My 1/350 TOS Enterprise Build--- WIP

[trekriffic]

Well, I guess it's about time I started one of my own 1/350 TOS Enterprise build threads.
First impressions of the kit...
well...
it's like one of my old grilfriends used to say to me years ago..
"God, this thing is BIG!"

Seriously folks, it's the biggest model I've ever worked on, such a sheer joy that it just so happens to be my favorite starship of ALL TIME!
I'm taking all steps necessary to knock my own socks off with this one.

So far I've gotten the upper and lower saucer gridlines filled and sanded using Perfect Plastic Putty. I've sprayed the inside of the two halves with flat black, silver, and flat white in that order. Once I've made a template of where the gridlines go (in case I want to redraw them in pencil) I'll spray with Dupli-color surface filler sandable primer and see if I need to do any more filling. I'm fairly optimistic I got'er smooth as a Vulcan baby's behind though so keep your fingers crossed for me guys.
Here's what I did this past weekend...

Before I can prime the lower saucer I wanted to take care of that business of the three lower saucer portholes that were molded too far back along the rim on the wrong side of the radial gridline...
I took some Tamiya tape and poked holes where the current ports were to make a template. Then I placed the template further foward along the arc of the lower rim, overlapping the hole closest o the bow which I kept. So I was only drilling out two new holes on each side:



The new holes after drilling and filing:



I inserted one of the window inserts into the new hole locations:



Fit was just right:



The old holes were filled with some clear acrylic rod followed by Perfect Plastic Putty (hereafter referrred to as PPP):



After the PPP dried (about 15 minutes on a nice warm day) I sanded everything nice and smooth:



I did the same thing on the opposite side of the saucer so I saw no need to take any pictures of it.

Next... working on the power jack and plug to the lower secondary hull...

I paid a trip to Fry's Electronics and bought a 4-pin Miini-DIN plug and matching panel jack to use for powering 2 electrical circuits inside the model-one for lights and the other for the bussard motors...

The lower mounting rod support part that inserts into a slot in the lower front of the secondary hull was modified to remove the support tube and insert a larger diameter section of Evergreen tubing. The Evergree tubing inner diameter fit the Mini-DIN plug from the new mounting tube perfectly:



The power plug dry fit onto an aluminum tube:



Inside is a second smaller brass tube glued into the inside of the plug's plastic backshell and the aluminum tube. Four wires for the two circuits willl pass thru the brass tube and down into the aluminum tube which will fit into the base. This should give the support tube much more strength and rigidity than it would have otherwise.

The lower secondary hull mounting point was modified to accomodate the new panel jack. I was amazed at how well it fit. All I did was carve out some slots in the plastic support framing so the metal panel jack base would fit:



The panel jack had pins that stuck up higher than was planned when the kit was designed which meant I had to create new brackets to provided clearance for the PC lighting board to slide into place:



Looking thru the mounting tube in the underside of the ship at the 4-pin Mini-DIN jack:



Dry fit with the mounting tube plugged into the secondary hull. Once the ship is assembled and the mounting points have been glued in and reiniforced with epoxy putty for stiffening it should balance front to back just fine:



Next up... those bussards... they task me... they task me...

Previously, over in the Tips and Trcks thread over on HobbyTalk (please don't hit me guys for mentioning the dreaded HT here), I'd posted about my version of the system JHauser came up with for quieting the bussard motors using brass axles inside of ball bearings mounted inside the tunnel of part 42 and isolating the motors from the plastic of the nacelles using foam padding to reduce motor vibration and noise. Work progressed on this as I took some time over the weekend to tweak a few things with the bearings inside the tunnel. One thing was to cut a small piece of Evergreen tubing and insert it between the bearings so they would maintain their positions at the front and back of the tunnel. Even though they fit like a glove, the process of inserting the drive axles tended to force them forward or backward so the spacer would take care of that issue. I took a piece of plastic tubing a little larger than the inside diameter of the tunnel and after cutting it to the exact distance between the two bearings I cut out a small longitudinal section of the tubing, test fitting until it slid inside the tunnel under spring tension:



The rear bearing was then inserted into the tunnel:



Subsequently the bearings were sealed into the tunnel in part 42 with a homemade styrene "washer" glued on the back side of the part so the bearing wouldn't pop out of the tunnel when inserting the spinner drive axle. Sorry, no photo of this, so you'll have to use your own imagination!

