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1/350 TOS 1701 for SWMBO!


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This build (YATOS350B) is a custom build for my wife, as she digs the Trek. Unlike every other build this decade, I believe I will get this one done relatively soon as I have her blessing, and despite its size it is a relatively straightforward kit (think the old AMT/ERTL kit on MASSIVE ROIDS!!!!) I was able to get her to settle on the production version, though I may keep the 2nd pilot parts handy for quick swapping. That would really boil down to the bridge dome, the nacelle rear caps, the goofy big deflector and bussard scoops. 99.9% of humanity wouldn't know about the neck light pattern...

I'm building this kit lit with the following parts/objectives:

1. Production build.

2. PL light kit and photo etch.

3. Blue nacelle lights.

4. Potentially lit Galileo shuttle in bay.

5. Friction or magnetic fit for swapping production/2nd pilot version parts.

6. Fix saucer underside lights.

Since there are a few builds going on, I'm limiting my posts to areas or things I'm doing (or think I'm doing!) different or that may be useful to others. Obviously the YouTube videos out there are highly recommended.

One personal triumph so far has been convincing her it needs to look like the TV show, not CHROMED as she wanted. After watching the TOS on Blu-Ray, she came around.

So, first shot is of the never to be seen again production date stamp. Kind of cool to see this:

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As a lighted kit, the first order of business is to light block as much as possible. For this, I did masking tape on the glue joints and used Krylon sandable primer, blowing through about a can to do all the parts. Exterior priming was easier--all I did was put the parts together, letting the natural seams once joined protect themselves from Duplicolor primer. Used Krylon on the inside and Duplicolor on the exterior primarily because I didn't have enough Duplicolor for both, and I figured the darker Krylon would work better for light blocking and for the next coat. For the chrome paint I used a $3.99 can of Rustoleum metallic chrome. Normally I'm not a fan of Rustoleum, but this particular chrome I like--it dries fairly hard, fairly fast. For the amount of paint I dumped on this kit, it should have been a gummy mess. More importantly, it works very well as a light block.

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Most of the masking was fairly easy, except the upper saucer interior. This is the one part that doesn't have any framework or interior structure to guide the masking. So, using liquid mask, I applied the liquid mask to all the joint surfaces on the lower saucer section, and put the two parts together. The wet mask was transferred to the upper section, giving me pretty much exactly where I didn't want paint to go. Another advantage of the wet mask is since I was a little sloppy with the tape, it gave me a chance to fix the areas I needed to on the lower saucer:

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The results, before priming and after chroming, are below.

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One other trick I used concerns the bussard lights, or "Christmas" bulbs. On other models where I have needed to frost a clear part, a simple trick is to dip it in acetone. The technique is fairly simple (I trashed a few green bulbs working out the best method). Basically, grasp the part by the stem with tweezers, and dip for a 5 count into the acetone. After pulling it out, gently blow on the underside of the bulb until dry, a few seconds at most. Then, set aside to fully dry. You can see the results below.

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Another nifty time saving tip--don't bother sanding the seams off the Christmas bulbs. Once you frost the inner spinner dome and the outer bussard scoop with steel wool, there is no way in the Federation or the Empire those seams are visible.

I of course started the light tests with the bussard scoops, which was truly cool as crap to see running (even after seeing a dozen YouTube videos of the same!) Unfortunately, one of my boards is dead--the random 5 blinking small bulbs didn't work, so that was sent back to PL for replacement.

I also wanted to get started on the Warp pylons, as I want the glue to be set set SET when I put this bad boy together. I've never been a huge fan of endless masking little windows, which is part of the reason this is my favorite Trek kit. That said, I decided to try something new (to me). I took the window sections and carefully applied liquid mask.

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At the same time, I primed the exteriors of the pylons and sanded them with 600 grit paper. I carefully inserted the window blanks, which don't quite fit without bowing, glued them in place, and then glued the crap out of the pylons. Note the instructions refer only to edge gluing, but you can and should also glue the truss structure too.

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Now I have perfectly masked windows, which in theory will survive the color coats, gloss coats until they come off for the final flat coats. In theory. It's not as dangerous as cold starting the engines with a controlled implosion, but if it doesn't work I'll be certainly disappointed. Ultimately, I'll need to get color coats on the pylons before I get too far down the road with the neck or hulls and realize it doesn't work.

