AMT Klingon Bird of Prey refurb with Green Strawberry aftermarket parts

[rms77]

I’m a long-term lurker on the forum, but rarely post anything. I thought I would try and do a thread on my last build - a rebuild of my old AMT Klingon Bird of Prey kit. I could not find any completed builds that use the add-on parts available from Green Strawberry, so hopefully it is of interest.

This is the original version of the kit, bought around 1995. It's moulded in off-white styrene and doesn't have the landing legs that were added in later runs of the kit.

Here's the starting point:

Lots of the pieces were misaligned, one of the wing guns was missing, and there was a large glue spillage on the starboard wing. The moulded detail wasn't great by modern standards, but the basic shapes were ok, and the paneling on the wings was fine.

I haven’t really done much scratch building or kit modifications before, apart from adding the odd detail or installing lighting. This build felt like a good learning project for having a go at modifying the model to add detail and make it look more like how the ship appeared in the films and TV shows. I hoped that it being a Klingon ship, it would be more forgiving subject, and weathering could be used to hide any unevenness in my modifications.

I picked up the Green Strawberry fruit pack set of aftermarket parts for this kit. The fruit pack includes the radiator/wing hinge set to make the wings posable, and the detail set, which includes photoetch and resin parts to correct the engine parts, wing guns, and add other details to the kit.

 

[rms77]

I disassembled the model as best as I could, but the 35 year old plastic was pretty brittle, and I wasn't able to get the wing halves apart. After stripping the paint off all the parts, I started with adding detail to the wings. The panels on the wings of the kit are mostly flat, but the wings on the filming model have lots of feather-like detail on them:

Using Adam Savage's Youtube video on scratch building and detailing

as inspiration, I started adding detail to the wings using stretched sprue and Evergreen strip:

It took quite a while to do this, but was actually quite therapeutic! I based the patterns on the screenshot above and reference photos of the studio model on modeler's, miniatures and magic Klingon Bird of Prey Studio Model.

 

[rms77]

The module just above the engine is supposed to have some kind of pipes coming out of it. The representation of this part in the kit isn't great due to the limitations of how it was injection moulded. There was also some strange crazing on it that needed sanding off.

I cut the module out and cut away the pipe detail. After sanding off the crazing, I replaced the piping using guitar strings I had annealed with a candle. I then applied the base colour to the part, as it would be difficult to do so when it was in place, and then reinstalled it into the main hull piece. The results aren't perfect, but I think they're an improvement on the kit part. If i were doing it again, I'd try and find guitar strings without a steel core, as even after annealing they were quite hard to bend consistently. I also added the Green Strawberry photoetch grilles to the parts on either side of the module at this point.

The triangular panels at the back of the engine section were really soft so I sanded those down and replaced them with styrene sheet and strip:

Again, not perfect, but more crisp that the stock kit part.

You'll see I also cut out section for the Green Strawberry radiator/hinge parts. If i"d read the instructions properly I would have seen that the two struts connecting the front and rear sections of this piece should also have been removed, but I didn't realise this under later.

 

[rms77]

Detail was added to the upper and lower hulls using stretched sprue and Evergreen strip, and I drilled out the two holes in the front panel of the main hull:

Again the detail is loosely based on reference photos of the filming miniature, but the main goal was to introduce straight lines and detail to distract from the softly moulded detail of the kit.

I replaced the inaccurate details on the lower starboard side of the bridge with some styrene tube:

 

[rms77]

Next, I started to tackle the windows. I wanted to light the model, so the windows would need to be drilled out. Unfortunately, my attempts to do this with a drill bit were pretty poor:

I then tried cutting out the entire window section and using styrene strip to separate the two windows, but that didn't look great either:

In the end I made a window cross-section out of styrene strips, cut out a hole where the window needed to go, glued the window cross-section into the hole, cut off the excess window cross-section on the inside and outside of the hull, and then filled and sanded until the hull was back to its original shape:

Quite an involved process, but his gave a much better result, so I used this method with the rest of the windows:

 

[rms77]

Went to see the 40th anniversary screening of Star Trek III last night. First time I have seen it in the cinema and I really enjoyed it. If you get a chance to see it on the big screen, I would definitely recommend it. Seeing the Bird of Prey at this resolution, I could see that my wing surface detail is perhaps a bit too prominent compared to the studio model, but I'm still happy with it.