Next I had a brilliant idea; or, what might be a brilliant idea if it works...

I'm going to redo the LEDs on the round lighting kit bussard circuit board to lengthen their legs so they will fit up and thru the "towers" in part 142 and inside of the colored plastic teardrop shaped inserts provided with the lighting kit which I will be hollowing out. This will involve either snipping or desoldering the legs of the existing PC board LEDs and replacing them with lights I bought online from Lighthouse LEDs. The new lights are ultrabright-wide angle-diffused LEDs in various colors-they even had pink! So I should get a LOT more light inside the domes than otherwise. Another thing I wanted to do was create a way to bounce the light around under the spinning fan dome and onto the inside surface of the outer bussard dome which is where I got this next idea using faceted chrome plated plastic buttons I'd bought at the craft store for use on another project:



The buttons fit perfectly in the center of part 142 between the light towers:



So... I drilled, routed, and filed a hole in the center of each button:



It press fit onto the spinner shaft easily:



Test fitting with the mirror button in position under the spinner and LEDs:



I'm hoping once I have the lights modified and lit, and the spinner going, the facets will bounce light from the LEDs above them as the spinner rotates. That's the plan anyway. You know, based on whether I place the button right side up (convex) or upside down (concave) on the spinner shaft I may get a different light effect. This may be one of my best ideas ever... or not... :-\

The last thing I did this weekend was cut off the tops of the taller LED towers on part 142 and widen the openings so the 3mm LEDs can pass completely thru:



Then I sprayed the part with Testors gloss silver:



I also bought a sheet of color changing foil paper they sell at Michaels craftstore. It has little stars and comets on a dark blue background that shift from gold to blue to red as you tilt the paper in the light. Man is this stuff reflective! I plan on making discs with holes cut out to fit the spacing of the light towers so I can attach the paper to the face of part 142 under the LEDs. It might be overkill but every little bit helps if it gets me an effect close to what we saw on TV back in the day! Dontcha just love experimentation! Man that's the stuff right there!

Thanks for reading along. More to come soon!

 

[Splat]

Looking forward to seeing more!

 

[Ruddigger]

Neat idea on the faceted button. I wonder how it works in practice.

 

[crackerjazz]

Very fine work you have going here! Thanks for sharing the step-by-step.

 

[moffeaton]

Very cool mods! Where did you get the wee bearings? That's a mod I would like to do.

 

[trekriffic]

Very cool mods! Where did you get the wee bearings? That's a mod I would like to do.

I got them at my local hobby store. Here's a post by me in the 1/350 Enterprise Tips and Tricks thread over on HobbyTalk explaining what I did with the bussard motors ...

I took a page out of JHauser's book and set about seeing what I could do to quiet the Polar Lights supplied bussard motors using his method of isolating the motors from the kit parts using foam. I wanted to see what I could find at local stores without using the internet. Altogether I spent about 20 bucks on what you see here...

From my LHS I bought the following...

Two packs of ball bearings (4 total) as each bussard gets two bearings:

One pack of large threaded couplers:

Some silicon tubing:

Evergreen round plastic tubing and square brass tubing:

From the craft store I bought some adhesive backed foam sheet:

From the hardware store I bought a bag of polyethylene pipe insulating tubing:

The ball bearings I found were the perfect size for slipping inside the tunnel in the bussard collar where the kit designed the motor to fit. To keep the bearings from sliding out of the front of the tunnel I glued in a rectangular piece of styrene into the rectangular recess with a hole in the center for the Evergreen sleeve of the coupler to pass thru:

The threaded coupler was a little undersized for the I.D.of the bearings so it needed to be inserted into a plastic sleeve for a nice snug fit with the bearings. 13/64" O.D. Evergreen tubing was perfect to slide the large barrel of the threaded coupler into but was just a tad oversized to fit inside the bearings so I sanded about 1/64" off the diameter. The brass coupler was a little short on the back end of the barrel too since I had to slide the threaded end of the coupler far enough forward to thread up into the clear bussard spinner so a short length of 1/16" square brass tube was jammed into the hole in the larger end of the barrel. It had to be filed just a little to get a tight friction fit. Then a short piece of 5/64" O.D. Evergreen tubing was forced over the 1/16" square tubing and sanded to the same O.D. as the diameter of the back end of the coupler; this extended the length of the axle out the back side just enough for the silicon tubing that connected the coupler axle to the motor shaft to slide onto. Here is the completed axle with it's bearings in place at each end:

