Jun 02

Building the USS Enterprise ( 1/537 Star Trek 5 version )

Opening Thoughts
The 1/537 USS Enterprise is one of those kits that stalked me since I was young. I remembered seeing it in various iterations through the years, basically re-released after every new Star Trek movie. Yet, my budget and available space never quite lined up, and when I finally hit the point of having the money, space and time to build it, it was the early 2000s when it became hard to find so many of the old 80’s and 90’s Star trek kits. Still, the movie version of the Enterprise is one of my favorite sci-fi ships of all time, and as such it was always tempting me.

So when I found this kit at one of my local collectible shops in Kyoto for essentially $25 ( 3500 Yen ), I couldn’t resist. I am stuck back at the point of not having the room though, so I compromised and decided to build this kit for a friend of mine to put up in his bar/ live house. This is also the Star Trek 5 version, so it has the etched in ‘aztek’ pattern that was done by the manufacture after the original release. Those are pretty horrible, both as an idea and as executed, since they don’t in any way match the aztec patter that was painted on the actual filming model. I do have an original ‘smoothie’ version of the kit that I am saving to put together later. So this one is my ‘practice’ kit to put together, try out techniques and see what issues and tricks I need to learn before tackling the one I’ll build for myself, someday…

Materials
Paints
I used a variety of Vallejo Model air paints and a few Tamiya acrylics for the various work.
Vallejo Mecha Primer – 73.642 – Black Primer – Interior light blocking
Vallejo Surface Primer – 73.615 USN Light Ghost Grey – Exterior primer and accent color
Vallejo Model Air – 71.296 USAAF Light Gray – Aztec accent color
Vallejo Model Air – 71.276 USAF Light Gray – Hull Primary Color
Vallejo Model Air – 71.337 Flanker Blue – Strong back and pylon stripe color, Bridge accent
Vallejo Model Air – 71.057 Black – Exterior Black
Vallejo Model Air – 71.308 Dark Grey – Pylon Accent Color
Vallejo Model Air – 71.075 Sand – Nacelle thruster area
Vallejo Model Air – 71.003 Red – Saucer Phaser and Thruster outline
Vallejo Model Air – 71.002 Yellow – Phaser and Thruster blocks
Vallejo Model Air – 71.065 Steel – Saucer caps
Vallejo Mecha Varnish 26.701 Gloss – Under coat for Decals
Vallejo Mecha Varnish 26.702 Matt – Final sealing coat
Tamiya Acrylic Clear Blue – X-23 – Deflector Dish, Impulse Crystal, Warp Crystal
Tamiya Acrylic Clear Red – X-27 – Navigation light, Impulse Engines
Tamiya Acrylic Clear Green – X-25 – Navigation Light
A few drops of Vallejo Metal Color 77.725 Gold mixed with Vallejo Model Air 71.075 Sand – Sorry, no exact formula, but it’s the mix I used for the ‘gold’ part of the bridge dome.

Other Materials
Micro Kristal Klear – Filling for all the windows
Microscale Liquid Decal Film – Used on the old Decals and to seal printed decals
Tamiya Sticker Paper – Printed aztec and detail masks and cut out
Clear Inkjet Decal Paper

Prep work and lighting
Aside from the standard washing of the kit in light soapy water, there wasn’t much to do before starting assembly type work. The big piece of prep work was far more to do with the lighting. All of the areas to be lit needed to get a good coat of black primer on the inside followed by a complimentary coat of white or steel. I did have some issues with the white, due mostly to my troubles working with my new airbrush. I needed to figure out how to clean it better to deal with what I thought were issues with the white paint.

The lighting is rigged for 4.5 volt DC. I used a mix of 3mm white LEDs and chip style surface mount white LEDs . I did use some red 3mm LEDs for the impulse engines and a blue surface mount LED for the impulse crystal. The deflector dish, nacelle inner lighting, impulse engines and impulse crystal were all back lit through the plastic. Basically, a good bright LED could push right through the old white plastic and give a good glow. Pretty much the Raytheon effect some modelers used for faking spotlights.

The deflector dish was a bit of trouble. I tried a couple of different ways to give it a ‘starburst’ look but ended up sanding down the whole thing back to bare plastic before the final iteration. That one was basically adding a ring of small hand cut stickers on the base plastic, then spraying clear blue and sealing it all with the matt varnish. The back white ‘bare’ plastic give a good flared look with the lights off, and helps brighten the ‘glow’ when the backlight is on.

Reinforcing the Pylons
One of the biggest worries with this kit is that the pylons for the nacelles are very weak. The tab that holds each one in place are very small and can barely hold the weight, if nothing puts pressure on them. So it’s a good idea to reinforce them. In my case, I choose to put a 2mm brass rod through from the nacelle to the main hull mount. I added a stack of cut sprue to backstop the brass rods inside the strongback area. That prevents the nacelles from sagging down. Then I wired the brass rods together where they crossed and soldiered that joint to prevent the nacelles from pulling together when hung from them.

Initial assembly and Priming
Once I finished getting all the lighting components together came the assembly. This is an old kit, over 40 years at this point, and it shows. Almost every seam and joint needs to be puttied and sanded, there are many gaps that needed to be filled. I mostly used Tamiya Putty ( Basic Type ) for this work. Took a good while but eventually it all came together with only a few minor issues.

Once that was done, I primed all the exterior, aside form the backlit areas, with the Vallejo light gray surface primer. Now it was time to move on to the next level of painting.

Masking and detail painting
One of the big tricks with the Enterprise, and pretty much most Star Trek Federation ships, is the aztec patterns that are painted on. It’s a bit of razzle dazzle to add a sense of scale to the ships, a subtle rectangular like pattern across the whole ship. To tackle this, I started by masking off the parts that needed to keep the light gray primer as a accent color. Then I painted the rest of the ship with the darker of my two light gray colors, as the ‘highlight color’ of the aztecs. Then came a lot of tape masking. The main hull, pylons and nacelles are mostly done with patterns of hand cut 2mm and 3mm Tamiya tape.

The strongback and nose of the engineering section have a different set of patterns. In all of those cases, I copied decals from the 1/1000 USS Enterprise refit model I have and then printed them out onto Tamiya sticker paper. I did have an issue with the ink from the printer not quite binding with the paper, even after having been left to dry for days. I fixed that by spraying a thin coat of gloss varnish over all of the sheets. It did bleed in some spots, but there was still enough of a pattern that I could use it to cut out the patterns.

So, after that, a lot of cutting out of the patterns and applying them to the kit and a final coat of the lighter gray to finish off the work. There is little as satisfying as removing so much masking material and finally seeing the result of all that work come out just like you planned.

Final assembly and light testing
With most of the painting done, the scariest bit is the final assembly. Getting something wrong at this stage would be terrible, so it was a rather nervous few days putting the pylons onto the main hull and getting then onto the neck piece and finally the saucer.

At every stage, I needed to made sure to test the lighting, to double check that all the connections. Nothing worse than closing things up and getting it wrong.

Assembling them upside down actually helped get the alignment on the nacelles right. It also made it easier to do that final solder joint that held firmed up the nacelles so they shouldn’t break. Unfortunately, not everything came together perfect, I got the neck a few degrees off. It’s hard to notice, but I can still see it.

Thoughts on the final results
This is one of the biggest models I’ve every built, and I spent a lot of time trying out new things, including tricks with the lighting and airbrushing that I’d not done before. I learned a lot, and it was a lot of work. Despite a number of small issues and mistakes, I’m pretty satisfied with the final result. I’ll need a bit of a break before I go to tackle my smoothie version, but I look forward to improving on what I’ve learned before I jump into that adventure.

For now, I’m just going to enjoy seeing it hang in my favorite hangout for pizza, interesting conversations and live music, Pop Pizza, in Kyoto Japan.

May 22

Building and lighting the Revell Build and Play Star Destroyer

Hello! I don’t usually do this kind of thing, but since every time I do a lit model I always get peppered with questions on how I did it, I thought I’d put together this little blog to show some of what went into the build and maybe some of my insights on the process.

I’ve been building models since I was a kid on and off and it’s always been a mix of fun and relaxing. This is only the third model that I’ve actually put lighting in, and it definitely adds a level of challenge and complexity to the build. Despite that, I find it rather fun, as there is a number of engineering type challenges involved in figuring out exactly what can be done and how to do it.

Now a days, it’s not hard to find lighting kits for many of the most popular sci-fi kits, these can come with instructions and all the parts necessary to do the job. Which is all really cool, but being a tinkering type, I prefer to build my own from scratch.

Starting things off

Ok, first, this is the Revell Build and play Star Destroyer that was released a few years ago, I think around the release of Rouge One. As Star Destroyer offerings go it beats the old 80’s kit in many ways. It’s got decent details, the lines are pretty crisp and you can build it out of the box in about fifteen minutes. It is a ‘build and play’ kit though, so there are a lot of peculiarities on the kit. The biggest issues are on the bottom side. There are three flip out ‘landing gear’ that are of course completely unrealistic. There are also cutouts for the provided ‘lights and sound’ module so that you can get to the batteries, slits for the sound to get out and a push button to turn the module on. All of these require some degree of filling, sanding and scribing to clean up.

This is not as nice a kit as the other recent offerings from Bandai or Zevezda, but it does fit in a nice mid size and while I do have the Bandai kit taunting me from my shelf, I figured this would be a good little project to practice on, and test things out before I tackle the smaller, though exceptionally detailed Bandai kit.

Planning things out

One of the things I like about lighting kits is the planning that goes into them. Of course, that means making choices. For this kit, that meant picking out how I wanted to light it. For this kit, that means the windows and the engines. In this case, I decided to light the windows with fiber optics and the engines with LEDs directly.

