1/2 Studio Scale Refit Enterprise

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I have a big update coming, but I finally got back the laser cut masks for the 350th Refit that I'm building in the Forced Perspective thread and I wanted to show them here, because these patterns are germaine to the 50" Refit as these are the same types of masks that will be available for this ship. I worked with my laser guy to get them at just the right depth so that they can be easily removed and cleaned up for masking, without turning the styrene into a molten heap of styrano-slag.:lol

I'll show how to use these in the FP thread. This is a great item if you do several builds of the same ship / vehical. They're easy to wash clean and reuse again and again. Woot!
 
Time for a little update.... Loads of photos to get off of the camera and a lot to show. If you go back one page, you'll see how I layed all of this out. I layed things out the way I did to make it possible to create the glove mold in the way I did and to make sure that I could key the master to the workboard and the glove mold and keep everything in alignment with the separate components. Glove mold to master, master to board and board to mold. This will allow me to pour a silicone glove mold, vent it and compensate for the undervut on the model that has to be there as a land for alignment of the spine.

Essentially, I cleaned up the mold and sprayed it with several coats of a brown gloss paint to seal it, then cleaned up a scrap sheet of styrene as a smooth base and covered the OSB with the styrene, drilled all of the holes for 1/4 20 machine screws and realigned all of the parts one to another to be able to place everything in its original positin to pour silicone in the cavity to create a glove mold. I'll use these alignment points in later photos to create an inner blank for back filling the multiple layers of fiberglass with resin, to build the support into the cast.

Much more to come.
 
Shizman said:
How's this goin?
Click to expand...

It's going quite well, thanks for asking. I just sat down to take a break from molding and casting. I'll have new updates soon and a new movie, the first one with actual narrative. I have a boat load of photos, I just haven't stopped to update the thread. Sorry, I'm in the zone and want to keep going.
 
Picking up right where I left off.... At the point of the first picture I was looking over everything that I had done to that point and considering what changes I needed to make, The fiberglass glove mold was not as good as it could have been, but that was due to working conditions at the time. I was working in the warmest day we had had in a couple weeks, but that isn't saying much, I still had to fire up the heater and wait for the garage to warm up enough to be able to work. I learned early on the fiberglass reson, polyester resin, enamel paint and so on didn't react to well to cold, heat, or humidity. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way. After the garage got warm I had worked inlayers on the fiberglass glove mold, but should have taken more time and worked more slowly, I'm going to keep that in the front of my memory, so that I don't make the same mistakes next time. As a result of the weather and the time constraints at the time the mold was in such a fashion that I wasn't to happy with it and knew that it needed more work before it could be a viable, working mold. I knew I needed to key the mold for the silicone I was going to pour in the recess between the master and the fiberglass glove, but before that could happen I had to smooth the innersurface out. I also needed a vent at the highest point of the mold, to vent the air, or any bubbles that might have gotten in with the mixxing process. So, essentially I used binary epoxy resin to fill in the places where the mesh was not smooth, used a hole saw to cut a vent, coated the mold with several layers of gloss enamel white and keyed both sides of the mold.
After cutting the vent out, I used a piece of old PVC to create a chimney, but I had to clean it up for so I soaked it in 91% alcohol to remove in contamination, impurities, and some of the sctoch tape that had been on it. I then epoxied the chimney into the mold. I went back to the earlier photos for reference and aligned all of the parts and superglued, or expoxied them back into the proper position, to maintain the original alignment of all of the components. I used the balsa wood to lift the part off of the main baseplate, so that I could clay around it and give myself a clean cut line. I used used pencil erasers left over from old pencils I had bought back in college as keys.

More to come......
 
