trekriffic
Sr Member
Thank you sir. I am honored!
TOS Enterprise-1/1000 kit by Polar Lights
- Thread starter trekriffic
- Start date
Thank you sir. I am honored!
trekriffic
Sr Member
You'd need a big compass for that beast! Though if you have the skills to build in that scale I'd imagine you could make one from scratch yourself.
trekriffic
Sr Member
Here she is after being dirtied up with pastel chalk last night. I know, I know, it's ugly, but remember, this will be covered over with the final thinned down spray of the basecoat. The effect will be much more subtle than this when I'm done. I just had to give her some staining to look like she did on screen. I just can't seem to make one of these without weathering of some kind...
I should be able to give her her final shot of the basecoat this weekend and them I'll paint the darker grey bits.
I should be able to give her her final shot of the basecoat this weekend and them I'll paint the darker grey bits.
trekriffic
Sr Member
Progress from today after overspraying with thinned down basecoat. The staining/weathering is pretty subtle now for the most part. Some areas a little too much so. After it dries I'll probably give it a once over with 600 grit sanding film to restore some of the weathering in certain areas. Alternatively I've had real good luck with subtle weathering using water-based gel ink pens. By and large, I'm satisfied with the upper saucer and warp nacelles. The secondary hull and under the saucer need just a little more weathering added back; although not too much. I'll also need to go back and repaint the accent tones on the front of the dorsal and behind and underneath the bussards-the overspray really washed those areas out. This time though I'lll add a little SAC Bomber Green in addition to Azure Blue to the mix with the hull color and go lighter.
Anyway, here are the pics:
Anyway, here are the pics:
superDrool
Sr Member
I had to check and see if someone else had this project going as well... sure enough! Well done so far, sir. I just came from Michael's Craft store with this as my wife and I (in tow) are on a TOS kick. So I'm going to follow some of your tricks to make it look life-like, but mostly the LED set up I was concerned with, as the scale is very small. I just wanted all the set in place LEDS to have one centered switch to turn everything on. But I like the idea of the grid and pastel, very nice! I'll be keeping tabs on the final outcome of this one. 
-Tony
-Tony
trekriffic
Sr Member
Update from this past weekend...
Having finished the weathering with black gel ink, attention turned to the small lights that were overlooked by Polar lights when they designed the kit.
I have seen many builds of this model kit that do not include these lights; nevertheless, they were there on the original Enterprise.
Photos of the studio model support their existence and Alan Sinclair even shows them on his blueprints.
These are incredibly tiny "bits" (as the Brits would say) in this scale and the work involved drilling tiny mounting holes with a pinvise and turning red, green, and clear acrylic rod on the dremel to the smallest of diameters using a scribing tool, needle files, and sanding sticks.
In the case of the tiny lights on the upper saucer rim located outboard of the main flashing formation lights, the plastic was filed and sanded to a teardrop shape before being cut from the rod with an Xacto knife and glued in place with CA.
Anyway, here are the pics...
Bridge dome lights:
These tiny lights are actually conical in shape and they light up very well on my model.
Spine lights over the hangar bay:
The outer tinier lights are greenish yellow and the center red light sticks up higher than you would expect.
Port and starboard saucer lights next to the rim:
These are teardrop shaped. Once in place a tiny brush was used to apply Testors Neon Red and Green enamel.
Outer rim lights on the saucer rim itself:
These don't light up so I'll paint them white.
b]Nacelle bussard collar lights:[/b]
Without a doubt the most overlooked lights on the Enterprise. Apparently not even lit on the studio model; mine, however, are lit.
So, purists could say my build is not 100% accurate to the original, but... I don't listen to rivet counters much...
This sequence of photos shows how I installed the stern hangar bay warning strobe lights which I made from acrylic rod and brass tubing some weeks back prior to painting the hull...
Soft wax adhesive is smeared on the tip of a flat toothpick and used to hold the strobe:
A round toothpick is used to insert Testors styrene cement into the hole on each side of the hull:
The strobe light is placed into the mounting hole:
Strobes installed:
These are not lit on my model, in fact, none of the lights in the engineering hull are lit; however, on my next build of this kit (the Defiant) I'll be using a 9 volt external battery which will give me more room (and a larger power budget) to play with lighting for the secondary hull. It would be great if I could have these light flash.
So that's it for the tiny lights. The next thing I did was finish the spike on the deflector dish which had been replaced at the start of this build with brass rod. I had glued the tiny plastic tip from the kit spike (it's shaped like the mouth of a bugle with a ball in it's throat) to the end of the brass wire with CA. This was extremely delicate work as you can imagine and not something I would look forward to doing twice so... of course, the tip broke off when I was in the midst of painting and weathering the hull and flew off into the garage never to be found again. I was prepared to scavenge a new tip form one of my other 3 unbuilt 1/1000 kits but, after some thought, I decided a better fix would be to make the new tip from brass which i did using my dremal and brass tubing. So using my scribing tool I shaped a conical collar which fit right over the brass wire and stayed put with CA. I just need to make the little ball for the tip now. I'll probably make it from Tamiya epoxy putty and stick it onto the spike followed by some thin CA for added strength after it dries.:
I'll post some pics of the ship as she stands now.
