I do realize this has been a while. What can I say, life is beautifully busy, and I've had a fantastic summer - both personally and professionally! Not much time spent on my hobby, but there's no deadlines or rushes. Anyways, I've also since I last posted ordered some additional materials for this build, and they just came in.
The ship has a name!! USS Olympia, it was featured as a crashed ship in an episode of Deep Space Nine. According to Memory Alpha Wiki, it was a reuse of the destroyed Enterprise Saucer Section from Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. I'm making an assumption it was a Constitution Class Refit. We saw Excelsior and Miranda Class ships throughout TNG, DS9 and Voyager, but never the Constitution Refit, except for during the "Battle of Wolf 359" (which BTW, is a real red dwarf star in the constellation Leo - many stars in Star Trek are named after real stars). The ship appears as the wreckage of a secondary hull of a Constitution Class Refit, and you do see a separated saucer section. That's the only time in Star Trek The Next Generation this type of ship appears, so it is reasonable to assume these old ships must still be in service too. So this build will now be a 24th Century Vessel. That means a five-digit registry (NCC-xxxxx) vs. a four digit (NCC-1701, or NX-2000, NCC-1864, etc.) and 24th century Starfleet branding with the Arrowhead logo on an elliptical disc vs. a circular one. I'm not going to be adding 'lifeboats' or 'phaser strips' but just update the markings. I did after all almost double the windows on the secondary hull. I digress, on to the build!
So this is now the continuation of the secondary hull, where I last left off. Lots of light leaks through the seams.
I did most of this work with the lights on so I could at least see what progress I was making with filling the seams while maintaining the gridlines.
I tried my very best to save my paint job (won't do this again, pre-paint the parts, especially on this kit). It was a good idea at the time to pre-paint the model, but in practice, not so good. I think pre-painting the pylons were a good idea, but let's see as I move forward with this build...
One of the trickier aspects of this is restoring every time the gridline where the seam is. This is why on future builds I won't be pre-painting this section. To re-scribe the gridline I used the edge of a triangular jewelers file, on its edge, like a saw.
This took more than one try to get it right.
I did this a seam at a time, always hooking up the internal lighting so I could see any light leaks.
The mess of wires out the front cavity of the hull.
Once I was finished with all of the seam-filling and addressing the light-leaks, I moved forward to paint the affected areas.
Now I can finally start to paint what I've fixed.
I chose silver as to me this looks like a section that would have to be structurally secure (both in the fictional universe of warp drive and literally to support the nacelles).
Another area which needs to blend in better is the spot just above the arboretum windows.
After many weeks (drying time, work and other commitments), the idea of just masking off sections and leaving others exposed didn't quite work as planned, unfortunately.
Next update will complete the secondary hull, but a complete repaint job. I have just received window masks for this project, something I should have done from the beginning, which will undoubtedly speed up things and properly finish this very long project.
Happy model building!!
Star Trek and all related marks, logos and characters are solely owned by CBS Studios Inc. This fan blog (production) is not endorsed by, sponsored by, nor affiliated with CBS, Paramount Pictures, or any other Star Trek franchise, and is a non-commercial fan-made blog intended for recreational use. No commercial exhibition or distribution is permitted. No alleged independent rights will be asserted against CBS or Paramount Pictures.
No comments:
Post a Comment