Moving forward.... At this point, I started doing the final work neccesary to pour the silicone. I placed a bead of clay around the perimeter of the mold base plate where it met up with the glove mold and used clay to fill in any of the areas there were left where the silicone might be hung up in the glove mold during demolding. I then attached on part of the glove mold at a time and loosely tightend the machine screws in a criss cross pattern, I then went back and forth in the same pattern to slowly compress the clay and provide for an airtight seal. I thought that I was kind over doing it with the number of screws, but found that when I had a little seepage, that I had chosen correctly. Besides the screws, I packed clay in around every where, where there might be a leak. As you can see, I also key the clay under the undercut, to be used to vreate the third part of the glove mold, less the base plate etc.

More to come.....
 
After the silicone had cured to my satisfaction, I removed the backing / base-plate from the glove mold. I knew that I had some seepage, but I thought it was a lot worse than what it turned out to be. The clay that I had packed in around the glove mold really did help and ring around the perimeter worked well too. The outer clay was dried out, but I expected that, I knew that the silicone would cure faster than the clay dried out, even though I had the whole thing sitting in front of an electric heater to speed up the curing process. The inner clay that was keyed to the silicone and attached the master itself was still moist and maleable. I wanted to pour the silicone into the recess between the master and the glove, to set up the fourth part of the mold to compensate for the undercut. It looks like everyting that I planned out is going to work, just fine. Considering I've never done anything like this, I'm a little impressed with myself right now and I don't mind admitting it.
The balsa wood strip worked great, to lift the part off of the base plate and give me a good cut line. Additionally, it worked well to keep the master from floating up into the recess and causing me to have to start over.

Besides the master, I've cast up a rather nice deflector dish, it's a perfect match for the master, all I have to do is finih the sanding and hit it with some clear transparent blue..... Finally, a friend if mine worked up a new impulse grill pattern for the decals, brass etch and or laser cutting. Unfortunately, he wishes to remain anonymous to avoid any hassle.
 
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After cleaning the clay out of the recess, that I set-up for the fourth part of the mold, I started pulling off all of the dried clay, cleaning the entire mold, and removing the dowl rod and the balsa wood and marked the perimeter of the cut line, following the shape of the hull. Afterward, I put down mold release all over the part and the mold and backfilled the recess (not shown).

I have been talking to Scott over at AW Studios about the *accurate* details of the Refit. Much the same as the TOS version, there are very different models used for filming the various movies and different shots within the movies. Whenever you try to come up with an *accurate* version of one of these ships you run into the same thing, separate references conflict with each other, different blueprints conflict with each other, separate models are not accurate one to another and some times what you think, or have been told... is not accurate. While working more on the decals and masks I decided to show exactly what I mean. Is the shots below, you can see that the blowup of the neck and hull section for TWOK does not match up with the eight foot studio model, the AMT model didn't match up with either of these and these are models that were used for various shots of the same ship.

Additionally, there is no aztec pattern. There appears to be an underlying aztec, but realistically, all of the pattern is a successive approximation of multiple panels which are in reality nothing more than separate layers of paint in varying degrees of gloss, dullcoat, pearl, translucent and so on... This is how I'm going to paint the build-up.
 
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About three years ago at this time, I started going through the available references, looking at working up the interior. Naturally, I found that several things didn't match up and could not work. For one thing, there is no chance in hades that the wreck deck could fit in the primary hull. Additionally, to me, there was no way that the officers lounge could be set up, they way it appears in the PLR2 model. I looked at Andy Proberts references and even he admitted that they were not as accurate as they could be. So, while deciding which way I was going to work on the bridge, I decided to work up a maquette of the Aboreatum. I took Probert's prints and came up with what was essentially a 1/35th scale Arboreatum. This was a study model for the 240 scale version.
 
Below you can see where I set up a clay damn around the impression between the mold and the cast and poured and removed the fourth part of the mold, this will allow me to maintain the original shape, work around the cutout and still be able to reproduce the part as originally made. You can see the custom decals I made for the various sized Refit models, in particular the 1/537. I really need to update that forced perspective thread. Additionally, you can see one more scale shot.
 
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