Next up will be glosscoting and decaling.
Having finished the weathering with black gel ink, attention turned to the small lights that were overlooked by Polar lights when they designed the kit.
I have seen many builds of this model kit that do not include these lights; nevertheless, they were there on the original Enterprise.
Photos of the studio model support their existence and Alan Sinclair even shows them on his blueprints.
These are incredibly tiny "bits" (as the Brits would say) in this scale and the work involved drilling tiny mounting holes with a pinvise and turning red, green, and clear acrylic rod on the dremel to the smallest of diameters using a scribing tool, needle files, and sanding sticks.
In the case of the tiny lights on the upper saucer rim located outboard of the main flashing formation lights, the plastic was filed and sanded to a teardrop shape before being cut from the rod with an Xacto knife and glued in place with CA.
Anyway, here are the pics...
Bridge dome lights:
These tiny lights are actually conical in shape and they light up very well on my model.
Spine lights over the hangar bay:
The outer tinier lights are greenish yellow and the center red light sticks up higher than you would expect.
Port and starboard saucer lights next to the rim:
These are teardrop shaped. Once in place a tiny brush was used to apply Testors Neon Red and Green enamel.
Outer rim lights on the saucer rim itself:
These don't light up so I'll paint them white.
b]Nacelle bussard collar lights:[/b]
Without a doubt the most overlooked lights on the Enterprise. Apparently not even lit on the studio model; mine, however, are lit.
So, purists could say my build is not 100% accurate to the original, but... I don't listen to rivet counters much...
This sequence of photos shows how I installed the stern hangar bay warning strobe lights which I made from acrylic rod and brass tubing some weeks back prior to painting the hull...
Soft wax adhesive is smeared on the tip of a flat toothpick and used to hold the strobe:
A round toothpick is used to insert Testors styrene cement into the hole on each side of the hull:
The strobe light is placed into the mounting hole:
Strobes installed:
These are not lit on my model, in fact, none of the lights in the engineering hull are lit; however, on my next build of this kit (the Defiant) I'll be using a 9 volt external battery which will give me more room (and a larger power budget) to play with lighting for the secondary hull. It would be great if I could have these light flash.
So that's it for the tiny lights. The next thing I did was finish the spike on the deflector dish which had been replaced at the start of this build with brass rod. I had glued the tiny plastic tip from the kit spike (it's shaped like the mouth of a bugle with a ball in it's throat) to the end of the brass wire with CA. This was extremely delicate work as you can imagine and not something I would look forward to doing twice so... of course, the tip broke off when I was in the midst of painting and weathering the hull and flew off into the garage never to be found again. I was prepared to scavenge a new tip form one of my other 3 unbuilt 1/1000 kits but, after some thought, I decided a better fix would be to make the new tip from brass which i did using my dremal and brass tubing. So using my scribing tool I shaped a conical collar which fit right over the brass wire and stayed put with CA. I just need to make the little ball for the tip now. I'll probably make it from Tamiya epoxy putty and stick it onto the spike followed by some thin CA for added strength after it dries.:
I'll post some pics of the ship as she stands now.
Next up will be glosscoting and decaling.
trekriffic
Sr Member
Here are some pics of her as she is right now...ready for glosscote and decals...
Lit up!
Before I spray the glosscote though I'm seriously considering giving her a rubdown with model wax.
Most car modellers will know what I'm talking about as it's used primarily to give shine to car model finshes.
It gives an ultra smooth (slippery in fact) finish and also deepens the color a shade.
I used it on the 18 incher and really liked the results.
Lit up!
Before I spray the glosscote though I'm seriously considering giving her a rubdown with model wax.
Most car modellers will know what I'm talking about as it's used primarily to give shine to car model finshes.
It gives an ultra smooth (slippery in fact) finish and also deepens the color a shade.
I used it on the 18 incher and really liked the results.
trekriffic
Sr Member
Thanks Rob!
Gave her a rub down and polish with Model Wax last night. She came out nice and slick to the touch and maybe a tiny bit darker but not much. It also seems that the weathering is a bit more muted than before which is fine too. I should spray her with Glosscote tonight and then I'll apply decals over the weekend.
First I'm going to mask the engine domes again. I want the domes to stay clean.
I'll also put the masking tape "hat" back over the deflector dish array. I like the metallic sheen it has.
