Polar Lights 1/350 Refit Enterprise

[crookedmouth]

What he said.

[mrvr6]

iv just bought 2 of these buggers and i might light both im saving this thread for reference

[Tabio]

I'd found that when the warp grilles were unlit, light from the spotlight led's made a glow near the end, so I made up these baffles in the end, perfectly dark now

now i'm starting to worry about the amount of weight in the ends of the nacelles, so I might balance them up with some weight in the front.

filled the massive porthole type windows round the bottom half of the bridge dome bulged area and made them smaller and beter placed, also fitted the bridge dome on its higher mounts.

That's all for now, thanks for all the interest!

Edited May 29, 2011 by Tabio

[Tabio]

Hello, I'm still alive! It's been a while, and it's been on hold for a bit until recently. Not quite the step by step stuff that there has been up until, but a big catch with lots of pictures.

Shuttlebay in the bottom hull part, with led's all wired up and stuck on

Inside shuttlebay lit up- the led on the floor will poke through into a travel pod, it's a nice yellowy white coloured led.

Arboretum, at this point the hull parts are dry fitted

Checking the side spotlight is ok and lining up the led's to point into the right area.

Checking the deflector. Both led's had to be replaced as the legs broke at the head of the led! I should have left them seperate till the last minute, but it was trickier to get them to point nicely in the centre of the dish that way.

top of secondary hull wired up.

Hull parts taped up, fitting ok and lights working. The kit is well engineered and fits together strongly before glue. The torpedo launchers have flat red led's in, and the inside of the slots was given some coats of a dark Tamiya clear red to dull them down a bit, as they really go bright when launching but seem to be duller otherwise when they are glowing. Iknow they don't glow mostly but they look good.

Warp engines slotted onto pylons and connected up using the connecting plugs.

saucer on, some pics of inside to be slotted in here when I can

Warp mode. The underside dome is glowing bad because I haven't painted the inside yet. The saucer halves are just pushed together for now that's why there's a big light leak and the neck is just pushed into the hull at the moment too do there's leaking there as well.

Standby mode. I've since added led's to the sides of the bottom dome to illuminate the saucer sides as seen on the motion picture film when it leaves dock

Saucer light for main registry

Thats it for the mo, will add some pictures of the saucer wiring when I can. I'm currently trying to get the end of the engineering hull to fit nicely, thats the worst bit so far, but I think it's my fault for putting glue gun blobs on wires where they can foul the hull, but it's getting there.

Sorry it isn't as comprehensive now but I don't get so much time now.

Thanks for looking!

Edited March 16, 2012 by Tabio

[mrvr6]

omg!!!

[christof]

that is stunning!

christof

[Devilfish]

Abso-freeking-lutely incredible!!!!!!

See, people like you, who do such an amazing job of it, are why my NX and Constitution class ships are still in the stash!!!

Really looking forward to seeing this done!!

[Plastic Bonsai]

That is going to look fantastic. I am amazed that the spotlights on the saucer and secondary hull look as per the "real thing".

Absolutely inspiring.

[Hawkkeeper]

Crikey, this is a brill build. love the crew in the shuttle bay.

[Stu_davros]

Absolutely outstanding work! Some of your pictures already look like screen shots of the film.

Cheers,

Stuart

[HOUSTON]

.... A W E S O M E ...

[Ian Shumsky]

Fantastic work, very inspiring!

Cheers,

Ian

[Tabio]

Thanks for the comments folks, here are some more pics as promised.

I had to rescribe a panel on the deflector housing, this shows the lighting and wiring through the neck.

The sensor bands on the saucer edge lined up nicely but the sections not quite so they have been fixed

The docking port was mounted on some plasticard and fitted to the saucer

The shuttlebay doors surround had a strange void at the top so I've filled that with some plasticard, this now meets up with the shuttlebay assembley, looks a bit scruffy at the moment

The slight curve has been added to the leading lower saucer dome edge which was straight

Plasticard segments fitted behind the clear dome parts to make well defined light blockers, then filled at the outer edges

Lost the front clear part so had to make something new! That could have disappeared a long time ago into the belly of the carpet monster

Saucer wiring

relay board and connector to lower saucer

light diffuser like inside the deflector for the impulse crystal

Thanks for looking

Andy

Edited March 20, 2012 by Tabio

[Smiffy]

Looking mightily impressive.

[Tabio]

Hello there!

Quick update on what's occuring at the moment. I've put the base together, this is the base that comes with the kit, and i've put a brass tube in the middle as near to the right size of the connector i could find, although the connector did need a little thinning to fit nicely. the brass tube was glued into the correct position nice and square, then it was fixed with some body filler after a good roughing up of the tube and surrounding plastic. The toggle switches are for on/ off and warp/ standby modes. It sits on the stand nicely, the connector is slightly tipped in the tube because the connection in the hull doesn't sit level due to the shape. It has 2 tiny screws in which ruin the look of it a little bit but i didn't trust glue alone! The saucer and engines are just a dry fit! Couldn't do that with the ERTL one, could you?!

The saucer is now fully glued together and has the lower dome fitted, unlike in this picture. I'll get the secondary hull done and then will move on to that in this wip.

I got the tail piece on, which was a bit of a nightmare fit- wise, partly due to my sandwiching an led between the shuttlebay floor and the bottom of the hull to illuminate the 'Enterprise' on the back, coupled with the fact i'd already painted the shuttlebay floor. there was a huge gap which needed filling and filling and a bit more filling! Imperfections in the filler surface were filled in with generous paint application from the airbrush! then the yellow lines extended out to the edge by masking and painting, blending into the original decal, then plenty of Klear over the lot to achiev the original finish of the shuttlebay floor. It looks ok, but I forgot pics of this and it's under masking now.