The axle was pushed into the tunnel with the forward bearing butting up against the styrene barrier in the rectangular recess. Then the clear bussard spinner was threaded onto the brass coupler leaving enough clearance for the spinner to rotate without touching the surface of the bussard lighting disc inserted into the bussard collar:

The lighting kit motor was about 1/4" smaller in diameter than the inside of the polyethylene pipe insulation so I wrapped two layers of 1/16" thick adhesive backed foam around the motor. The motor shaft was a little small to fit inside the silicon tubing which was being used as a universal joint to attach the threaded coupler to the motor shaft so a short lengthh of 5/32" O.D. Evergreen tubing was pressed over the shaft for a tight friction fit:

The motor with it's layers of adhesive backed foam was slid inside the pipe insualting tube cut to length with a razor knife. It fit nice and snug:

The completed assembly fit perfectly inside the front of the nacelle:

The nacelle halves were fit together and held in my hobby vice for powering up the spinner:

Here's a short video of the motor running at 12V so you can all see for yourselves how it sounds. Isolating the motor in this way did a lot to eliminate vibration and reduce engine noise to a low whirr. I anticipate a further incremental drop in the noise level once the bussard housing has been more firmly attached and the nacelle is glued together with it's end cap in place:



Since taking the video I have gone back and inserted small discs of 1/4" thick foam (non adhesive backed I also bought at the craft store) into the ends of the motor tubing thus further reducing any noise emitting from the ends of the motor. I also fit the LED lighting disc from the lighting kit to the back of the bussard lighitng post disc and powered it up. It fit in nicely (with a little sanding around it's edges) and lit up with no trouble. There was enough play back and forth with the threaded coupler to allow for plenty of clearance for the spinner since nothing related to the motor in it's foam tube and the threaded coupler was really glued in place it allowed for easy adjustments of the spinner position within the housing. I may go back and insert more sections of foam inside the nacelles to see if that causes futher noise reduction. So this is an ongoing experiment at this time but I have to say up to this point the results have been encouraging.

I hope the members here find this posting to be helpful in our quest for a quiet bussard experience. Thank you JHauser for providing the inspiration for this approach.
My next experiment will involve a hybrid approach to the bussard lighting question which I have not seen mentioned up to this point.

The above HobbyTalk post was made before I came up with the mirror button idea. My next posting on the bussards will show them lit up and spinning with the mirror button in place.

 

[Jsimon999]

Hey Steve. I'm in the process of finishing up the 1/350 for someone and I'm really upset by the amount of noise the nacelle motors make. I kinda knew it before I buttoned them up but I thought that would lessen it much more. What a racket these things make. Completely ruins the effect of the model for me. And probably will my client too. Pretty sure it will be their first comment. Cannot believe Round 2 let this kit go out like this.

The things you did to muffle the sound seem to make some difference but I expected it to be much more. There's got to be a way to totally silence them...maybe using different motors? Why does something that small make so much noise?

The rest of my work is coming out fine but overall I'm really ticked beyond words with this kit. Almost wish I could get in there and disconnect the motors. Which I'm thinking of doing actually.


Jon

 

[trekriffic]

Yeah. The noise does kind of kill it doesn't it? That's one of the reasons I want the option of being able to turn the lights on without the engines running.

As far as other motors goes, I think RossW over on HobbyTalk is using these by Sayama:

Precision Mini Gearhead Motor Sayama 12SM-AT3-The Electronic Goldmine

He claims they are quieter than the kit motors.
Honestly though, when I ran the kit motors outside the model, I thought they were pretty quiet.
It's not until you mount them inside the nacelles that the noise is amplified.
I ended up having to remove the foam disc I'd inserted into the insulation sleeve at the front end of the motor as it kept getting caught up with the driveshaft. I'm going to experiment with adding more foam inside the nacelle, both in front and behind the motor, and all down the length of the nacelle.
I hadn't done that yet when I made the video.

 

[trekriffic]

Quick update on the bridge...