The next step was putting together the radiator parts from Green Strawberry. There are four radiator components - two that attach to the main hull, and two that attach to the wings. These are all made of resin and are very nicely cast with no flaws or bubbles. Each of those four components is made up of two parts that are glued together to make up each component.

If you pick up this aftermarket set, I would recommend double-checking to make sure you have all the correct pieces. My set contained pieces to make two of the starboard wing components and the parts for the port wing component were missing. I contacted Green Strawberry and they sent me the replacement parts, despite me buying the set from a distributor, so that was good news.

For the pieces that attach to the hull, there is thin material between the fins and in the holes of each fin that need to be removed.

Quite a bit of sanding was needed on the surfaces are these two parts join in order to get the fins to align correctly. The parts were joined together with epoxy, so there needed to be a big enough gap to accommodate the adhesive. I had a couple of fins break off during sanding, but these were easily reaffixed with epoxy before the two pieces were joined. The photo below shows an in progress test fit of the two parts with more sanding needed to get them to align correctly:

For the components that attach to the wings, less clean up was needed. In addition to removing the stub form the resin pour, you also need to remove a small section of thin material from the underside of each fin on one half in order for the two parts to come together correctly:

Again the pieces were joined with epoxy. I had a bit of trouble getting these parts to align, but I may have just made a mistake when I was removing the excess material. I found that when the fins were aligned on the visible side, they were out of alignment on the underside. In the end this didn't really cause a major issue in the build.

The radiators are moulded in colour, and I didn't want to paint them and risk the paint being scraped off by the motion of the wings. However, as there were a few imperfections on the outer fins of a few of the components, I painted these with a 1:1 mix of Vallejo dark grey blue and Vallejo sea grey, which I found to be a good match for the resin colour. As this is an old model, I didn't have the decals for these parts that Round2 include with the recent rereleases of this kit. Instead I just painted in a few lines with Vallejo insignia white to add a very simplified version of the pattern.

 

[rms77]

The Green Strawberry set includes a photoetch piece for the torpedo launcher and another one for the ring of red lights that surrounds it. After annealing the torpedo surround piece and painting it with the base colour, I fitted it to the kit part with CA. As the old kit was moulded in off-white, there was no need to drill out any material behind this piece for the light to shine through.

I was playing about with paint schemes at this stage, and as you can see I was having real problems with paint adhesion. Not unheard of with Vallejo paints, but I had particularly bad problems with this throughout the build.

You can see I sanded off moulded detail off the clear torpedo launcher kit part in preparation for applying the photoetch. I wasn't worried about the crack in the part as it would be hidden by the photoetch. The design of the photoetch part is very similar to that of the kit part and not very close to the actual filming model:

I used some pieces of the photoetch intended for the boarding ramp to add a bit more detail and loosely follow the on screen appearance:

Here it is fitted to kit part, along with the other hull pieces after some initial painting and a gloss coat. I kind of got ahead of myself with the painting, and in the end a lot of this was painted over with different colours by the end. You can also see I fitted the Green Strawberry replacement wings to the back of the main hull - a big improvement over the featureless kit part, and also some of the photoetch pieces on the neck. The rod going along the underside of the neck was made from styrene and aluminium tube. The Green Strawberry kit does include a resin replacement part, but I found I could make a scratch built version that was a little more sharply defined:

I should say that due to brittleness in the plastic, the head section had snapped off by this point. It turned out to make the build a little easier so I didn’t stick it back on

 

[rms77]

Starting to think about lighting, I thinned down the plastic around the inside of torpedo launcher to improve light transmission to the outside, then painted it with a few coats of clear red. I managed to reasonably successfully drill out the windows either side of the torpedo launcher, and used a chisel to reduce the thickness of the hull behind them. Then I placed squares of opaque styrene as window panes to diffuse the light.

All the hull pieces were light-blocked by a coat of black primer, followed by Vallejo semi matte aluminium, and finally several coats of white primer help the light to bounce around the inside of the model.

I wanted the torpedo LED to be on a separate circuit to the rest of the lighting, as I wanted the option to have it on, as it appears in the Star Trek movies, or off, as it appeared in TNG. I added a bit of styrene tube to the back of the torpedo launcher, so that a 3 mm led would sit nicely inside. This was then light blocked to isolate the launcher, so it wouldn't be lit by the rest of the internal lighting when switched off.

