DeBoers Refit Enterprise WIP

[NemVia]

Updates For June 2012

I've added 15 new pics for the Enterprise Update.

For the Enterprises it has been quite a month of work. The first tough part was to add the new re-cast thruster pieces to the tops and bottoms of the saucers. Some were exact fits while others needed a bit of sanding and puttying, but all this effort will produce a very nice lighting effect later on. I've had to cut out some wiring holes in the saucer section to allow the wiring to go from the saucer to the Dorsal. I've also had to remove a section of one of the framing braces to allow room for the crew rec-deck assembly for later on. I have also opened up the rear of the upper saucer to allow for both the epoxying of the warp crystal/impulse engine piece as well as the lighting effects for that area. I've made the hole large enough so I can epoxy these pieces into place well enough so they won't move at all. To epoexy them into place and take care of the putty work at the same time, I line the entire rim of the Warp crystal piece with the putty, then press it into place, then I immediatly epoxy the piece into place with 5 minute epoxy. When this is set I take an exacto blade and remove the excess putty from the outside. This alows for sanding to be kept to a minimum. Next I mask off the Warp crystal dome as well as the impulse engines so that I can opaque the entire hull top and bottom. I let the Flat black set for at least a day then spray the entire top and bottom with Light Neutral Gray. I've been finding it better to start with the darker colors first, then mask off the smallest details and work my way up to the lightest colors. By next month I should have most of the first masking done and hopefully the second one for most of the saucer pieces. Hope you enjoy this update and I'll see you all next month.!

Mark

[NemVia]

August Updates

This months update is very picture heavy!


For the Enterprise update, unfortunately I was not able to get too much accomplished on the Aztec Painting because of spending so much time on Reliant. But it has been started and is going good as well. Although the Aztec pattern is different from Reliant I am still using the same painting technique. First I've sprayed the entire saucer sections, top and bottom Neutral Gray and now I'm in the process of masking of smaller areas of the hull to create the first color of the Aztec pattern. These maskings will then be removed after spraying the next color "Light Gray" and then lightly spraying over that to soften up the harshness of the Neutral Gray color. Then for the final Aztec Pattern I will overlap different parts of the first color with the masking and painting to give the hull the appearance of several different shades of color in the Aztec pattern. There are 5 new pics of this process in the August updates. As of this update I have two of the Enterprise upper saucers masked and ready for painting. By the next update I should have all of the base colors finished.

See you next update! Enjoy! And as always comments and New members are always welcome!

Mark

[NemVia]

Updates for September 2012

Hey everyone! There are 26 new pics for this month's update! Please check them out! Comments are always welcome.

It's been a very busy month for the Enterprsie models! I've now begun working on the Aztec patterns! And hooooweee! that is sure a lot of work.I've decided not to use any friskette to make the patterns because I've found that the widths of the grids vary slightly from one another. Some are wider and some are narrower. This can be very frustrating when using a friskette template. So in this case I measured the widest grid and use that for the basis of my pattern, then for the narrower grids I just make slight cuts and do some minor overlapping for the narrower grids. So all of the patterns for each individual grid are now matched up more perfectly with masking tape than they ever could be with a stencil or friskette. It takes about one hour to do one entire grid circle on each of the saucers. All of the upper saucers Aztec patterns are completed and I've got 4 rings of the grids done on the lower saucers. So, yeh, do the math... yes, about 30 hours to get what I did, done. But the pictures will speak for themselves. Everyhting is turning out very nice at this point.

I've also had to tweek a few things with the engineering hull and deflector housing. As I re-watched parts of ST:TPM and ST: TWOK I realized that something did not appear to be right and it turned out to be the Strongback and deflector dish housing. In ST:TMP when the Enterprise was in drydock, I was not seeing any of the strongback details that I painted on the ship that I was seeing in the movie. There was way too much definition to the colors that I had used and there is a slight sheen to the surface of the ship indicating she was basically "BRAND NEW". I began to rethink what I did and it turns out that I had been following pictures of the studio model details as the model was repainted for 1701 - "A". I became very distrought and realize this needed to be corrected befor I add decals. The solution was quite simple though, I took some light Neutral gray and thinned it out a lot. Then with a very light spray setting on my airbrush, I resprayed over the entire strongback with this color and guess what. It worked. You can still see the details but they have been toned down quite a bit. I will be spraying the Engineering hull as well as the other parts of the ship with gloss to give it just enough sheen to not only add the decals, but to give it the new hull look as well.