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Well,everybody knows Bussard scoops are red, nacelle lights are blue. :rolleyes:

SWMBO wants maximum lighting, and the nacelle lights are bordering on canon, as they were omitted from the production version to save costs.

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Well, I have to disagree about it bordering on canon, there was never a hint of it in TOS. How do you figure it borders on canon? I dont think it had anything to do with cost. Nice work so far.

Edited by midnightprowler
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Well, I have to disagree about it bordering on canon, there was never a hint of it in TOS. How do you figure it borders on canon? I dont think it had anything to do with cost. Nice work so far.

Thanks!

Let me put it in simple terms to set your mind at ease:

MY WIFE WANTS LOTS OF LIGHTS. BLINKING LIGHTS. STEADY LIGHTS. LOTS OF LIGHTS.

To address the fan concern, the folks at Round 2 claim their research shows Roddenberry wanted them, but nacelle lights were deleted due to cost/schedule. If it really is a concern, I'd suggest taking the issue up with Round 2. I'm lucky this thing isn't going to be chrome! She whom is my wife has spoken.

Dude, I hope you mean STEroids...?

Yeah, sure... Let's go with that. Though the saucer does remind me of a certain pillow...

Edited by MarkW
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On a truly happy note, BTW, I have my replacement board from PL. I had a bad one with no blinky, and it took them all of a week to replace it. Also got a replacement Bussard dome--now I can use my chipped one for masking during painting.

Important tip when removing all the sprue attachments on the Bussard: when clipping, make sure the tip of the nippers extends a few millimeters beyond the attachment point. If you try to "nibble" the piece off, you might end up having it chip like mine did. By having the attachment point completely within the blades of the nippers, you'll get a clean cut every time.

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Did a little more today before being wiped out by a stomach flu. Working on the nacelle struts, there are two options. You can go with the molded in detail, or flip the parts around to the smooth side and use photoetch. I went with the PE option for my lovely customer. Below you see the molded in detail, which is actually pretty damn good, and I'm sure would look great with a black wash over the gray paint.

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Note these panels are mildly trapezoidal edge on, so to get them to fit you have to file/sand all four edges.

f46d0f760d69f4f045b351961643a344_zpsed9353b0.jpgWithout sanding or filing down the long edges, you end up with a hideous fit (one of these things is not like the other):

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Looking at the Nacelle detail parts, there are som terrible seams and draft angle issues. PL tried to be clever by putting a mold parting line right down the middle her, but it resulted in a triangular line on the curve, and the line created on the seam is pretty crappy:

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Since I need 8 of these total between the two kits, I'm leaning towards fixing and recasting them. I removed the lines on the seam and the curve the get started. Stretched sprue should be a simple fix. In addition to the draft angle issue, there are sinks on both sides of the front and rear, which need to be evened out.

The nacelle vent detail part has an ugly seam, but it is easy to fix.

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This one also hides the mold line in a raised detail line, but does a much better job. This part also has a noticeable sink mark on the flat side surfaces.

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Came across a couple other issues. First, the nacelle pylons can be a hideously tight fit to the secondary hull. This is in part due to a tight fit in the first place, but also if you don't properly align the nacelle strut supports, part #54, it will require some work to fix. Easiest thing I did was shave off the misaligned edge between the secondary hull and part 54. Still tight, but you don't need to be Schwarzenegger.

Second, I did a test run of the blue nacelle lights. They will need their own circuit--hooking all 30 lights up to the Bussard circuit caused the blinky Bussard lights to stop blinking. Fortunately there is an unused 12 V hookup on the secondary hull board. I also need to evaluate whether I need that much light, or can I get by a little smarter arrangement with better diffusion.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was able to get a decent cast of my master for that wretched part #49. There were a number of issues that popped up. First, the "clay" I used to make the pour block wasn't clay, and had a bad reaction with the RTV. By bad, I mean it prevented the RTV it touched from curing, resulting in a goopy mess. Fortunately the reaction didn't go into the detail area, and doesn't seem to impact the resin from curing. There are still areas that are substantially tacky. Second, my pressure rig was acting badly. Here I was worried about the RTV or resin being old... The pressure pot has a slow leak, a hair trigger relief valve that blows right at 50 psi, and my compressor is now developing relief valve issues (replacement has arrived). It was so bad my first cast was totally screwed up. But after pummeling it into submission (ok, holding the relief valve shut with my finger and a small amount of pressure) and adding the 2 drams of liquid resin, I finally got the good cast:

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This part needs a tiny bit more cleanup, but that is definitely easier than trying to fix those bad draft angled lines. This is dry fitted, and fairly snug without any gluing.