I decided to make the bridge railings 3 dimensional rather than flat like the PE.
Here's a pic of the set to show what I was shooting for:

To do this I needed to turn the flat PE railing legs 90 degrees so...

First, I sliced slots into the short walls around the circumference of the bridge center section using a #11 blade.
Then I cut the legs off the PE railings and glued them into the slots at an angle leaning inward.
Talk about tedious work with a magnifier and tweezers!
Once the CA dried I dotted the tops of the legs with CA and very carefully placed strips of Evergreen strip on top to form the rails themselves:

Once all the railings were in I painted the legs black and the rails Italian Red.

Here's a pic of the center section with the completed railings installed into the outer ring:

There was a good sizes gap between the two sections which I filled with AVES Apoxy Sculpt.
Once it's dry I'll do whatever cleanup is needed before touching up the upper level floor with Gunship Grey.
Then I'll finish painting the 9 chairs and placing them into the floor at each station.

I'll take a pic when it's done with LEDs in place behind the upper display screens and the main viewer so you guys can see how it looks lit up all pretty.

 

[KUROK]

I was wondering when someone would do the railings up like this and here it is!
Impressive!!!

 

[trekriffic]

Saturday's update... a tale of horror and redemption... kind of...

So this morning I decided to set up and take some pics with my "studio" lights (the ones with the reflectors I got at Loews) of the finished bridge.
Just need to add some figures:

After taking the last pic I got up for a minute and when I came back I noticed something so horrible... so horendous... I wanted to shoot myself with a phaser! And not on stun either!

I had left the hot lights on too long and too close to the bridge and it had caused it to soften and warp.

Arrrrrrgggggh!

The bridge was now oval instead of round.

Holy crap! If I wasn't so afraid of cracking the concrete I would have beaten my head against the garage floor.

8 hours of work was circling the drain of my own stupidity (sob)...

Frantic, I grabbed it up and noticed all the putty had softened and cracked off in spots around the center section and the it just came free in my hand when I pressed it from below. Two of the railings had broken free as well. The outer walls were warped but while it was stil warm I was able to get it back to basically close to round. There was only minor buckling in one of the ion pods.... er.. I mean, one of the overhead PE display panels has bent slightly; luckily, I was able to press it back down and flatten it.
It could be fixed but the center section... not good news... I tried reheating it but it was no good. It just wasn't going back to round even putting it in my hobby vice and heating it with a heat gun only caused it to bow in the center making matters worse.

You can imagine my disgust at myself as I tossed both pieces into the trash and contemplated just building the ship without the bridge.
After all, at least I had photos of the work I'd done. I could just glue the dome onto B-C deck housing and leave it at that.
Nobody would even know....
except me...
I would know.
Still upset with myself I glanced around my worktable and noticed something sitting quietly off to one side in a dish with some odds and ends. It was the clear center section of the clear bridge which I had removed when I used the kit section instead. There it was just staring at me coyly. It was intact except for some roughness around the rim from the xacto saw. Yes! So I took it, kissed it, primed it with Tamiya surface primer, and painted it up.
I didn't have the energy to make all the same mods I'd made originally but I was able to fake it pretty good. The hand rails were solid clear plastic so I painted the short wall at their base and the legs black. Then I painted the red railings on top. In between I left the light grey primer. Here's how it looked:

Not bad, not bad.

Then I squeezed it into the outer ring and glued it in with CA before filling the gaps with AVES like before. I lost 3 of the chairs so made 3 new ones from scratch. I think they look better than the old ones in fact.
To give the impression of the handrails being open between the legs I painted the gaps between the legs dark grey to match the color of the carpet on the upper bridge level when viewed fromm the lower level. On the other side I left the gaps painted light grey to match the lower carpet color. So when you view the rails from the lower level it gives the illusion that you are seeing the darker grey carpet thru the rails and vice versa when looking down from the upper level. It's a very convicing illusion.

Here's the new bridge:

All things considered it was a decent save I think. Once it's inside the hull and lit up I think it will look fine.

Thanks for reading about my moment of horror and how I was able to salvage something presentable from the wreckage.

 

[trekriffic]

Sunday's update...

Decided to work on the photo-etch crew figures. These are sooooo small. Kirk, Sulu, the Navigator, and Scotty had to be cut from the fret before painting since I needed to bend their legs and arms using tweezers and PE pliers and didn't want to mar the paint in the process.

