My next project is the 18" TOS Starship Enterprise from AMT to go with my jj-prise and the refit i just finished. Doing the little things to give it some strength that i will explain as i go.
So far i have started working on the secondary hull,added strips to the half's to give it strength and have putty up the seams.
Pieces added to strengthen up the seams:
Puttied:
Last edited by cylon75; Jul 20, 2012 at 7:50 PM.
Is that an old smoothie?? Hard to tell being all white!
You should tape before you putty, saves you tons of work.
Myself on those long straight seams I like to use a goodly amount of styrene cement and squeeze the parts together real tight so some of the meted plastic squeezes out along the seam. Then, after it dries, sand it a little then her it with a seam scraper. Then more finish sanding. Sometimes you can get away with using hardly any filler putty at all.BenCozine said:
I mean check it out. No seams on this hull:
http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r...AboveStern.jpg
Last edited by trekriffic; Jun 25, 2012 at 6:47 PM.
The 1st thing im going to say is that if your doing one glue tabs on everything,the butt joint system is not a good one it making life a lot easier with the tabs!
1st i reinforced the supports for the nacelles with solid stock to stiffen them up than i added glue tabs,believe me they are your friends here. Got the main body all sanded and the nacelles glued up and a coat of putty on them. And I also got the saucer section glued.
Added stock and tabs:
Technically, one might call it a "new" smoothie since it has no raised grid on the saucer. The 18" kits otherwise were always smoothies as they were pretty spartan on details.Monster Dave said:
You've got a good start on that model Cylon. The extra building tweaks you are doing are very good ones and I did many similar ones on my last couple of builds.
Is it just me, or does it seem like a lot of us who do Trek end up coming back and building an 18" kit after a tough slog with something else? I honestly don't know why that is exactly. Sure, it is an old kit and has some half baked inaccuracy issues. But, it seems like the parts size, part count and level of work required to either build or accurize is just enough to satisfy us.
Worked on the nacelles today got them together sanded and primed.
Its all primed and painted up as far as the base color goes. Detail paint next.
Early post today ,heading to see Roger Waters doing the wall tour tonight.
Last day of Va-cay for a couple mouths.Got most of the nacelles paint work done this morning.
Did some detail on the front of the nacelles and added some missing detail to the main hull and got it painted a coat of gloss is next on them for the decals.
For a simple model the nacelles are a pain in the a-- to glue in place they move way to much. We will see if there still straight when they set. I also got the saucer section ready. At any rate the whole thing has been shot with a coat of gloss clear so the decals are next.
Starting the decals ,1st i made a decal myself for under side the FWD section of the nacelles happy with how it came out. Than i totally messed up the side marking red stripe decal on the nacelle itself it broke in to to many pieces to fix so i had to order another decal sheet. But im moving fwd anyway, so far the others have been fine learned from the 1st one.
Other side of ship decaled and my grid line decals came in for the saucer, they are not easy to do ill let you know if i like it when what i did drys completely.
Finished the grid lines decal on the bottom not perfect but i do like it a lot better with it than with out it, now i have a better feel for applying the top half. Looks a lot nicer when it dry!
Using the lessons learned doing the bottom part of the saucer, the top came out very nice and im really happy with it. No work being done for the next couple days ,ordered new decals for the rest of the ship. The decal sheet that your given in my opinion sucks so i ordered a aftermarket one to finish it.
My decal sheet came in today. Starting to come together now.
Tonight's progress. the only thing left is the underside of the saucer.
Decals done, and the saucer has been glued to the main body.Ill let it sit over night and see what i got.
These are the 1st shots of it all together. Not done yet, still have to give it a coat of flat that i have to order because of the decals (good thing i did a test decal because it would have really been bad to find out the decals were not compatible with my clear on the ship) than weather and it should be done than.
The ship its self is now done. Still need to do the base. more pictures coming soon.
Nice work there, Cylon75. I built this kit a few times as a kid and remember all the challenges involved.
You came up with a great way to get the nacelles attached with the rubber bands. Wow. That would have saved me alot of grief back then if that had occured to me.
Jon
This is my 18" Enterprise that I just finished. Pretty much stock out of the box except for a few aftermarket decals. The last couple of photos are of my 3 recently made Enterprises together and in the display case.
Nice little display you've got there. Good work! The grid lines on the lower saucer worked better than I expected them to on the stock saucer (without modifications to the dimples or the rings).
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