I fitted the Green Strawberry replacement panels for the underside of the main hull. In the instructions, these are supposed to be fitted to the upper hull part, but I decided to fit them to the lower part, as I was considering keeping the upper hull as a separable piece, and doing it this way would give me better access to the lighting. I glued sections of opaque styrene sheet over the two holes in these pieces, and then glued red sweet (Quality Street) wrapper material onto those using microcrystal clear. I could have used clear red paint instead, but I've used this material in builds before and it is quite effective. I gave it several coats of diluted micorcrystal clear to seal it in, so hopefully it won't come unstuck over time.

You can see I have cut away material from the lower hull around the engine area in preparation for fitting the Green Strawberry replaced engine piece. I’ll cover that in a separate post.

I got carried away with the next few steps and forgot to take any photos, so I'll just have to describe them. I placed the top of the bridge section in position on the lower hull, but not glued in. I used that to correctly position the lower bridge section and then glued that to the front of the lower hull. This gave me a complete lower hull to work with, allowing me to work out where to put a 3 mm LED to light the bridge section. It was placed about one third of the way into the 'head' from the neck, on a styrene support that elevated it by about 1 cm. At this position it lit all the windows and also shone enough light straight ahead to light up the red ring around the torpedo launcher. I also glued another 3 mm LED, tinted with clear yellow, into the torpedo launcher, and fitted three optic fibres - one under the bridge, one under the circular section on the main hull, and one in the top of the bridge. The fibres and LED wires were fed out of the neck towards the main hull area and the top of the bridge was then glued in place.

There was a ridge between the upper and lower halves of the bridge, which needed smoothing out. As the detail around the bridge was very soft anyway, I sanded it all off and then smoothed the area out with filler. The panelling was then added back using styrene sheet and strip:

There was an ugly seam line along the neck, so I added some styrene strip and a few tank parts to hide this - completely inaccurate compared to the filming model, but I was having fun with it and allowed myself to just go with what felt right here:

 

[rms77]

The Green Strawberry kit includes resin and photoetch parts to replace the inaccurate clear engine part that comes with the kit. The resin pieces are really nicely designed and the castings were great - very crisp and no flaws or bubbles. However, I struggled to figure out how to attach these parts to the model - the instructions weren't massively helpful here.

The instructions say to leave the rectangular section of the kit part at the back of the engine in place, but I cut this out as it would have interfered with the lighting if I had left it in place. However I positioned the resin engine frame part, I couldn't get it to fit correctly - the space it needed to fit into was too big.

What I should have done is what Neon Nautilus has done in his excellent build (1/350 Klingon Bird of Prey - Improving the AMT Kit) and add some styrene shims on the insides of both sides of the hull to narrow the gap that the piece sits in.

I just had a mental block on this bit and had to pause the build and work on something else for a while I tried to figure out a solution. In the end, I used epoxy to glue the part to either side of the hull. This put a slight bend in the resin part, which isn’t ideal, and thisintroduced gaps around the clear pieces when they were fitted. For the bottom engine section, I used styrene sheet to cover fill in the gaps by gluing it in place and then cutting and sanding it down flush to the rest of the hull.

Around the top clear piece, there was a gap that I filled with a piece of styrene strip, and then black Tulip paint was used to fill in and light block any gaps. The top of the main hull, which now has the radiators epoxied in, is just test fitted at this point:

 

[publiusr]

Chang’s BoP looked to have a true torpedo tube. I thought Kruge’s was a heavy disruptor emplacement from the damage it did.

 

[Neon Nautilus]

This is looking great rms77!
The technique you've used for the cut-out windows is really effective, looks spot on!
Love the greebly details you've added on the bridge.
I can definitely relate to how much of a nightmare that GS resin engine block is to get in!
The engine glow you've got on the clear parts looks spot on. Can I ask how you painted the clear areas? I've been wondering if I should just use a clear red and yellow or if it's best to base coat those with a fine coat of white to diffuse it a bit first?

Looks like you've got it well covered but feel free to message me if you get stuck with anything. I'm always happy to share ideas or my experience with the GS set if it helps.

