To get things started, I'm going to talk about the stand first.
I actually started this process very early on. I made the stand out of dimensional lumber, 2x8 to be exact. The reason I did this was I had it left over from another project. I used the best piece for the stand and a less perfect piece as a temp stand I've used throughout this build.
Here is the pristine lumber:
I then used a router to sculpt the edges with a simple relief and used wood stain to make it look something like a dark oak.
I chose to make a dedication plaque for this in the blank space. I took a 1 mm piece of styrene, sanded it in one direction and painted it gold. I drilled out the four corners so I could use brass screws to attach it. I make a custom decal in Photoshop. Since the recipient of this gift has a Serbian background, the markings are Serbian in nature. Just another part of the 'multiverse' ;)
Finishing the Stardrive section
What I really like about this model is how there are very few points to blend the saucer halves together which makes this ideal to build in sections. For the star drive section, I took this time to finish adding the remaining decals.
The marking decals were part the original decals, part custom marking decals(SFS Tesla vs. USS Enterprise, EN-56515 vs, NCC-1701-D) window decals (made from scans of the model compared in scale to the Ed Whitefire's blueprints which are available online and a decal set I downloaded from Starshipmodeler.com which is freely available.
Mating the lower saucer with the rest of the ship.
This was pretty straight forward after a lot of test fitting. I had to use bit of styrene to glue the lower saucer to the armature. I bonded that with hot glue. The main wiring connection for the model are in the lower saucer. I didn't take the time to photograph every step but here is the result:
For the saucer impulse engines, I used a piece of clear styrene sprue, polished it, and it successfully bends the light in a horizontal fashion to provide even illumination, and then tinted with both clear orange and clear red paints. I also used foil duct tape to reflect the light better.
Attaching the upper saucer to the lower saucer was somewhat simple. I laid the upper saucer on the engines while I made the final connections and fed the fiber optics to the right locations. Here is a test fit with illumination.
Clamping down the saucer halves were tricky as I used bulky wiring vs. what I now use, thin magnet wire.
DECALS and more DECALS...
Once everything was together and I tinted each of the running lights to their appropriate colour, the next task was finishing the remaining decals off. I jumped the gun a bit putting the upper saucer registry on, but that's ok.
Here are a few supplies I use to do custom decals. Decal bonder, letter sized decals paper and I use a few drops of white glue to promote decal adhesion in the water. Works every time.
The rest of the windows I filled in with a very fine pencil. I made window decals which were missing from the model.
That's going to wrap up this post, next one will be the final reveal.
Cheers and happy model building!!
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