I should be able to have the rest of the masking done by the next update and hopefully all of the decals will be finished, then I can finally start putting these babies together and begin the lighting and wiring.


So, that's all for this update. I will see you again next update! Take care,

Mark

[NemVia]

Updates for October 2012

This month I've been concentrating on finishing up all of the major painting and/or Aztec patterns on the Enterprise Saucers. I have to say I am super Glad this is now pretty much behind me now. Just some minor touchups that need to be done, but most of these will be finished when the models are completely assembled. The next phase of these kits is the DECALS of both the upper and lower saucers as well as the engineering hulls. I was kind of taken aback with these kits when I finally realized that there are several decals that are not included with the decal page namely, the yellow areas for around the phaser turrets along with their Red outlines. I had to paint all of these on instead. I also had to paint on the Red stripes that go along the outside of the bridge area. But all of these colors are now painted on included the gray stripes where the dorsal meets the saucer and the gray stripe that encircles the bridge area back to the officer's lounge. The area around the windoes was painted Intermediate blue. After everything set, I then Gloss Coated all of the Painted areas with 2 coats to first seal all the paints so that it would be easier to handle the model pieces and also prepare the surface for the massive decaling that needed to be done. The upper and lower saucer and the engineering hulls all needed to be decaled. I believe when I counted up all the decals that needed to be applied and there were about 283 individual applications. Many of the single piece decals had to be cut as individuals, namely the ships name and registry numbers. The decal sheet has great graphics but the backing used is extremely thin and for some reason I needed to soak them a few minutes extra in order for it to seperate completely from the backing. But everything went on very smoothly. After the decals were added another light coat of gloss coat was then spritzed on and left to dry for about an hour, this will prevent the decals from sliding if the coat is too heavy. Then after another hour or so I put on the final coat and this sealed everything in place. There are 38 new pic in this months update.

Now I will be able to start on the interior lighting and adding the interior pieces to the model. I will first need to build some cradles to hold the models in place while I'm working on these areas. But the ships are finally going to be assembled during the next month. Even I'm looking forward to the update for next month! See you then!

Mark

[NemVia]

November Updates Posted

Hey Everyone!

This month was not a good month for productivity, I ran into a very nasty problem with the Hanger Decks... All three of them actually. While they were in storage the very ends of the flight decks started to warp (no pun intended) upwards. I finally realized there was no chance of getting these pieces to fit into the model properly, so I was going to have to re-do all 3 flight deck pieces. Apparently the resin I used, which was supposed to be a very hard and durable resin, was not as hard and durable as was promised, So I had to cut off all of the flight deck pieces and use what I originally wanted to use in the first place but was afraid that the paint would not adhere to it very well, and that is pieces of window quality plexi-glass. I first had to trace the old piece shapes onto the plexi then cut them and reshape them until they fit perfect inside the models. Then I wanted to add some more detailing to the flight deck namely, more and clearer landing and take off lines along with parking position lines for the work bees. The best way to do this was to first mask off the areas where the chase lighting effects would go, then spray the entire top of the deck piece flat black to make sure no stray lighting would come through the deck. Then I sprayed the same entire pieces yellow so I could mask off the lines I wanted on the deck. I didn't want to do this the other way around because I was afraid the masks might peal off some of the deck paint. Anyway it was easier to cut small strips of masking tape and get all of the yellow lines nice and straight. Then I sprayed the flight deck Intermediate Blue. Then removed all of the masks and finally sprayed the entire deck pieces with gloss cote. This gives the deck a nice sheen to it. Check out the pics in the November update page and you'll see what I mean.

After this huge delay I started adding the porthole glass which for the most part is .005" clear styrene #9005 and then the exterior lighting and wiring for the secondary hull. This proved to be quite a challenge because the Engineering hull comes pre-assembled and if you have large hands, it can be quite cumbersome getting all of these LEDs in there. Plus there is the matter of getting all of the spot lights aimed properly, then carefully putting the hanger deck piece inside without bumping anything. I have several Lighting TEST pics in this update and from what I'm seeing it looks pretty good so far and I can move onto the Deflector Dish lighting and start on some of the saucer lighting.