 

[rms77]

Chang’s BoP looked to have a true torpedo tube. I thought Kruge’s was a heavy disruptor emplacement from the damage it did.

Yes, it's interesting how the launcher appears different throughout the films and TV shows.

ST III:

https://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/movie-03/screencaps/search-for-spock-2021/chapter-06/st-tsfs-remaster-bluray-0580.jpg

Appearance pretty much unchanged in ST V:

https://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/movie-05/screencaps/final-frontier-2022/chapter-08/st-tff-remaster-bluray-1194.jpg

It's also shown with some kind of cover on it in this film:

https://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/movie-05/screencaps/final-frontier-2022/chapter-05/st-tff-remaster-bluray-0675.jpg

For ST VI, they appear to have removed the launcher completely. I had assumed that the mechanism had broken and therefore had to be removed, but as you say, maybe it was a deliberate decision to show this prototype BoP had a different launcher firing photon-like torpedos in order to fire while cloaked? https://movies.trekcore.com/gallery...22/chapter-12/st-tuc-remaster-bluray-1758.jpg

ST: TNG Redemption http://www.tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/screencaps/season4/4x26/redemption-hd-267.jpg

In TNG, the launcher looks to be back in place, but it's blacked out and the disrupter energy ball just shoots out of the black hole.

 

[rms77]

This is looking great rms77!
The technique you've used for the cut-out windows is really effective, looks spot on!
Love the greebly details you've added on the bridge.
I can definitely relate to how much of a nightmare that GS resin engine block is to get in!
The engine glow you've got on the clear parts looks spot on. Can I ask how you painted the clear areas? I've been wondering if I should just use a clear red and yellow or if it's best to base coat those with a fine coat of white to diffuse it a bit first?

Looks like you've got it well covered but feel free to message me if you get stuck with anything. I'm always happy to share ideas or my experience with the GS set if it helps.

Thanks very much Neon Nautilus! That means a great deal coming from you - I've been in awe of your build thread since you first started it. In fact your initial post was one of the inspirations for having a go at modifying the kit. I can't believe how much fine detail you've managed to add to your model. I'm looking forward to seeing how your build turns out. My model is actually completed - I didn't want to do a realtime thread, as I didn't have any confidence it was actually going to turn out ok

For the clear engine parts, I sprayed them with a mixture of Vallejo matt varnish (either acrylic or polyurethane - sorry, I can't remember which) with some Vallejo transparent red (for the outer-facing surfaces) and Vallejo transparent yellow (for the inner facing ones) mixed in. I think I added a few drops of transparent yellow when spraying the red, as Vallejo transparent red is quite pink out of the bottle. I'm afraid I don't remember the proportions of varnish to transparent coloured paint. I was worried how well this would adhere to the resin, as I was having bad paint adhesion problems with the rest of the model, but the tinted varnish stuck to the resin really well. I did leave it quite a few days to cure though. I then used CA to glue the painted (Tamiya primer, then Vallejo Light Grey, then Vallejo matt varnish) photoetch parts onto the varnished clear parts. Finally, I hand painted the frames with black Ultimate Primer, then several coats of Vallejo Exhaust Manifold to light-block, then Vallejo Light Grey. The Vallejo metallics have tiny flakes of metal in them, so they do a good job of blocking the light.

 

[Neon Nautilus]

Thanks very much Neon Nautilus! That means a great deal coming from you - I've been in awe of your build thread since you first started it. In fact your initial post was one of the inspirations for having a go at modifying the kit. I can't believe how much fine detail you've managed to add to your model. I'm looking forward to seeing how your build turns out. My model is actually completed - I didn't want to do a realtime thread, as I didn't have any confidence it was actually going to turn out ok

For the clear engine parts, I sprayed them with a mixture of Vallejo matt varnish (either acrylic or polyurethane - sorry, I can't remember which) with some Vallejo transparent red (for the outer-facing surfaces) and Vallejo transparent yellow (for the inner facing ones) mixed in. I think I added a few drops of transparent yellow when spraying the red, as Vallejo transparent red is quite pink out of the bottle. I'm afraid I don't remember the proportions of varnish to transparent coloured paint. I was worried how well this would adhere to the resin, as I was having bad paint adhesion problems with the rest of the model, but the tinted varnish stuck to the resin really well. I did leave it quite a few days to cure though. I then used CA to glue the painted (Tamiya primer, then Vallejo Light Grey, then Vallejo matt varnish) photoetch parts onto the varnished clear parts. Finally, I hand painted the frames with black Ultimate Primer, then several coats of Vallejo Exhaust Manifold to light-block, then Vallejo Light Grey. The Vallejo metallics have tiny flakes of metal in them, so they do a good job of blocking the light.

