Polar Lights 1:350 Enterprise refit - my build up

[Mechinyun]

Hey guys, area I know your working on soon. Here are my grills i completed today.

I know the filming model has a purple sheen to the raised ribs, but after a few tests with different paints I did not find one that I really liked, I opted for a straight gunmetal which was then buffed to a sheen. It will match the outside grills which is ok by me . Clear lacquer purple sprayed on the inside.

 

[Garbaron]

WOW! Those lit grooves look razor sharp! How did you do that? Despite all my attempts mine are not that sharp but jagged at some portions. You don't see it from a viewing distance but its noticeable when you get closer to the powered warp engines.

 

[ob1al]

Those look great. I'm going to go for purple on the outside and clear grooves on mine, but I'm struggling to find a way to mask the inside grooves. How did you do it? or did you paint them freehand?

 

[clancampbell]

I am right at this very moment trying to mask the inside grooves on mine with .75 mm masking tape....it's bloody frustrating.....

Rich

 

[Mechinyun]

I am right at this very moment trying to mask the inside grooves on mine with .75 mm masking tape....it's bloody frustrating.....

Rich

Thanks guys

And thanks to advice from Clancampbell a few months back I picked up .75 masking tape as he mentioned . It fits perfectly in the grooves and gives you those razor sharp edges, always nice to have something come out better than expected! (Also a shout out to Garbaron who has given me advice on the deflector dish and lighting over at SSM and hobbytalk - excellent work your doing!)

Here is the link Clancampbell gave me for purchase of the masking - its pretty hard to find it.
http://www.jammydog.com/micro_masking_tape.htm


It IS frustrating as heck to get the grill masks laid properly though! Once I did a couple they started going in easy though, what I did was take a piece of the masking quite a bit longer than the grill, start on on end of a groove, wrap it on the back (inside) of the grill and get it stuck and started. I held the other end of the masking taught with one hand and used the dull edge of a thin knife in my other hand to push it down into the groove, small sections at a time until i got to the other end (quite a juggling act!!). Once each one was laid, I used an exacto to slice the excess off and create a sharp and clean stopping point on both sides of the tape. Be sure to go over the masking a few times with the knife pushing it down before you slice off the edges or paint. .75 tape is crazy thin, it stretches and breaks easy. Each grill took me about an hour or so to do with masking.

I used Gaia color clear purple lacquer (2 bottles - 1 per grill - needs multiple coats to get it even and thick rich purple) on the inside and model masters buffing metalizer gunmetal on the outside, both sprayed via airbrush. I had to thin down the gaia color considerable to get it to shoot well and the metalizer came out great after a buffing with a cloth.

I plan on dipping my LED's for the warp grills in the purple soon, I have the trek modelers lighting kit.. still need to experiement with getting the lighting even. I hate hotspots!!

Dont ever doubt your skills guys, this was the first time time i have ever used masking, ever used an airbrush or even built a model in over 20 years since i was a kid. I took a few weeks just to get these done, as with anything taking your time experimenting pays off in spades! Although i do lay awake at night worrying about the aztecing and strongback detailing thats coming - hahah!


.

 

[Garbaron]

Oh am not doubting. It's just that even with the masking itself being razor sharp after I was done laying it out the color became jagged after I removed the tape. It was not so much a problem of the masking process itself as removing it. Took me hours to get the jagged edges appear even again. As I said, you wont se it untill you get really close and personal. Still it bugs me. Anyhow. The warp engines are long done, the saucer is my place of work right now (almost done with the construction work) and that is an entire other beast to deal with.

 

[Caladonis]

Excellent work so far and I'm following this build closely for all the tips I can "borrow" :$

I do have a question for anyone that may know. Is there a definitive list of all the lighting for the 1701-A (other than windows of course) with the color and flash rates? That's the first thing I did on the model I'm working on now (not a 1701-A so don't want to hijack) and it was a lot of work, but makes programming the Arduino (I use a RBBB) much easier.

 

[ob1al]

I used these as reference, plus lots of print-outs of screen caps. Hope they help.

In the first diagram the deflector dish position lights are marked as white, but I chose yellow to match the screen caps.

 

[Garbaron]

All RC- Thurstes (deflector, saucer rim clusters, at the fins at the nacelles) are yellow!

 

[vaderdarth]

very nice!!!!

 

[ob1al]

Garbaron, I used 0.75mm masking tape (a bit useless - very little stickiness!) and did the best job I could to mask off the groves, then hit the pieces with a coat of clear purple. When I removed the tape I had exactly the same problem as you - lots of paint bleed into the grooves.

I started to clean the grooves up, but after half an hour or so I gave up. I've now hit the entire clear parts with translucent purple and it has removed the headache of trying to get the grooves perfect. I don't need any more stresses on this project so I've decided to compromise.