Shows the illumination where the ENTERPRISE decal will be. I was a bit disappointed with the red lights above the shuttlebay door, there was an led for that but the light doesn't seem to have found it's way through very well. There is very little room above the shuttlebay roof.

I've been masking up the secondary hull for some paint! I made a card disc for the deflector so I didn't have to have liquid mask on it for ages. I also made a card mask for the ring around the deflector as it was too complicated to mask up as it's painted now anyway. Good old compass cutter did those jobs nicely. Foam was wedged into the openings and then maskol was (made from copydex and ink, as i ran out!) used to fill up gaps. The light spots were masked up as I need the light to get through there so paint will be kept to the minimum.

The black paint was airbrushed over any glowing parts where light was leaking in joint areas etc.

It's grey! It's had a coat of Halfords' finest, and I've been finding a curing any gaps, imperfections or scratches. The roots of the warp nacelle pylons have been a real problem area, requiring lots of filling and shaping due to big gaps and different levels at the joint, but it's looking ok now. Had about 3 sprays, fills and resprays in various areas now, and it's looking like time for some proper colours!

Thanks for looking.

Andy

Edited May 7, 2012 by Tabio

[Tabio]

Hello! I moved house and this got packed up and stashed in the loft while much work has been done on the house. I did get most of the painting on the secondary hull done before moving, so I'll put some pics up of how that went later. I unpacked it yesterday and it all looks ok. I must get this done, it would be such a shame not to I think, trouble is it looks even blummin bigger than before!

[plasmahal]

Hello! I moved house and this got packed up and stashed in the loft while much work has been done on the house. I did get most of the painting on the secondary hull done before moving, so I'll put some pics up of how that went later. I unpacked it yesterday and it all looks ok. I must get this done, it would be such a shame not to I think, trouble is it looks even blummin bigger than before!

Great work so far, don't let it lie for too long,

One day I'll be brave enough to start mine, it's nice to get out the massive box and marvel at it.

[k5054nz]

Wow. Superb!

[Tabio]

Hello

as promised here are the pics to bring us back up to date, so there will be a lot!

The strongback was painted RAF sky and then the first set of masks were applied

Duck egg blue was next then the next set of masks went on

then a grey went on the whole hull and the strongback was all covered up and the masks applied to the hull

white was painted over the hull

Then masks came off, and this is where it started going a bit wrong, some masks pulled up paint and the grey looked a lot darker with the white than I'd have hoped for.

It did look quite good in the dark though

That's when it went away for a year or so!

I've painted the black parts in the pylon edges, painted the strengthening parts on the topsides of the pylons, painted the torpedo launcher area, the yellow squares round the phaser emitters and rcs thrusters on the deflector area, and tidied up a few bits.

with little sis

I was looking at the pylons and thought that the radiator type parts on them needed to be darker, I'd done them duck egg blue as I'd seen that somewhere (can't remember my thinking there as it was so long ago), and had a look at the motion picture again and saw they were very distinctive on there, so went for it on the larger areas to see how it went using a gunship grey I'd used on a panel on the top of the deflector.

I thought it looked better and made the grey on the panels make more sense as they were no longer the darkest point, so did the smaller triangles too

So that's it, we're all up to date, and won't need so many pics next time! Next thing is to tidy up the remaining iffy bits, paint the grey panels either side of the shuttle bay door and then it will be time for a pearlescent coat.

Cheers

Andy

[SHAR67]

Well Sir

Your doing an astounding job on this Andy, I just cant get my head around all that masking. I have had this kit for quite some time now and wanted to get the lighting kit for it, as you cant have it without lights but I'm not single anymore and now have one child plus one on the way and money has become a thing of the past. So I guess she will be in the loft for a bit longer but your model is looking great and I look forward to the finished kit.

Clive

[Tabio]

Cheers Clive, It's a big project so I reckon it will be a while before you get a chance by the sounds of things!

I've got the pearlescent coat on, I used Plasticote pearlescent found in hobbycraft. I was a bit worried it might end up looking bad and all that paintwork would have been in vein, but it turned out alright I think and did what I hoped it would which is tie all the paintwork together. I've got some pics but it's quite subtle to pick up on them, which I suppose is how it was on the original model to film, I was quite careful not to overdo it and dusted it on with light sprays. I've put a few coats of Klear on now for decaling.

[SHAR67]

WOW that looks the bizz mate,

now how's this for coincidence, I fuelled a BA flight to Malaga the other day and upon leaving the cockpit through first class cabin there right in front of me was no other than Mr Sulu George Takei I just could not believe it so I guess I now have to get the lights and build the kit.

Clive

[Tabio]

Cheers. It's a sign, can't argue with that!

[Tarkas]

Ii-ii-ii-ii-im-mm-mm-pressive!

I'm going to bookmark this thread for reference when I start mine. I have most of the same after-market stuff, plus the Trekmodeller guide to the original multi-coloured paint job -- which is frightening! Having said that, I've found a local source for pearlescent paint in spray cans in the right colours, and they'll even ship them to you despite the stupid new Royal Mail restrictions, so I'm going to give it a try... eventually.

Great work on your part. Looking forward to seeing more as and when.

[Tabio]

Thanks Tarkas, that's a good find with the pearlescent sprays, I think that's going to look a lot better than mine but I don't envy the masking you'll be taking on if you replicate the paint job of the original! I think there's a link to how it was done at the start of this build which may interest you if you've not already seen it.