That feels really cool to know that my build inspired yours! I'm looking forward to seeing some more of it when you get a chance.

Thanks for your kind words about mine. I've definitely fallen very far down the rabbit hole but enjoying the process very much. It's offered lots of opportunities to improve my scratch building skills and confidence. Just got to try and keep up this enthusiasm for it!

Thanks also for your great description of the engine painting process. I've got some of the Vallejo Matt Polyurethane so I'll give that a go.

 

[rms77]

That feels really cool to know that my build inspired yours! I'm looking forward to seeing some more of it when you get a chance.

Thanks for your kind words about mine. I've definitely fallen very far down the rabbit hole but enjoying the process very much. It's offered lots of opportunities to improve my scratch building skills and confidence. Just got to try and keep up this enthusiasm for it!

Thanks also for your great description of the engine painting process. I've got some of the Vallejo Matt Polyurethane so I'll give that a go.

I had a similar battle with keeping up the enthusiasm for this build. I think I started this build in Nov 2022 and finished a few weeks ago, but I was only working off and on on this model - mainly off I would say. I had periods where a couldn't leave the model alone, and other periods where I couldn't stand to look at it. Quite a rollercoaster ride. It's a great kit for modification though, and as you say it gives plenty of opportunities to develop new skills. Adding details was a lot of fun, figuring out how the aftermarket parts were supposed to connect to the kit less so... I found building small Bandai Star Wars kits helped get me back into model-making mode and just kept doing little bits of work on the bird of prey in between.

 

[rms77]

Nearly there I think. The next stage was to sort out the wings. The kit parts have some ridged detail on the back edge of the wing, but the two wing halves were misaligned on my model, and I wasn't able to separate them to correct this. Besides, it doesn't look much like the filming miniature away, which had a kind of concave vent running along this edge. Instead I filed this detail off and then used a thin strip of grooved styrene and styrene strip to add a vent-like detail (see later photos).

The Green Strawberry kit comes with two resin replacement disruptor cannons (the big guns on the tip of each wing) as well as four smaller gun barrels that also go on the end of the wings. Again these are nicely designed and cast, but I felt the disruptor barrels were a little soft and I was also worried about them snapping off or maybe drooping over time, so I decided to remake these with aluminium tube.

First I used 5 min epoxy to glue the unmodified GS disruptors into place on each wing and made sure the alignment looked ok. Once they were cured, I cut off each disruptor barrel and drilled out holes in the back of the tips of each disruptor to receive the aluminium replacement barrels. Details made of styrene sheet and brass rod were added. This was all glued together with CA.

I left the guns off until the end of the build, as they would inevitably have got snapped off if I'd added them at an earlier stage.

I also fitted the GS photoetch parts that fit over the double-headlights on each wing. I fed fibre optic wire through these, though the inside of the wing and out of the side that would attach to the hull. This was complicated by the fact that the wing halves were already glued together, so I had to cut a hole in each wing just behind the headlights to allow me to pull the fibre through. These holes would be hidden by the GS radiator parts once they were fitted. I also cut out a triangular section from the side of each wing as per the GS instructions for the hinges:

The GS set comes with some photoetch sections that are supposed to completely cover this area leaving just a small gap to accommodate the hinge itself. Having cut out the hole, I could not figure out how this piece could actually be made to cover it up again - it's quite a complex shape and I did not see how the photoetch could be bent to fit. I felt it would be easier and more structurally sound to just fitted the hinge piece in place and then filled the hole up with styrene sheet, so that's what I did. This area has no detail on it on the studio model, but it looked a bit plain to me, so I added a few panels just to break things up:

 

[Neon Nautilus]

I had a similar battle with keeping up the enthusiasm for this build. I think I started this build in Nov 2022 and finished a few weeks ago, but I was only working off and on on this model - mainly off I would say. I had periods where a couldn't leave the model alone, and other periods where I couldn't stand to look at it. Quite a rollercoaster ride. It's a great kit for modification though, and as you say it gives plenty of opportunities to develop new skills. Adding details was a lot of fun, figuring out how the aftermarket parts were supposed to connect to the kit less so... I found building small Bandai Star Wars kits helped get me back into model-making mode and just kept doing little bits of work on the bird of prey in between.