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OK, work continues. First, a nice shot of the slide mold technology used. Very impressive, and a little frustrating it was used so sparingly. The shuttle and the impulse engines are the two obvious places, yet the intercoolers look like crap...

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No pics of the progress here, but I was able to grind down a 5 mm white LED to fit inside the shuttle. I also wired up a white SMD (402 package) to see which would work better. The 5 MM is snug, but much brighter. I'll have to see how hot it gets, and if it would potentially warp the shuttle plastic. The intent is to have the back open and the shuttle in takeoff position, so the LED would light the windows, the open rear of the shuttle would be impossible to see and any excess light would help illuminate the shuttle bay.

Moving on the dry fitting the lights. That was fun--not. The starboard side neck and secondary hull windows fit for crap. I had to basically chop the large window sections down to tiny chunks to get them to fit. On the hull side, there were numerous window holes that weren't square or round and needed to be carved out.

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Keep in mind the above is supposed to fit as one piece...

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On the flip side, literally, the port side windows fit into the neck and secondary hull very nicely. Only 3 or so windows had flash or needed squaring. Once I finish masking, I'll start gluing the windows in and fixing the light block issues. Then it's wiring and off to the races.

I've also made a start on fitting the windows to the saucer. The B/C deck windows have a significant gap at the upper edge, which was partially alleviated by cutting off spare clear plastic on the upper edge of the window insert. Getting them snug and flush has been a challenge. The rest of the upper saucer clear parts have been OK, but the lower saucer windows are a mixed bag. I think on the next kit I'll use the black or white window blanks to effectively mask the portholes so the clear parts will fit cleaner. As is, I'll need to use the white or black blanks to fix the B/C deck window holes which are not very well molded.

One other observation. I'm doing up some of the Pilot version parts so I can make a poor man's swap and pretend I have a pilot version. To that end, I decided to do all three sets of copper parts (two production and one Pilot) deflector dishes. To my surprise, the Pilot version dish was not fully molded--it had a small triangular chunk missing from the outer rim. Trivial to fix--so trivial I didn't bother to dig out my other copy--but still another quality control issue. Not overall impressed...

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Looking good, what was the problem with the kit reactors? Also, what does SWMBO stand for? Lol.

If you look at the middle line at the top in this picture, you'll see it is a triangular blob instead of a distinct line.

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Is that what you were referring to?

"She whom is my wife" would be more appropriate for Star Trek Modeling, I guess!

More quality issues. I'm really getting annoyed with frankly how crappy the molding is. I've seen a dozen or so online reviews of this kit, all gushing about how awesome a job PL did. Well, on kit #1537, not so much. These are inserts that go along the raised structure along the secondary hull. Note the bottom one has some missing details in the upper right corner:

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I hope I got lucky with this one--I still have one more to go.

A couple of pics to follow up on the shuttle LEDs. First, the itty bitty 402 LED--now the backup:

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BECAUSE I was able to sand the 5mm white LED to comfortably fit inside the Shuttle:

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It lit up fairly well using my two hearing aid tester batteries. After taking this much material off, it was prudent to do some testing to make sure I hadn't toobed it. I plan to wire this in to an existing 5V line with an appropriately sized resistor.

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Don't worry Mr.Gopher, Dr's orders...

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I'll use some clear smoke for the windows so they'll have some definition if the power is off.

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Continuing to clean up parts. This is more for my future use-- what parts to keep an eye out for on the next build. Here the nacelle end caps have some degree of sink marks.

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Here is the worse of the two after sanding and priming.

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Now I'm waiting for a replacement part for the badly molded part #20 in the above post, and paint. The neck and secondary hull windows are in place, I can start testing my masking concept.