Here's a pic of what would end up being the wee Sulu figure after I bent his arms down and bent him at the waist. Both the helmsman and navigator had to have their legs amputated to fit into their seats unfortunately. Poor Sulu:

I used foam tape to hold the seated figures still while I painted them:

Some of the figures I left on the fret to paint. Left to right here are a redshirt, Spock, McCoy, and Rand:

The figures were glued onto the bridge using Elmer's clear glue. I liked it better than CA because it's easier to remove the figures if I want to reposition them. Also less messy:

Next thing is to work on how to light it. I have a few ideas.

 

[Ineffable13]

Ah, poor Sulu. Well a fencing accident was always somewhere in his future... Awesome work man. Both before and after the nice save.

 

[trekriffic]

Today's update from work done yesterday...

I wanted to see if I could approximate the ceiling soffit which illuminated the peirmeter of the bridge so I cut out a ring from clear styrene sheet and sanded it to help with light diffusion. The inner diameter was made to be about 1/16" less than the upper hull dome opening:

A ring was made from Evergreen strip and glued to the inner edge. The width of the ring matched the distance from the bottom of the lighting soffit and the underside of the dome openng above:

Reflective tape was wrapped around the inner edge of the ring to reflect light back inside the soffit and block light from showing thru the ring:

For the upper dome lighting I soldered two 30 AWG kynar wires to a warm white surface mount LED I got from Lighthouse LEDs. This was my first time soldering to such tiny LEDs; guess my experience working with the small crew figures was good practice:

The surface mount LED was epoxied to a styrene disc which was then glued into the underside of the translucent white upper dome. Here it is lit up:

I used the "N" wiring harness for which there are two sockets on the circuit board. These are optional ports intended for those who want to light the impulse engines but I won't be lighting those on my build so I used one socket for the dome light instead.

The upper dome in place on top of B-C deck and lit up:

The ceiling soffit ring is glued into the hull with CA:

The bridge is glued to the soffit ring with CA :

The "O" lighting harness is installed and tested:

"Captain. You may want to look at this. It appears to be a miniature of our bridge."

After these pics were taken I went a step further and inserted small squares of semi-opaque milk jug plastic between the three LEDs and the bridge displays and main viewscreen to help diffuse the light more. Then this morning I mixed up some Envirotex resin and poured it around the bridge inside A deck up to the level of the LEDs. The clear resin helped to alleviate hot spots and more evenly distribute light around the bridge displays. It was a small but noticeable improvement.

Thanks for following along!

 

[Flash Dixon]

Wow.... I am absolutely floored with your bridge. Unparallelled work.

 

[gunnerk19]

You. Are. Nuts.

That is all.



Seriously, unbelievable work! I'm loving this build :thumbsup

 

[trekriffic]

Next up... the launch bay!

After removing the parts from the sprue I cleaned up with a file and sanding sticks:

I'll mask off the ceiling, side and rear wall windows from inside before I paint the floor and walls. My plan for the ceiling, side and rear walls is to paint them silver on the inside followed by black and a coat of primer. The silver on the inside will relect light back outwards thru the clear plastic towards the windows on the side of the hull. I'll paint the final colors before applying the PE which will be painted before gluing to the plastic.

The launch bay taped toether for dry fitting into the hull:

I had to enlarge the slots in the floor (the lighting kit doesn't include a floor as you are supposed to use the kit part) so the sidewalls tabs would fit flush. On the rear of the sidewalls I had to file a little off the tab that fits between the pair of LED brackets on each side of the rear wall.

Once I had all the wire harnesses in place and taped to the bay I did a second dry fit. The first test I did without the wiring was perfect. Everything went together with no gaps. With the wiring in place it was not quite so good. There was a 1/16" gap between the hull halves caused by not enough clearance between the LED's, the wiring and the hull itself. I could force it closed but I have no intention of gluing the hull halves together with the rear seam under constant stress so... I'll have to make some modifications to the wiring scheme. The LEDs appear to be wired in parallel so the board must be supplying 3 volts to each string. Perfect! One thing I'm going to do for sure is switch out the wire for a smaller gauge-probably the 30 AWG Kynar I just got. That alone might do the trick along with grinding and thinning the square LED that fits over the hangar doors. I'm also not going to install the LEDs in the trenches in the ceiling as those will be covered with PE; the ceiling beams are not meant to be lit in my opinion. I'm going to use thin SMD LEDs over the ceiling on top of the bay. If there's not enough clearance I may have to go ahead and thin the top of the hull plastic just a little so they fit.