When the cold cathodes are lit behind it, the solid purple shows up as blue. When unlit and on display (as in most of the time) the purple kind of looks like this pic:

Not precisely what I wanted, but I'm limited by my own abilities, materials and time. I'm going to call the clear warp pieces done and move on to the next job.

 

[Garbaron]

That is exactly how you should approach this build. Got a problem, try to fix it to the best of your abilities and then move on. There is always that one point where you think "I can't do it any better, but still..." and that is when you should leave it as is. When I had spent almost a day trying to get rid of the jagged edges of the warp grill grooves, I declared it "a-ok" and moved on.

Always think of Ian "Raytheon" Lawrence's resume on his first Refit build:
You won't build the perfect model.
You will fail on certain aspects.
Accept it and move on.

 

[ob1al]

Wise words.

After experimenting with a few different whites, I've just pulled the plug on some Tamiya Pearl white. I think it's the best way forward for the base colour of this ship.

Just 6 more LED's to add and I'll be ready to seal everything up, fill the seams and start masking and painting! I'll be glad to put the soldering iron away, I'm sick of the sight of it!

 

[Caladonis]

Thanks for the lighting info/plan - looks really good.

Model is looking really great - good job!

 

[Garbaron]

Just 6 more LED's to add and I'll be ready to seal everything up, fill the seams and start masking and painting! I'll be glad to put the soldering iron away, I'm sick of the sight of it!

Oh I know how you feel. Last week after I had installed the final LEDs in to the saucer I had to solder all corresponding color coded wires to a saucer main circuit board. It almost drove me crazy!

There are 38 LEDs in the saucer total. Some, like the lower saucer wires had already been reduced as much as I could by wiring them to intermit circuit boards but still, there was plenty of wire from the LEDs that power up the saucer rim view ports alone. Well picture says more than a thousand words, this s what it looked like after everything was soldered

(there is one smaller circuit board missing in this picture: I use fiber optics to realize the position lights, which are powered by a single LEDs for the lower and upper saucer segments. The board connecting the lower to the upper saucer is missing here. So add some more wire to what you see here.)


But when you turn the result "on" you know why you tortured yourself like that

(And no, that is NOT an internal "Raytheon" spot light, but a practical one using 2 SMD)


All soldering work left now are two connectors (1x 4 Pin and 1x 3Pin) to connect the saucer circuits to the secondary hull master circuit board.

 

[FlyAndFight]

Wise words.

After experimenting with a few different whites, I've just pulled the plug on some Tamiya Pearl white. I think it's the best way forward for the base colour of this ship...

If you are referring to Tamiya's TS-45 Pearl White (spray-can), I recommend that you first paint with Tamiya fine primer and then spray with the Pearl white.

I noticed that the TS-45 is back in stock now (after many months) and I ordered several cans of Pearl and primer myself.

 

[ob1al]

Been putting in the hours and I'm pretty much finished the electronics now. Thank goodness.

Also been starting to finish a few parts, like the deflector dish:

I utilised the 0.75mm masking tape to make the cream coloured lines, then gave them a coat of matt clear coat to seal them in place. I notice that the kit part has the lines going right to the edge, but the screen used lines stop a fraction short of the edge so I cut my tape that way. I used a fine brush to paint the ring around the dish - still more work to be done on this piece. This build sure takes a long time, every part is a journey in itself.

I am planning to use liquid latex to mask the (many) windows. Does anybody have any tips or better suggestions? I'm hoping to start painting within a week or so and I'd like to get the window problem right, I don't want to create more work for myself correcting an error if possible. So, liquid latex?

 

[Michael Bergeron]

So now that you're done the electronics how much do you think you ended up spending on all of your lights? IIRC the lighting kit available for this is about $300. Did you save much?

I'll be working on this one later this year and was wondering if the cost difference was worth even trying it without the kit.

 

[ob1al]

I think I saved around $150 by doing it from scratch, also my lights have cold cathodes rather than LEDs in the nacelles and I think I have quite a few more lights overall than the trek modeller kit does. However it's so bloody time consuming that if I were to start again, I'd just buy a prewired kit. I can't tell you how many days and hours have been spent soldering, replacing shorted LEDs and generally pulling my hair out. Too much hassle! Get the kit.

 

[Garbaron]

Get yourself some 2mm hole punchers to mask the windows.

You just put your favorite masking stuff on to a semi hard surface, like a styrene plate for example, and punch hole in to with the "puncher meets hammer" method.

Once you think you have enough holes, you remove the excess material and the window masks will stick to the surface. You can lift them off with your hobby knife and place where needed.

Regarding the main deflector; in the reference pictures I noticed that those spokes are some sort of styrene strip glued to the dish, so I copied that approach by using 1mm x 10mm evergreen styrene stripping.

After applying the strips the outside was given a clear coat, while the inside remained as it was giving me the milky look you can see in the picture of the studio model you posted. The result is pretty close to the studio model I would say: