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STAR TREK - SPACE SHIP SET
AMT/ERTL - 1:1600

Build on June 2005



This kit is not a challenge from the building difficulty point of view. The ships do not have too much details and in  the most complicated of the ships, the Enterprise, there are only 12 pieces. The scale is 1:1600 so although they could be lighted with one or two 3mm LEDs, I've chosen not to do it.

However this kit is going to be a challenge for me. I've decided to use it to learn about battle damage weathering, weathering with pastels, washing, dry brushing, and something else...

As a building guide I'm going to use Rick Jackson's book "Starships at the Final Frontier. Building Star Trek Models" where he explains some tips to get a better result.

To build the models doesn't give any problems, but since it is easy to do I decided to do it good. I will pay a lot of attention to the puttying and sanding.
This is what we get with the kit. As you see it is not too much. The decals are the weakest point, especially for the Enterprise. So I will use this kit to learn about making self-done decals


I will build the ships one by one and later I will paint them all.


1st Ship, the Romulan Bird of Prey.

The ship consists of only 3 pieces. So it is only matter of glueing them together, waiting until the glue has dried and then applying putty and sand. The pictures I've seen in the net about this ship show a plasma emitter in the front edge. I took a small piece of styrene sheet to build it. The result has been quite satisfying.
All the ship has been smoothed. As the bottom of an android



2nd Ship, the klingon Battle Cruiser.

A bit more complicated than the BoP but not stressing. In the warp nacelles there are 3 bulks corresponding to the snap pins. After the glue has dried, these bulks have been removed. To attach the nacelles to the hull, we have to protect the detailed surface of the hull, otherwise we could mess up the details with the glue. The neck and the head are a bit harder work. The neck is very thin and I decided to put a piece of wire to make it stronger. I glued the wire with a drop of superglue and, before fixing the to halves together, I put a lot of styrene putty in each tip of the wire.

In the head, there are two things to improve. The first one is the torpedoes launcher, it is only a hole and when you see directly there is no profundity view. So I took a piece of plastic tube (from a siringe) and I fixed it with epoxy glue. Once it is fixed and dry the visual effect will look much better.

The second thing to improve is the joint between the round part and the plane part. The round part has an odd end, does not go deep enough. It can be solved with a triangular file and a bit of patience. Filling in the joint will provide a nicer look. With this procedure I have thined the plastic and therefore weakened it. In order to make it strong again, I apply styrene putty in the inner side of the head.

The rest of the building up is easy, only glue together, puttying and sanding...


Making the neck stronger with a wire and a view of the result of removing the bulks in the nacelles To achieve a profundity effect in the torpedoes a piece of small plastic tube is fixed in the inner side. I  the neck is fixed with a clamp, the tube is glued with epoxy glue and the teeth stick is there to keep it in place Look how smooth it is... More shots



3rd Ship, Constitution Class.

The very first thing to do is to remove these awful grid lines in the upper half of the saucer. Why did they put them there???.  The 4 panels in the nacelles pylons are in the wrong side, outside instead of inside. So they are also removed and makeing use of  0.5 mm styrene sheet I make the panels and glue them in the correct place. In the nacelles there is also a cooling wing which has a wrong shape, triangular. This wing is also removed and substituted for one made with styrene sheet. When all these corrections are done I glue together the nacelles and also both hulls.

The saucer in 3 different stages: with grid lines, in the way of removing them and already glued General "refitting" of the nacelles. The styrene sheet on the pylons are a bit sanded to make them thinner. A view of the triangular wing and its substitute Getting fixed


The shuttle bay is also not accurate. The bottom of the hull must be a bit longer than it is. A little piece of styrene helps to achieve the desired shape. There is also an inaccuracy in the necelles, close to the Bussard collectors. A pair of scrive lines are required and I do them with a needle file.

Once everything is puttied and sanded, the nacelles and the saucer are fixed to the secondary hull. A little bit more putty and sanding in the new joints and the work is done.
The shuttle bay door beeing refited. We can also see difference between the nacelles before and after adding a new line. Finally all the parts before assembling The ship is already fixed and in the dry dock. And my working bench is clean again...



Finishing Up.

After applying the primer coat, I used black paint to preshading the grid lines and the joint in the head. After it is done the base coat is airbrushed. I used one of Tamiya's green directly from the flask (after thinning, of course).
Preshading of the ship


And now is when the fun starts. I will do some battle damage on the ship, mainly phaser or torpedoes shoots. I've read many ways to achieve this effect in the Starshipmodeler.com technical library.

If you want to try what I'm about to explain, please, NEVER DO IT ALONE. Even if you are an adult person, an accident could happen. If something happens and you are alone you cannot get any help quickly. Use ALLWAYS safety glasses and do it on open air. NEVER do it in closed rooms. Since I don't know who is e-mailing me, I WILL NOT explain to no-one how to do the gunpowder.


One way to achieve a shoot effect is to take a drop of glue, put it on the hull and burn it. Another way is with the use of gunpowder. Finally the last thing I've tried is the head of a match. Before I did it in the ship, I took one of these useless CDs (the one which comes with a cilinder CD pack) and I tried out how each one of these techniques look like. I decided not to use burning-glue to the ship since the effect I saw in the CD is not as good as the others. However I believe that this is a problem of the glue.

Either with the gunpowder or the match head the technique is the same: to put the burning stuff in the hull and CAREFULLY burn it. Both burning things work very well and the effect looks nice (from my point of view). The only problem is the scale. In such small scale the shoots could look too big... but, who knows? there are allways bigger ships :)   One advantage of the gunpowder is that one can apply it in a line. Why? if we do it so we can achieve a phaser continuous shoot as we can see in Star Trek II, on the right side of the secondary hull.
Different view of the results. I had a lot of fun doing it !!!


Well now is time to pay attention to the other ships. I've decided to apply base coat to both of them together so that I can do it in a single airbrush session. So after complete a hard preshading, I applied the base coats. Light green to the BoP and light grey to the Enterprise. The areas with preshading black have been airbrushed from an angle in order to let the black color show through the base coat. If I had done it at 90 degrees or something like that the preshading would have been useless because no black color would be visible.
Both ships with the primer coat and also a pair of shots with the black preshading. I applied preshading to all the edges and also to the Enterprise saucer, to give a deep look Base coat is ready. If you have a look at the edges you'll be able to see what is the preshading for. In the picture is, maybe, hard to see, but in the model itself the effect achieved is really neat


I will continue with the Romulan Bird of Prey. To finish with the painting stuff I got into the nacelles, the Bussard collectors and the exhaust are painted orange and metallic respectively. Parafilm tape was used for masking. Next step is add some cool panel lines in the hull. I have seen a larger model of the BoP by Gil Brumana and it has these nice lines and I want them in my model too. It seemed difficult to me in the begginig but after asking the question in the Starship Modeler Forums, I decided to do it with pastels. Very easy I masked the area where the line was going to be with something (Post-it note paper in this case) and I applied a bit of powder of pastel pencil. Then it is only necessary to brush it gently with a normal brush, remove the masking stuff and diffuminate it a little bit more with the brush. The effect is really nice. Somebody suggested to do it with the airbrush, but I don't feel capable of doing such a straight line...
Ship with all the painting work done ! Panel lines on their way



When all this stuff is ready is time to take the gunpowder and do some battle damage. I reproduced four shots in all the ship. After burning the gunpowder I used a brush to remove the excess of crap. The gunpowder has melt the hull with a nice effect. On the right nacelle I have done a line of gunpowder and after burning it it looks like a continuos phase shot... wow !
Battle damage effects



The Romulan Bird of Prey was characteristic for having a big Bird on the bottom. The kit comes with a large decal of this bird. Because it is very important in this ship and I want to learn the good way to apply decals, I followed step by step the procedure described by Terry Miesle (click here). A very wise and easy to follow protocol. In this protocol, Terry, as well as everyone in the modeling comunity, recomends the use of Future (floor finish) before and after the decal application. For more information about the use of Future in modeling click here. So I airbrushed a pair of thin layers of Future (known in Germany as Erdal Glänzer) over the BoP and I let it dry. When it has dried (about one day) I cut the decal and prepared the surface. With such a big decal in the midle of the hull it is better to start from the midle and go furher to the sides. And so I did, to center the decal I draw a line with a pencil as a guide for the decal. The decal has been cut as close to the edge as possible. To help the application I used a decal setting solution, Mr. Mark Setter. This solution helps the application, makes a stronger bond and also softens the decal for a good setting on the surface. Once the decal is applied I left it resting for one day. It is important not to touch the decal while drying.
A first look of the decal on the surface. A hole on the decal must be done to make the stand hole available Process of setting down the decal. Step by step and well done



While the BoP decal is drying I will work up the Enterprise a little bit. The first deception is to have a look at the decals: there is no detail for the Enterprise and it will fall the look down very much. So I took the adhesive sheet of the PL TOS Enterprise and I scanned it. In the computer I scaled down the picture to fit the small Enterprise and then I printed the picture in an adhesive sheet. With patience I cut every detail I wanted, masked the ship with it and paint the detail with brush. It takes a while, but makes fun. For the designation number, names, and federation sings I will customize decals by my own with clear decal paper.
The adhesive sheet with the scaled details, ready to cut using a hobby knive The result of one-by-one detailing



At the last moment I've decided to rename the federation starship. I will name her USS CATALUNYA and with the registry number NCC - 1714. Do you want to know why?, follow the link: www.freecatalonia.com . So I bought clear ink-jet decal paper to customize the decals for the ship. I designed the decals using Adobe Illustrator. It has been the very first time I used this program and it took me a while to get the idea of how to do it. This program is really powerful and it will take me some time until I get used to it... but it is a new tool to improve my models.
Decal paper available in Conrad, Germany



Once the decal is ready on the screen I print it out in a normal paper and cut all the decals to test the size, fortunately everything fits perfectly. I leave the decal paper drying overnight and when it is dry I apply a protection coat (Mr. Metal Primer) so that the decal will not be destroyed with the water.

Before applying these decals, I want to do some pastel weathering as well as battle damage in the ship.
After and before pastel weathering... and, what do you think?


The decals are applied with the help of setting solutions. Before and after the decal application the acrillic coat (Future) has been applied. After 48 hours of drying time the final dull coat has been applied to all the ships.
Final look from above of the USS Catalunya. I'm very satisfied with these decal sheets An additional look from the left side



And the final result.

 

General view Genereal view from above Once again



From the USS Catalunya
From the other side



Thanks for dropping by !!!

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Last updated: 11.01.2011