I figure if there's on thing on the ship that would stay clean it would be the deflector dish since it should always be on unless the ship was stationary. Being on, there should be no dust or grime getting thru the deflector field to stain it.
My theory on the stains you see on the hull are they are mostly caused by heat from the few ocassions when the ship has entered a planet's atmosphere. My opinion, but, I doubt the deflector dish would have any ability to block heat from reaching the hull since heat is not a particle.
Gave her a rub down and polish with Model Wax last night. She came out nice and slick to the touch and maybe a tiny bit darker but not much. It also seems that the weathering is a bit more muted than before which is fine too. I should spray her with Glosscote tonight and then I'll apply decals over the weekend.
First I'm going to mask the engine domes again. I want the domes to stay clean.
I'll also put the masking tape "hat" back over the deflector dish array. I like the metallic sheen it has.
I figure if there's on thing on the ship that would stay clean it would be the deflector dish since it should always be on unless the ship was stationary. Being on, there should be no dust or grime getting thru the deflector field to stain it.
My theory on the stains you see on the hull are they are mostly caused by heat from the few ocassions when the ship has entered a planet's atmosphere. My opinion, but, I doubt the deflector dish would have any ability to block heat from reaching the hull since heat is not a particle.
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trekriffic
Sr Member
Thank you sir! I'm sure everyone has their own interpretation of the weathering, paint scheme, engines, and such that would prompt them to do things a bit differently than what another builder might do; especially with this ship. I have a pretty nice Canon Rebel EOS DSLR which can take pics up to 15 megapixel resolution. That, in conjunction, with my starfield backdrop should allow me to recreate some of the shots from the original series fairly closely. I could even take some greenscreen images with my foamcore panels; I'd need someone to collaborate with on turning those into scenes though since I don't have the software or the skills to do compositing myself.
trekriffic
Sr Member
No. I decided I was in deep enough as it was with all the other things I was doing to this kit so I'm just going with decals for the windows.
trekriffic
Sr Member
Did a little cleanup around the upper and lower saucer domes this morning. Nothing that my dental pick and a microbrush dipped in rubbing alcohol couldn't handle though. Also did a little touch up around the bussard dome rims.
trekriffic
Sr Member
In case anyone was wondering what was going on with this...
After spraying with Glosscote I got the decals on the saucer on then started in on the secondary hull and started thinking it was a little too weathered on the port side so I tried lightly sanding some of the weathering off and ended up screwing up the underlying paint. After trying to touch it up with a brush it looked just okay until I tried applying some Model Wax which caused the new paint to soften which required more touching up until finally it really looked like crap. I could have tried more handbrushing with the basecoat but after having gone this far I was not about to settle for "just okay" so I ended up sanding and re-airbrushing the entire secondary hull last Friday. Then yesterday I gave it a coat of Dullcote and re-weathered it (being careful not to go too far overboard with the black gel ink and q-tip swab) afterwhich I sprayed her with more Glosscote. Dare I say after all the extra work to fix my mistakes it looks better than before? Yes! It looks better than before! Thank god! Luckily I have extra of these kits in the stash so I'll use the one I was planning on building as the first or second pilot Enterprise and swipe the decals for the production version from the decal sheet to replace the ones I destroyed. Should have the decaling done by this weekend and then I'll hit her with 2-3 coats of Dullcote to finish her off.
After spraying with Glosscote I got the decals on the saucer on then started in on the secondary hull and started thinking it was a little too weathered on the port side so I tried lightly sanding some of the weathering off and ended up screwing up the underlying paint. After trying to touch it up with a brush it looked just okay until I tried applying some Model Wax which caused the new paint to soften which required more touching up until finally it really looked like crap. I could have tried more handbrushing with the basecoat but after having gone this far I was not about to settle for "just okay" so I ended up sanding and re-airbrushing the entire secondary hull last Friday. Then yesterday I gave it a coat of Dullcote and re-weathered it (being careful not to go too far overboard with the black gel ink and q-tip swab) afterwhich I sprayed her with more Glosscote. Dare I say after all the extra work to fix my mistakes it looks better than before? Yes! It looks better than before! Thank god! Luckily I have extra of these kits in the stash so I'll use the one I was planning on building as the first or second pilot Enterprise and swipe the decals for the production version from the decal sheet to replace the ones I destroyed. Should have the decaling done by this weekend and then I'll hit her with 2-3 coats of Dullcote to finish her off.
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Chrisisall
Master Member
One thing I love about this kit is the challenge to make it look bigger than it is. When it works, the results are amazing. This will be one of those.
I still have a 1/1000 in stash. :unsure I want two months with no interruptions to do it.
Probably in the next decade.
I still have a 1/1000 in stash. :unsure I want two months with no interruptions to do it.
Probably in the next decade.