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Large piece construction is underway. Used low temp hot glue to mount the nacelle LED strips and secure the wiring, then put the nacelle halves together. Part of getting to this step was running a second set of wires through the nacelle strut (that was fun :rolleyes: ), and then taping the strut to the back or outside of the nacelle to keep it out of the way. Though I had done some dry fitting, there still is some gap work to deal with. I used Testors liquid cement rather than a solvent cement due to the length of the seam. Next time I will probably use liquid cement on the male/female peg connectors and solvent cement along the external seams to see if that helps. The first seam to fix is the strut receiver area, which I plan to use SGT on due to the stress of inserting the strut. After that, the nacelle and strut become one sub assembly until final build.

I also did a quick test of the liquid mask I applied before gluing the windows in. Though I put some effort into getting the windows to fit, they aren't perfect so the liquid mask peeled right off no problem. I do have a plan to fix any poorly fitting windows post paint.

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What I'm doing with my windows is in areas where they protrude out to far, I sanded them flush to the exterior. Thinned down putty was used for the edges of some of the round windows (such as on the bridge B-C deck) and it did the job nicely. For masks, I went with a combination of the Aztek Dummy masking set and Tamiya tape for a couple of the windows that were a little too long for the masks. After applying those (with the lights on too help me position them properly) once the major assemblies were done, it was down to utilizing some high build primer to deal with any remaining seam issues on the edges.

I hope to have my model done by this Wednesday for a club meeting, but I should be ready to pull off the masks before then and I can reveal my results.

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Can't wait to see your finished E. I didn't mention directly, but I also mounted and sanded the windows flush as well. It becomes more relevant here...

Been working on the neck lighting. The kit lighting rig would have you set one 3 pack on the bottom left, the other three pack on the top right (or vice versa), and magically all the windows are evenly lit. Not even close. So, I tried a different arrangment. First, I saw the neck is wide enough to mount the LED srips facing up or down instead of sideways. The PL light kit wire clips, however, are too wide to fit sideways. Since the clips on my wire set here in particular was really flaky, and the LED strips are trivial to solder, I simply cut off the clips and direct soldered the wires to the LEDs.

I then experimented with a variety of ways to mount the strips with the top one facing down, and the bottom one facing up. This immediately gave better lighting, but resulted in hot spots with the windows closest to the LED strips. To remedy this, I used a couple methods. First, I painted and then puttied over the edges of the clear styrene of the window inserts. This helped tone done the light seeping between the window insert and the hull--not all windows are perfectly flush as I mounted them to be flush on the outside.

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Next, I mounted the LED strips to the starboard side of the neck--the side with the female connectors. This ensured I wouldn't end up putting them in a place that would be pinched when the halves were closed. Once again, everything was nailed down with the low temp hot glue gun.

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Finally, I realized with all the light blocking and baffling, and sheer number of windows, trying to thread the saucer power cable through that mess AND not running across a window was silly. Since Mr. Scott couldn't give me exact figures, I had to make a guess as to the length to leave on either side, then tacked it down with glue.

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Results below show how they came out. Not perfect, but I'm out of time to dork with it--and much better than the sideways mount. You really have to neck down an camera to get close to accurate shots--anything short of a 1/200 shutter was washing out, making all the windows look super bright and even. I'll see if I can smooth things out a little better, especially on the foremost top row after the glue has dried. Or those will be blacked out...

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In my own case, using the stock lighting arrangement, I got the windows to light evenly in the neck. I made sure to sand the clear parts so the light diffused nicely (VERY imporant step) and it produced a good effect with no hot spots. Part of it could also be down to the silver paint I used as well on the inside, which gave everything a nice even reflective coating.

I like the lighting idea you came up with, but be aware that if you don't mount the main wiring harness for the saucer lights inside first (and maybe have a quick release plug topside of the pylon) it could be a bit of a struggle to get the harness to pass through the closed pylon.

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Weird. I used a fairly reflective silver paint as well, and frosted all the clear parts as well. I'm leaning towards flat white for the next one.

You'll note in the middle picture above I mounted the "H" saucer harness already. Was there another one I missed?

One other note--the lighting in the starboard side shot is better than the picture implies. That was where I did a test shot of primer trying out my masking scheme.

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