I find it very difficult to pick up a build that I've left for a while. Usually spend the first hour trying to remember where I was at and what needs to be done next. So, I've been trying to make at least half an hour a day, more if I can, to work on the KBOP. I've found this really helps and is now becoming habit. I've got so many kits that I want to get finished!

Your wings look great. I think I'll have a go at replacing the barrels on those guns too. I'd not thought about the resin sagging over time.

 

[rms77]

On to the hinges next - sorry this is a long post and is pic heavy. I have to say, for me, the hinges are the (literal) weak point of the Green Strawberry set. Each hinge is comprised of a small resin block with 3 hooks on it, which attaches to the wing, and another block that attaches to a photoetch plate that is glued to the hull. The wing hooks are then latched over the hull piece to form the hinge. The photoetch hull plates each have a square on them to indicate where you are supposed to glue the hinge to:

I started to try attaching the hinges onto the square indicators on the brass plates, as per the instructions, but this would have put a lot of strain on the radiators fins - you had to really push them towards the front of the ship to get the hinge into position. This didn't feel right, so I decided to ignore the square indication on the plate, get the fins on the wing radiator intermeshed with the ones on the hull radiator and, with a blob of epoxy on the back of the hull hinge piece, let the radiators guide the hinge into position onto the hull plate. This meant there was no strain placed on the radiator fins.

After the epoxy had cured, the wing could be raised and lowered ok, but it wouldn't stay in place. I think the idea is that the friction between the fins is supposed to hold the wing up when it is raised, but with the hinge attached in this way there wasn't enough friction to hold the wing in place - it would just hang down as far as it could go:

Also, because the wing latches were just hanging onto the other hinge piece, the hinge was very loose. The wing would wobble forward and backward as it wasn't being held securely by the hinge. Not sure how clear it is in the photos below, but the wing is pointing towards the back in the first photo, and then pointing forwards in the second:

The wing hooks were also prone to unlatching from the hull hinge piece, causing the wing to just fall off. Unfortunately, this happened while I was doing a test fit to see how the fibre optics were going to feed into the main hull, and the falling wing pulled on one of the fibres, snapping it. It wasn't possible to fix it without cutting the wing open again, and by this point I was getting impatient to finish the build, so I decided to live with the loss of one headlight, and put it down to battle damage. One of the wing hooks also snapped off at this point.

Here, you can see where I glued the hull hinge piece on my first attempt, and how far away it is from where the square where the piece is supposed to be glued:

I detached the hinge piece from the main hull, and decided to try again, this time following the GS instructions and gluing the hull hinge piece on so it was aligned with the square on the photoetch plate. With that done and the wing in place, the radiator fins were now forced right up against each other, adding a lot of strain onto them and the hinge itself. This did make the wing more posable, but after raising it up and down a few times, another one of the wing hooks snapped off (you can see this in the last photo of the previous post). I wasn't happy with the amount of strain this arrangement was putting on the radiator fins (she cannae take it captain!), and it didn't seem like the wing hooks would last very long - they were just too flimsy. I had to accept that the GS hinges weren't going to work and think of another solution. I must admit it was disappointing to be this close to finishing the build and to come up against this hurdle. It's a shame, as overall I'd been pretty happy with the rest of the GS kit. It's the first time I've worked with resin or aftermarket kits, so maybe I made a mistake somewhere? Anyway, problem-solving is a big part of this hobby, and it had certainly been a big part of this build so far, so after taking another break in the build to consider the next steps I decided to try and make my own hinges.