Also in this update I've been able to add one of the botany decks inside the engineering hull. This deck will be lit with some EL lighting. I really like the effect this stuff does on a piece like this. It lights the deck up very evenly rather than the sharp light points that an LED gives off. It was also a challenge to get this deck into the hull. It can not be done assembled. I had to first put the lower half in first, then the top piece. They are both very tricky to get in there. The corners of the pieces had to be fed up into the dorsal (Thank goodned it was hallow otherwise I would've really been stuck) then slowly turned so that the pieces were parallel to each other then one more 90 deg turn to make them fit into thier final postion.

Just one more note: Because of the redoing of the flight deck pieces, I was only able to accomplish all of these updates on only one of the models, so I will need to repeat these on two more of the kits and portions of this on the Reliant model. I apologize for this mess up, but sometimes these things happen, but actually I'm kinda glad it did because I like how the flight decks look much better than I did before. Well that's it for this update. Please feel free to make comments! See you in 1 month!

Mark

[NemVia]

Updates For January 2013

Hi Everyone! Sorry this update took so long to get uploaded. December was a very rough month for my secular work so very little was done on Enterprise x 3. I have 22 new pics in the Updates for January page

For Enterprise updates:

I needed to get all of the viewport glass in place as well as the wiring and lighting for some of the spot lights and the warp engines in place before I could put the Hanger and Botany deck pieces in place. So I added the clear pieces into the hull first. This included the Botany Deck Viewports.

I was then able to add the exterior lighting on the other two engineering hulls and get all of the spot lights aimed to their proper locations. There are 7 Spots on each of the hulls. To insert them and secure them in place as well as aim them took about 2 - 3 hours each. No easy task because of the limited amount of room to work in with each of these models. In the November update I was able to get the first model done, but I learned from that one what NOT to do on the other 2. With the polar Lights Enterprise you can work on one half of the hull at a time, then assemble the 2 halves together. With the DeBoers, the hull is already one piece so you have to try to get your hands into that limited space. So it is very time consuming.

I was also able to finally put the saucers back on so all of the ships are basically assembled. I also added all of the upper and lower saucer spot lights and they are all in place. I was able to get one of the saucer Interior lighting in place this month. I'm using some 4" fluorescent tubes that run off of ballasts and require 12v. to operate. I just have 2 more saucers to put the lighting into, but I do have a good pic of the lighting tests with these fluorescent mini lights on. There are also a couple pics with the warp engines on. By the next update I should have all of the lighting done in the saucers as well as the torpedo launcher effect and other lighting effects such as the impulse engine effect. I am looking forward to sealing up this ships and getting ready for the next phase of 2 of these builds.


That's all for this months update. We'll see you next month.

Mark

[NemVia]

Updates For February 2013

Greetings!

For this month's update I've spent much of the time adding all of the clear plastic for all of the windows and viewports, plus I'm adding the interior lighting for the Officer's lounge which, by the way is turning out fabulous. There are some great pictures of this lighting in the UPDATES FOR FEBRUARY page. Check them out.

In other areas I have had to scratch build and paint all of the interiors for the open hatch version of the Enterprise that will be in the Drydock. I wanted these hatches to be able to open and close, unlike the ones I made for the PLE version which always stayed open. I was originally going to make all of the hardware out of copper plating and tubing, but the problem I ran into was how to connect the hardware to the hatch doors without it looking like it was cemented together. I decided to scrap that idea and use styrene parts instead of copper so there would be less mess. It worked out better this way. I have 14 new pics in this month's updates.

For the next update I will be adding some updates for the plans for my new Drydock Builds. I've started blueprints for this build so that I can get the proper scale of this build to match up with the DeBoers Scale Enterprise. I'm estimating the length of this new version to be about 56". This larger scale will be good for adding even more details for this build. That and the fact that I was able to see the original Filming Miniature in person and I will be able to work off of that model to make some corrections and changes so that these models will be even more accurate to ST:TMP filming miniature.

That's it for now. Check out the pics, let me know what you think and I'll see you next month.

Mark