Star Trek USS Centaur studio scale

Hey sneaker 98 and Section 31, thanks for adding to this thread. Yes, many of the parts for building the Centaur are still available but some of the kits are getting expensive because of their rarity. If any of you would like to cast these parts up, that would be great. I'm sure Adam Buckner wouldn't mind. Also, thank you for adding the parts maps. I didn't have the time to make them when I posted the kits used earlier in the thread. This thread has been on and off for 13 years now.
 
I just watched the pilot episode of DS9 again tonight, as it's being rerun on Sci-fi channel. I remember seeing the Centaur the first time around, time flies.

My Centaur is sitting proudly on a shelf though I'm still at primer stage. I manged to get some painting masks for the Excelsior class so I'll have a go at Aztecing the Hull panels. I'm trying to get a vintage Tamiya RC project finished at the moment so that's taking precedent.
 
I just watched the pilot episode of DS9 again tonight, as it's being rerun on Sci-fi channel. I remember seeing the Centaur the first time around, time flies.

My Centaur is sitting proudly on a shelf though I'm still at primer stage. I manged to get some painting masks for the Excelsior class so I'll have a go at Aztecing the Hull panels. I'm trying to get a vintage Tamiya RC project finished at the moment so that's taking precedent.


I have one Centaur with white plastic and light grey greeblies and the other is painted up like my avatar picture. I sure hope I can finish them both this year. Good luck with your builds.
 
I have one Centaur with white plastic and light grey greeblies and the other is painted up like my avatar picture. I sure hope I can finish them both this year. Good luck with your builds.
Thanks, I'm hopeful I'll get mine finished this year too.

I'm waiting for warmer weather as condensation is problem with paint this time of year and I'm banished to the garage which doesn't have any heating.
 
Well, you're both definitely years ahead of me! Still waiting for parts, which should arrive over the next few weeks.

GcoEQJe.jpg
 
I know that feeling, sneaker98. For years I felt I would never get past the mock-up and collect parts stage. Reading back through the early years of this thread, there is a lot of trial and error, as well as starring at blurry, motion blurred, screen captures, trying to figure out what the parts were and from which kit they were from. It wasn't until early 2017 that I finally figured out the 1/32 scale F-15 landing gear parts. Barnstormer started this thread here on the RPF, but he and I started working on this project on another website at least a year before.
 
Anyone like some very rough progress pics? Fair warning, this is my first time doing any sort of molding. I'm learning a lot, but definitely missteps here and there. I'm fairly certain I won't need to buy any more models and that I can do this using molds and resin.

Updated album: USS Centaur

I'm using alumilite products: quickset for the mold, and clear resin for casting. I actually ran out of quickset so I used the alumilite rubber mold for the second (top) part of the nacelle... I don't recommend it, it's a bit too flexible. I'm seeing if I can make do or if I have to re-mold the nacelle. I also use Polytek Pol-Ease 2500 as a release agent, basically spraying it before pouring in the resin. I used a lot of it so my second stage mold would release from the first stage, otherwise you might get a big rubber brick.

The parts that I need to make at least one copy of are: reliant bridge docking port, reliant nacelle pylon cover (both), excelsior bottom halves of the nacelle, and excelsior torp launcher. I'm making copies of the k'tinga greeble parts just because I made a mold for them anyways while I was practicing, so I might as well.

I used a cupcake mold just to hold all the alumilite quickset for the first two molds I made - I forgot to use mold release the first time, so you can see here that it's not quite an even surface since some of the quickset stuck to the cupcake mold. The second mold came out much better, though the excelsior torp launcher fell over inside the mold...

The excelsior nacelle mold is much more difficult than a cupcake mold with greebles sitting in it. I hot-glued a craft board frame around both nacelles, filled the nacelles with clay for the first part of the mold, then filled the frame with maybe 3/4 cup of quickset. Once dried I removed the nacelle to reveal this. Great detail, but lots of cleanup around the edges - looking back I probably cut off a bit too much of the mold during cleanup, but I'll live with it. I then took out the clay from the nacelles and used alumilite rubber for the second stage (top part) of the mold (but only because I ran out of quickset and could only get the rubber stuff locally, I definitely prefer the quickset). First run at making a copy of the nacelles was a partial success - the resin took a while to stiffen (I was worried about how bendy it was at first!), and it captured all the detail of the original nacelles.... but, there was an air bubble in one, and I used too much blue dye in the resin. You can see the first copies here, note the air bubble on the upper nacelle near where it says WESTROCK.

I've got enough resin left for a few more copies, so more to follow. I'm having fun with this project though, and am already researching what kind of paints I'll need plus the lighting for the model. I'm also still waiting for a couple more models - the german flakvierling, and the M2 bradley. Hopefully they arrive soon!
 
Looks great! I'm hoping to do something similar myself but making the Yeager out of the same model kits they did for the show
Thank you. Now that the nice weather has finally arrived I can finally get down to finishing this build.
I look forward to seeing your build of the Yeager. I think it's a great idea.
 
Just a follow on, did you over coat your paint with a clear matt or did you use all matt colors. I like how it came out.
I'll do you one better, here's my paint notes:

base coat tamiya gray primer, left as-is for the lighter grey colour (ie: ring of ventral saucer, outer ring dorsal saucer, various saucer panels, etc)

main colour, "centaur grey", 1:1 XF53 neutral grey:X2 white. You can use XF2 instead, but the gloss white gives it a subtle sheen which I like. I did play with this a bit, often I did 2:1:1 (XF53:XF2:X2), so 2 drops neutral grey, 1 drop flat white, 1 drop gloss white. Really allowed for a quasi-aztec pattern in the light without an actual aztec pattern, since the grey panels would shine a bit different than the light blue or darker grey

dark centaur grey (used on various saucer panels), 2:1 XF53 neutral grey:XF2 white (I did add some drops of X2, again just for a slightly different sheen)

light blue centaur grey (used on various saucer panels), 15:1 centaur grey:XF8 flat blue. I lightened up the centaur grey for this, more like a 3:2 instead of 1:1

saucer edge, literally 10 drops X2, 10 drops XF2, 15 drops XF53, and twice I dipped the very tip of a toothpick into XF8 and used it to stir the mix. Just wanted to give it a subtle hint of blue, didn't want it to stand out at all

dark blue, 4:1 centaur grey (flat):XF8 flat blue (tried 1:1 XF53:XF8, and 1:1 centaur grey:XF8, and 2:1 centaur grey:XF8, but blue was just too dark)

copper, maybe 5:2 copper:centaur grey (5 drops copper, 1 drop white, 1 drop grey)

yellow, 10:1 yellow:black (I think... didn't love the colour. I'd recommend mixing yellow and orange, but I didn't have the orange colour)

shuttle bay colours, I think it was 2:1 flat white:neutral grey. Should go lighter though... ideally it's closer to the primer colour, but the rattle can is much harder to spray than airbrush



I do plan to apply the decals in the future so I'm a bit worried I'll lose the variation in gloss that I achieved through mixing various ratios of X2 and XF2... but we'll see. My plan is a coat of pledge, apply decals, then a coat of matte. Might do a test run first
 

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