The method I used was based on a guide I found for making elbow joints for animation armatures:

Ball & Socket Armature - Hinge Joint

Hinge Joints In today's post I'll continue discussing the construction of my Ball & Socket Stop Motion armature. I'll be showing how to mak...

nathan-flynn.blogspot.com

I drilled 2 mm holes into several short strips of styrene and threaded these onto a 20 mm M2 bolt. These were arranged so they pointed in alternate directions and an M2 nut was fitted to secured them in place:

Then I slotted scraps of styrene strip in between these to fill in the gaps. I brushed on a small amount of Tamiya extra thin to lightly secure the pieces in place, being careful not to let it creep around the whole thing and glue both hinge halves together. After a few minutes to let the glue dry, I took out the bolt, separated the two hinge halves and brushed on more Tamiya extra thin to get a good bond between all the pieces of strip turning them into two solid pieces. Once they were dry, I reinserted the bolt and sanded the top and bottom flat. I didn't worry too much about this as most of the hinge wouldn't be visible when fitted to the model. I also rounded off the inside edges of each hinge by bending the hinge a little, sanding off any corners that stuck out, and then repeating the process until I had two curved hinge pieces:

Finally, I sanded down the edge of the larger half of the hinge until it was flat. This half would be glued to the main hull, so I sanded down the flat edge until, when held against the main hull, the bolt was the same distance from the hull as the GS hinge had been:

I managed to pry the photoetch plates off both sides of the main hull, and cut out the GS hinge pieces out of the wings. The larger hinge pieces were glued into place and any gaps hidden with styrene strip. The smaller hinge piece was then connected and the bolt put through both pieces. I then interweaved the fins on the hull and wing radiators and let them guide the hinge to the correct position on the hull where it was glued in place. The visible edges of the hinges were painted with grey Stynelrez primer, trying to leave the mating surfaces of the hinges paint-free. Here are the hinges in place before final fitting:

And here's the completed top section of the main hull with the wings bolted in place and a test fit of the disruptor guns:

 

[Neon Nautilus]

I have been wondering about how well the GS hinges would work so it's interesting to see the issues you have come up against.
You've come up with a great solution, really cleanly executed, looks quite similar to what's on the real studio model as well.
Great paint and weathering too, you've really captured the KBOP vibe!

 

[rms77]

The original stand that came with the model had been lost long ago. I had originally planned to use a spare Round2 dome stand, but it didn't have enough room to accommodate the wiring and battery packs I was planning to use, so I scratch built one out of styrene sheet and brass tube:

My lighting skills are very rudimentary - I have yet to figure out how to solder properly, and haven't used any arduino boards yet. I'm also not yet brave enough to connect anything I've made to mains electricity. So my lighting was all made up of prewired 3V LEDs from a supplier of small scale lighting.

I would have three circuits - one to light the windows, fibre optics, and engine, the second would light the torpedo launcher, and the third would have a flickering led for the engine. The main circuit would be powered by a 2xAA battery pack, while the other two would run off 3V coin cells. I this photo I have a 3V coin battery pack installed in place of the AA battery pack. This was just for testing, and was swapped out for the AA pack later on.

I added some extra detail to the piping that goes around the bridge to beef it up :

And fitted it to the bridge, which by now had been painted and weathered:

Bypassed like a Christmas tree as Scotty would say. It was quite a struggle to fit all the wiring and connector boxes into this space. I really need to learn how to solder. I believe the later releases of this kit have even less room in the main hull due to the housing for the landing gear. The interior and engine LEDs were all warm white. The flickering LED was also warm white, on a separate circuit to avoid any risk of it causing the other lights to flicker. The fibre optics for the nav lights at the top and bottom of the bridge were connected to a cool white LED on the main circuit. On the actual filming model the nav lights appear to be a warm white, but I wanted them to be distinct from the other lighting.

By this time I had installed a pair of magnets at the back on the main hull. These would meet up with another pair in the upper hull piece to hold it on. I wanted to keep the upper hull removable, in case I need to any maintenance on the tangle of wires inside. I also added two small channels at the top of the lower hull for the wing head-light fibre optics to go through.

On the upper hull, I added some half sections of styrene tube to hold the fibres in position. You can see I had sawn off some of the excess material from the radiator pieces prior to fitting them, to give me some more room for fit the wiring in. The fibre optics from the wings and nav lights in the upper main hull were taped together so they could be connected to the cool white LED once the upper hull piece was fitted:

I painted the visible sections of fibre optic between the hull and wings with white Stynerez primer, followed by several coats of Vallejo Exhaust manifold to light block, and then dark grey. Due to the upper hull being separate, there were plenty of gaps around the joint between it and the lower hull. I used black tulip paint to seal these and block any light leaks.