1/350 S.S. Botany Bay Build

Mark2000

Active Member
Fantastic Plastic's Botany Bay kit is a pretty great rendition of the ship and I thought it would be a great test bed for some of the techniques I'd like to use on big models like another 1/350 Enterprise build or Nice-N's Klingon D7 – both of which I have on hand. While really well made, the model has some inaccuracies that need to be dealt with. Many of them are well pointed out by Trekriffic's professional build. I'll be following him as a guide on these points and diverging shortly after.

My first task was creating the solar panel struts. I used three sewing pins and soldered them together in the middle.

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Along with the three rear humps not being in the correct direction, the four greebles on the back of the engine section were completely unlike the details on the actual model. To solve this I recreated them in 3D and had them printed by Shapeways. You can pick up your own set here.

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Here's a shot of the ribbed details from the studio model that I added back on the ship. They include the conning tower front and the panels on the nose cone that surround it.

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One of the things Spock mentions when the Botany Bay is first picked up is that its surface is pockmarked with meteor hits. While I plan to reproduce the weather patterns on the hull in a similar way to the filming model, I wanted to add some physical marring of the surface as well. This was done with a drill bit in my dremel. I also added the clamps on the top of the cargo units but constructing them from styrene sheet. the piping on the neck of the engine section was done with the same sewing pins as the solar struts.

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Here's the final priming of the main hull before the paint work starts.

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A lot of painting this past two days. As you may know there are three levels of distressed paint on the Botany Bay. The first level is a black bare metal. The second is a beige primer. The last is an orange red top coat. Jefferies then sanded down the layers to get the distressed effect seen on the final model. My first task was to create a realistic bare metal hull. I started with dark brown, and then wet down the model and sprinkled salt on it to create a mottled effect for the next color. I then sprayed on a mist of reddish brown, salted, misted on black, salted, and then added a satin finish. I'm pretty happy with the effect.

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