucer, I'll probably stick to a more careful, traditional approach. (As well as it's served me in the past, ahaha). 😄 

March 12th, 2023 - Spent the morning and a bit of this evening toning down the black wash on everything. My mistake - again! - was letting the wash dry for too long. A bit of Googling confirms that other people have had similar problems with too-dry Vallejo Model Wash. In the end, I had to use a 1:1 water/acetone mix to make any impact at all. My bad. But once I'd sorted out the nacelles and the engineering hull, I decided to press on and do the saucer!

This time, however, I did it all very differently. First, I brushed the diluted wash all over like a maniac (as usual). Then, instead of waiting 30 minutes (way too long), or even 10-15 minutes (also too long), I just wiped it off as soon as I'd finished. And bingo! Panel lines! I mean, it's something I've read lots about, watched lots of videos, but just could never make it work. If you've seen my Reliant, you'll know what I mean. That thing looks like it flew through an exploding nuclear reactor. 😄 Now, however, I feel confidant that I've done this right. Maybe not perfectly well, but right. Yay! 😄 

March 14th, 2023 - So, the last two days I've been busy decaling and filling in the window holes with Formula 560. Because the next steps are basically 'Gloss, then Matte, then stick the sub-assemblies together', I thought that rather than spam out loads of decal photos, let's leave it at this shot of the really nice, juicy, glossy, fresh, thick decal sheet. Compared to the ancient Reliant decal sheet, it's a joy. 😄 The only problem with this picture is that the flash obscures the two rim decals that feature the docking hatches.

Anyway! This is the order in which I decaled: nacelles; engineering hull/pylons/neck; saucer top; saucer rim; saucer bottom, and windows. Decals were thick and needed lots of Micro Set, but came off the paper easily. The only breaks I had were in a couple of the long rim decals, and in the red pinstripes around the bridge module. The pinstripes were an unholy bastard to get into position, and I mostly failed at that. You'll see. 😄 I also last-minute added a couple of phaser blasts to cover un-hideable messes on the engy hull. You'll see. 😄 I also decided to use the impulse engine decals, because I was so surprised and delighted that they even made them that I thought it would be a shame not to.

With the Formula 560, the single windows were basically no problem, but the double windows needed to be glued a few times to be completely full and flush. Funnily enough, the big set of four rear windows behind the bridge in the officer's lounge glued up really nicely the first time. 

March 16th, 2023 - All paints and varnishes dry! The nacelles were glued together today, and everything -- nacelles, saucer, and engineering hull -- sits resting quietly until final assembly tomorrow morning. 

March 16th, 2023 - Finally, the shuttle got painted and decaled and washed and then varnished, although I may have gone a bit too quickly at the end and applied the matt too soon after the gloss. I mean, the decals are okay, funnily enough, but the paint seems to have had a small reaction. But, overall the 'aesthetic' is not too bad I think. More Lower Decks than live action. 😄 

March 16th, 2023 - Nacelles on... I used big wodges of poster-tack stuck between the base of the nacelle where it joins the top of the pylon, on the inside side, to help the nacelle glue dry straight. The fit was better on the starboard side than the port side, which was a bit too tight because of the shape of the tabs on the pylon and the layers of paint and varnish on the nacelles in their slot. I filed down both tabs a tiny bit and it was fine, then after the nacelles were dry I just ran a tiny bead of Vallejo Acrylic Putty into the slight gaps on the inside and outside of the nacelle-pylon join. The gaps were not too bad actually, but still quite noticeable up close. After about 15 minutes, I turned the model upside down on a flat surface and propped up the neck with a couple of books. 

March 17th, 2023 - Saucer on... Not much to report here. I used a shoebox lid and some books to keep that neck-saucer join straight and flat while drying. Both the nacelles and the saucer were glued with the Revell Contacta Pro, then had Tamiya Extra Thin brushed along the seams. 

March 18th, 2023 - Et voila... About 3 months after I started, I have finished! This one was actually quite a challenging build, not so much because of the quality of the kit (which despite the inaccuracies is very well made imho -- the 1:1000 NX was more of a challenge in terms of basic quality than this one), but because it was more of a test of my skills. I made a lot of mistakes but I also learned (I hope) from those mistakes.
 

March 18th, 2023 - I had always intended to make this kit as-is, without any aftermarket parts, because why spend so much money beautifying a basically flawed model. One day I'll do the larger 1:350 version of this, and then I'll go for all the PE and resin parts. But of course, I had wanted to light this thing up, and was having a great success with that, right up until I came to glue the hull upper halves (pylon attachment plates), which cause one of my solid-core wire solders to snap in an inaccessible place. I have since then finally replaced all my wires with soft, flexible, multi-strand wire. Speaker wire, basically. No more compromises and accidents based on inflexible wiring! 

March 18th, 2023 - That breakage changed my painting strategy too. I was always going to make this a TMP Enterprise, i.e. orange deflector dish and no -A in the name and reg decals, but without proper window and nacelle lights I decided not to paint it like it was supposed to be lit, but rather like it was just sitting in drydock. Well, I already had all that nice orange and blue paint just lying around, sooo, I decided to compromise again and paint it like it was basically functioning - deflector and impulse deck 'on', but internal lights 'off'. I dunno, maybe they're doing some testing or something. 😄 Anyway, I've come to quite like it as it is. 😄 

March 18th, 2023 - The panel lining and washing was another big learning moment for me. Both my Reliant and the engineering hull and nacelles of this Enterprise got that very dirty look because, long story short, I was letting the Vallejo Black Model Wash dry too long, and it was proving impossible to remove after that. Fortunately, the light bulb came on over my head before I got to the saucer, and with a bit of research I understood, finally, that I need to apply it and basically wipe off the excess right away. This and the soldering thing were my two biggest learning moments here. 😄 

March 18th, 2023 - Any time you photograph an Enterprise, you have to get this shot, from between the end of the nacelles to the back of the saucer. It is the moral obligation of every Trek modeller, basically. 😄 😄 

March 18th, 2023 - Yes, I used the impulse engine decals. 😄 I mean, this whole model is a potpourri of compromises and last-second decisions, and I thought really, these things looks so nice it would be a shame to waste them. Well, and it is all basically an out-of-the-box build, so let's do it. 

March 18th, 2023 - Another iconic and obligatory shot - the big elliptical saucer shape with the diminutive nacelles and pylons jutting out at the back. 

March 18th, 2023 - Well it's not an A, B, C, D, or E, but I'm not sure what Scotty would say about the condition of this one. xD 

March 18th, 2023 - One thing I'm very happy about is the Tamiya AS-5 Light Blue (Luftwaffe) that stands in for ye olde Duck Egg Blue. I kind of skipped over the detailing on my Reliant nacelles, but with the proper paint I took the time to do them nicely here. I think that the contrast between the AS-5 and the Vallejo Game Color 72.059 Hammered Copper is gorgeous! 😄 

March 18th, 2023 - They give you a choice of Galileo (5) or Copernicus (3) decals, so I thought that for sheer variety on my shelf I'd go with Copernicus. (Given that the big Galileo shuttle kit is sitting in my stash, waiting for the interior parts pack before I start it). 

March 18th, 2023 - Speaking of the shelf, thar she blows! From L to R: The old slim-saucer 1:650 Reliant (my first build); a big-ass IKEA lamp (standing in for Earth Spacedock!); NX-02 Columbia season 5 refit (third build); 1:200 Cadet series Enterprise C, and now the 1:650 TMP Enterprise Refit. What's next? I think I know, but let's see... 🙂
LLAP!