Stay tuned!

 

[trekriffic]

Based on a suggestion from a member on another forum I revised how I lit the dome on top of the bridge. Using the existing wires on "A" deck I soldered two brass strips to form contacts:

These match up with two brass strips mounted at the edge of the dome which I completely redid:

Now I can remove the dome completely to view the interior of the bridge rather than having it attached by flimsy 30 AWG wires that can break.
Here's the dome lit up with it's new contacts:

Getting back to the shuttle bay...

Here's the taped together bay in the stern with the rear wall and fantail LED wiring harness in place but not the upper LEDS for the ceiling and beacon light:

The hull went together fine with little need to try and force the halves together:

The fit wasn't so good though after I tried installling the bay with the ceiling lights in place; I ended up with about a 1/32 inch gap in the upper hull and stern. I think I can fix that though using SMD LEDs and filing down the thickness of the rectangular beacon LED over the doors. I'll also remove the kit wires and use something thinner like 26 or 30 AWG.

Switching gears, I masked off the areas of the shuttle bay that I either wanted left clear or that I would be applying CA to in order to glue the brass photo-etch in place. Then I sprayed Testors silver on the inside of the walls to reflect light from the rear wall LEDs outwards towards the inside surface of the hull to hopefully illuminate the rear windows on either side of the bay:

After the silver dried I left the masks on and sprayed with Tamiya grey primer:

Yesterday I airbrushed with Model Master Sand:

Next I'll mask the Sand areas of the walls off and airbrush with MM Dark Ghost Grey. I'll also paint the PE before gluing it to the inside walls.
Then it'll be checking for light leaks and applying PPP and more paint as needed.

Moving on while the paint dries I took a gander at the strobe lights that came with the lighting kit.
Ports "P" on the main PC board in the secondary hull are meant to power the strobe lights in the stern.
When I plugged the wires in though I noticed one flashed at a slow rate, similar to the saucer flashers, while the other one barely flashed at all!
Cripes! This woudl not do!
Then I had a brilliant idea.

Years ago I had purchased a dual synchronized strobe flasher board from my LHS:

It's powered by 9-15 volts which is perfect for this project. The bulbs are incandescent and tiny; I believe they are referred to as grain-of-rice bulbs.
I powered the board up for the first time and the bulbs flashed very quickly, just like I saw on TV!
I also noticed an open port on the PC board; it's the one in the lower righthand corner which is an unassigned port.
I checked it and written below the port it lists it as a 12V LED strip port which is great because it gives me an easy way to plug in the strobe board using one of the unused N harnesses from the saucer.
I will fit the strobe flasher in right behind the shuttle bay with room to spare and I think it will look much better than the strobes from the lighting kit.
One thing I'm wondering though is if it would be possible to swap out the incandescent bulbs for LED's. Does anyopne know if that's possible with this board? Would it just be a matter of adding a resistor for each LED?

One last thing to mention before getting back to work, if you are looking to use a different approach for attaching the power supply plug into the kit base or a custom base of your own and would rather plug it into a panel jack rather than using the harness in the lighting kit with it's mating inline coupler, what you want is a size "M" panel jack. I had one that I got years ago at Radio Jack and it fits perfectly to the power supply plug. It will fit really nicely into a hole I'll drill into the refit Enterprise base. I have a 1/350 Reft kit which was the first issue with the rectangular "drydock" base. I'll use it instead of the round base from the kit which I'll swap out and be using for the refit at some point. The panel jack has solderable contacts in the rear which I'll split two circuits off from to light the LEDs and the motors separately with rocker switches.

Anyway, that's it for now.

Thanks for watching my progress!

 

[Aries2]

I like the idea of the chromed faceted button to increase the bounce inside the collector dome. Thanks for the tip.

 

[DanielB]

Could you tell me how you applied the PPP? Your gridline fills look so clean. What tool did you use to put the PPP in the cracks? Much sanding involved after?