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Hermes Class (Star Trek) 1:2500


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Late Friday night, while waiting for my MiG-15 to dry, I got stuck on my Miranda Class because the paint I needed was dried out. So what does a modeller do? Start a new project! :D

 

I have an extra 1:2500 AMT 3 enterprise kit, and this has been percolating in my mind for a while. As with most kids my age, I thought the Franz Joseph "Starfleet Technical Manual" was the greatest Star Trek book ever and always dreamed of building up my own fleet (of course, when role playing I was always the captain of a Federation Class Dreadnought :) ). 1:2500 scale is the perfect scale to do that with. So, since I have extra registry number and fleet pennant decals from my JT Graphics Surya class decal sheet, I figured I'd make the USS Anubis (NCC-586) -- partially as a nod to Stargate SG-1 which my kids love.

 

So, for starters, I wanted to turn the center section (with the "control reactor" which is the name given by the old AMT Enterprise instructions) so that it would face down in the finished product.  So, I cut the front and back parts off the engine nacelle with an exact-o knife and glued them on 90 degrees clockwise. I had to cut off the "Intercooler units" and will need to fabricate new ones later.  I didn't get pictures of the nacelle all cut apart, but here it is re-assembled, but not sanded yet:

 

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I also needed to cut the "neck" off of the secondary hull, so I did that with an exact-o knife and press-fit it into the saucer:

 

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Yesterday, I sanded the warp nacelle.  It looks pretty good, but I won't know for sure until I primer it.  Don't know how well the picture shows it, though:

 

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Also, I've seen pictures of kit bashes with a shuttle bay on the saucer section, which I think is brilliant for a hermes class scout.  So, I tried to replicate that by cutting the back end of the secondary hull off with my Dremel and spending an hour with the Dremel and sandpaper to try and get it to fit correctly.  This is the best I could do. I think it will be OK. The next step is to sand this down, and then use Apoxie sculpt epoxy putty to fill in the gaps.  That will be the tricky part!

 

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This is looking good. Having a decent-sized fleet of 1/3788 wargame miniatures of the Franz Joseph ships, I can appreciate the work you have to do to convert a twin-nacelle Constitution-class ship to a single-nacelle Hermes/Saladin-class.

 

Purely for interest's sake, you might be interested to know that, according to a set of unofficial blueprints of the Saladin class (similar in style to the original FJ Constitution Deck Plans), the ship has two small-ish shuttlebays in the saucer with the doors on the underside, located either side of the planetary sensor dome, about 2/3rds of the way out towards the rim. Having said that, your idea is at least as good, if not better from a practical point of view, and I have always thought that the Engineering section on the Hermes/Saladin ought to be bigger as well, since it would need to include both warp and impulse engineering, which are separated in the Connie.

 

So good work, and I look forward to seeing more of it.

Edited by Tarkas
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On 10/13/2018 at 3:22 PM, Tarkas said:

This is looking good. Having a decent-sized fleet of 1/3788 wargame miniatures of the Franz Joseph ships, I can appreciate the work you have to do to convert a twin-nacelle Constitution-class ship to a single-nacelle Hermes/Saladin-class.

 

Purely for interest's sake, you might be interested to know that, according to a set of unofficial blueprints of the Saladin class (similar in style to the original FJ Constitution Deck Plans), the ship has two small-ish shuttlebays in the saucer with the doors on the underside, located either side of the planetary sensor dome, about 2/3rds of the way out towards the rim. Having said that, your idea is at least as good, if not better from a practical point of view, and I have always thought that the Engineering section on the Hermes/Saladin ought to be bigger as well, since it would need to include both warp and impulse engineering, which are separated in the Connie.

 

So good work, and I look forward to seeing more of it.

Thanks for the kind words! I didn't know about the blueprints with the 2 shuttlebays. It would be interesting to see that.

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My weekend kind of got away from me, so I really was only able to work on this project.  But, I was able to mold and sand the join between the shuttle bay and the center of the saucer section.  Here are a couple of pictures.  It's hard to see how good (or bad) the contours are in these pictures and the different color of the Apoxie sculpt doesn't help. It will look better when it gets primered.

 

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This side profile shows the joined sections better:

 

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I had to fabricate new "Final Stage Intercoolers" (according to the Franz Joseph manual), since the others were in the wrong position and sanded off. I used 0.10" styrene sheet and the other nacelle as a template. It took a few tries before I was satisfied with both the shape and position.

 

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The other thing I needed to do was figure out how to do the navigational deflector. The deflector arm tapers to a point hand has a little ball attached, with the deflector on it.  I used a toothpick because it was tapered. I soaked it in superglue to seal it for painting.  I used epoxy putty to make a ball, but it didn't work very well because of the small size.  So, I just shaped it into something that looks OK.  It may need some sanding after it cures. When all of this dries I will be able to primer, then I can really see how good of a job I really did.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Haven't gotten a whole lot done -- started a new job with 10 hour shifts, which kinda takes away time from the bench. I'm also having a difficult time with the MiG-15

 

I primered all the pieces with Mr. Surfacer 1500 black.  As I expected, the area where I blended the shuttle bay into the saucer look much better with a uniform color over it.

 

I wanted to use the paints I'd used on another Star Trek model to paint the Bussard collectors on the front of the warp engines: Tamiya Orange and Testors spray pearl white. The last time, I just brush painted the orange and then sprayed the pearl white.  This time, I brush painted the orange and it sagged over night and after 3 days was still soft and tacky, which is really weird because it's an acrylic. I sanded it all off and tried to spray it with the airbrush and it ran all over the place... which is odd.  I decided to try a different approach and sprayed it with decanted Tamiya Silver leaf and then tried to spray Tamiya transparent orange over that.  The transparent orange beaded up really bad.  So, I cleaned that off and went hunting for orange enamel at the local hobby store.  The only orange I could find was the little square Testors bottle, which seems more red than the Tamiya orange. I sprayed that without any problems and then overcoated that with the pearl white.  It looks OK. I don't like the reddish orange as much, but I will live with it. Here's what it looks like so far:

 

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Looks pretty cool in black! :D I can't wait to start painting on it.  I think it will go pretty quickly now. I'm a little hot and heavy into the MiG-15 right now, so I may not work on this until next weekend.

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  • 1 month later...

Had 10 minutes last night and got the marble coat on. I used Testors model master FS36440 (Gull gray) thinned with Mr. Color Leveling thinner 2 parts thinner to 1 part paint. I get the airbrush really close, and just let a little paint out so it's a very thin line and then just literally scribble like a kid with a crayon. The trick is to be as random possible and it eventually builds up into a finish resembling marble. The saucer came out OK, but the nacelle wasn't my best work.  Still, it's good enough!

 

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In that last picture, I should mention that I covered the orange Bussard collector with liquid masking.  Hopefully it will turn out OK.  It occurred to me it would've been easier to do that after painting the gray -- I'm not sure what I was thinking.

 

Next steps: some preshading and then spray a highly thinned gull gray over the whole thing to finish off the base coat.  The marbling only serves to add some (hopefully) natural looking tonal variation to the paint and, as such, should be subtle. I always have a hard time knowing when to stop.

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Did a little pre-shading on the nacelle.  On my Surya class, I pre-shaded in black but it was too much contrast.  This time I went with Model Master Gunship Gray.  I put Tamiya yellow masking tape where I wanted the "panel line" and dry brushed the gunship gray toward the back.

 

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I will need to do the same with the edge of the saucer and then I can put my final Gull Gray coat on.

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Got the base coat on last night.  I had a marathon paint session with the Enterprise so I piggy-backed my painting on the Hermes class on it.  the 1/2500 scout gets covered much more quickly than a 1/650 scale Enterprise, I can tell you that!

 

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Unfortunately my Airbrush has decided to stop working right, so I need to cough up one of my old ones to finish this off, or get my current one fixed.

 

 

Edited by opus999
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Did a lot yesterday between last minute Christmas shopping (kids wait until the last minute...) and other holiday activities, and work on my Enterprise I'm giving as a gift tomorrow.

 

Most of the work was on the nacelle and saucer pylon.  I masked it and painted the inset part Testors Dark Ghost Gray.  The fore section of the saucer pylon is Testors Dark Ghost gray too.  Some fiddly bits on the nacelle were masked and painted Testors Gunship Gray.  When the Dark Ghost gray had dried, I hand painted silver on top of it and then gull gray on the bit that sticks out:

 

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The silver doesn't look very straight in the picture, which is weird because it looks fine in real life.

 

I took the liquid masking off the bussard collector and it worked fine!

 

Hand brush painted the navigational deflector gold:

 

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And then I brush painted Alclad Aqua Gloss on the whole thing to prepare for decals.

 

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I may not get to decals until next weekend because I am working like crazy to get the Enterprise done so I can give it as a gift tomorrow.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

A major setback on the Enterprise with the decals sapped me of my modelling mojo. I left the workbench alone until a couple of days ago.  I sanded this model down to 6000 grit to prevent the same silvering issue that I had on the Enterprise (although, the decals I have for this are much, much higher quality than those that came with the Enterprise). I'm sure its fine, but now I'm unsure of myself.

 

I'd hoped to get to decals tonight, but the work on the Enterprise took a little longer than expected. So... certainly this weekend!

 

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Got back in the groove late last night by starting decals after the kids went to sleep.  I'd hoped to finish them today, but stuff happened.

 

After my Enterprise decal mess, and because of difficulties I had on my Miranda class model, I used a technique I've read about here on the forum where you put Future (I used aqua gloss) where the decal is to go, and then put the decal on it. The technique prevented silvering and the decals seemed to the few raised details I had. I found that if the aqua gloss dried and I still needed to move the decal, I could put more aqua gloss on top and it softened up the aqua gloss under the decal so I could move it.  Worked pretty well. Here's a glimpse of what I got done last night (pardon the reflection of the light on the photos). 

 

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The decals were great, and paper thin, but I kept tearing them.  I think I was a little impatient, so it was my fault, and I was able to line them up so you can't tell, so it was a win. 

 

It's funny how things get over looked; I had planned to sand all the raised detail off the bottom and totally forgot until last night! I didn't feel like prolonging the project another week, so I will live with it.

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Got decals on the top of the saucer last night.  All the decals are on except for the ship's name -- that's going to be a lot of work and I was pretty tired of fiddling with teeny tiny decals.

 

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I took some dots off my PNT decals sheet to make windows for the side of the shuttle bay.  It just needed something for visual interest.  Boy were those tough to get on and straight because of their size!

 

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So now I go to put the ship's name on.  It will be a challenge because I will be piecing the letters together from other ship's names and those letters are small. Getting them centered and lined up straight will be difficult.

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Ugh. The last week has been so busy I haven't been able to do any modeling, or looking at other people's builds! ☹️ I was able to get the name on last week, though, and it went much more easily than I thought it would! Last night, I sprayed it with decanted Testors Model Master Semi-Gloss and glued all the pieces together.  And made a stand.  So I got another one in the books, and I'm really happy with it!  I think the shuttle bay looks pretty great.  Whoever came up with that idea (it wasn't me!) was pretty smart.

 

RFI is here.

 

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