For things like windows there are really two big choices. Fiber optics is one and back lighting is the other. Each has it’s advantages and disadvantages. My quick thoughts on the differences can be broken down this way:

Fiber optics
Pros
– Direct light to where you want it
– Easier to contain where the light goes
– Good for small round windows
– Can mix different light colors easily
– Good for getting light into complex areas
Cons
– Need a fiber strand for every window you want to light
– Need a light source for every fiber strand
– Need space to run all the fiber and hold light sources

Back Lighting
Pros
– Good for lighting differently shaped windows
– Can light many windows with only a few light sources
Cons
– Need to be very careful for light leaks from edges, and thin or translucent plastic.
– Can’t mix colors without careful light boxing
– Can be difficult to get light into corners and edges
– Can get lighting ‘hot spots’ if the back lighting isn’t diffused carefully

So for something like the Star destroyer, where I have plenty of space to run fibers, it makes things easier than trying to back light the windows. Especially,with one of the other decisions I made with this build. That being that I wanted to try and keep the power inside. That meant I wouldn’t be completely sealing up the kit, so that I could open it up to replace the batteries when necessary. As such, I’d be risking huge light leak issues if I tried to do back lighting, since the plan was to keep top and bottom main hull unsealed, and I needed to put lights on the windows in each side trench.

Running Fiber

So with that decided, I proceeded to start running the fiber. This involved a lot of drilling with a 0.5mm drill bit in a pin vise. Somehow I managed to drill all the holes while only losing two bits. There was also a lot of gutting of the internals and drilling of access paths for the fiber to run through. Since this was heavily built up to be a build and play kit, it’s actually got a lot of really hardened internal structure with snap tight pins. I removed a lot of them to open up space, and to make it easier to pop the halves of the kit open later.

A key point in using fiber is making light boxes. Technically, you don’t need them, so long as your light source goes into one end of the fiber, the light will come out the other, but since that can lead to light leaks, it’s better to create a light box. So what is a light box? It’s basically a box or tube where the fiber goes in one side and there is a light source on the other. Then it’s sealed up to contain the light so that it only goes out through the fiber.

So when running the fiber, decide how you want to make your light boxes and where to put them. Then you can start designing your fiber fiber runs. In my case, I choose to make my light boxes out of plastic tubes. I secured the tubes that would house the fiber end points and then some additional tubes where it would be useful to help direct where the fiber would run. You don’t want loose fiber running everywhere or it’ll be a serious pain. Another point is to spread the light boxes around so that you don’t need to run more fiber than you have to. You could choose to run all your fiber to one light box, but then you’d have huge runs of fiber from all over the kit, which can be a pain to manage, and you’d use up a lot of length of fiber. It’s better to choose strategic spots spread around the kit so that you can run short lengths of fiber and make the project more manageable. In my case I had 5 light boxes on the upper section and three on the lower.

For each piece of fiber, I made sure to leave a quarter inch or so of fiber poke out from the kit, and the same on the other end at the light box. This will be trimmed up once everything is done. You want the bit on the outside so you can trim it off cleanly once the kit is painted.

Once I finished running the fiber in each section. I painted the areas around the fiber with black enamel paint. I did this for a couple of reasons. First, it was as a backup light blocking. It’s always better to plan on some like leakage from your light boxes just in case there is more light than expected. Once you’ve built up the kit, it can be very hard to go back and fix it later. The other reason is to help hold the fiber in place. Fiber optics doesn’t respond to many plastic glues and when it does, it can melt and lose it’s effectiveness for lighting and make a unholy mess to cleanup. For the same reason, don’t try using super glue with fiber! I made that mistake and before and it was a horrible mess to fix after loads of fiber melted into the hull. There are other ways to hold fiber in place than paint, white glue can be another good choice, the best idea is to test out your plan with some spare fiber and plastic first.

Once the fiber runs were complete, I would trim up each section’s fiber as it exited the light box so that it would be neat inside. Then I prepared the other end of the light box so that the LED could be attached later. Once the light box is built up, I made sure to coat it with several layers of good blocking paint. Black and thick metallic paints work well for this. This usually helps well with light blocking.

  • Fiber runs and light boxes

LEDS and Wiring

Another of the big things with lighting of course is your light source. Now a days, LEDs are one of the best choices, though there are other good ones as well. They don’t consume a lot of power, and don’t generate heat if they are wired up correctly. For this kit, I went with a simple run of parallel loops for the LEDs. I choose parallel loops because that way if one LED does burn out, the rest will still work. That isn’t may not always be the best choice, but that is one you should make for each kit you build. Since I’ve got easy access to the internals on this build, replacing an led isn’t the scary thing it might be in other builds.

The LED circuit is pretty easy, a resister on the positive input and then wired up to the power. Repeat for all LED loops. If you’re new to making electrical circuits, then you should be able to lookup how to wire up an LED. If you’re just starting out, I suggest keeping things simple, but if you pick up the components and a few bread boards, you can experiment until you get the right mix for what you want to build.

Once you’ve built up your circuit plan, make sure to test it out. Plug in breadboards are very helpful for this. It is a good idea to let this test run for a while and then make sure that none of the components heat up. If they do, you should make sure you’ve got the right resisters selected for your LEDs and they are attached to the right input. There is nothing worse than having a hot running circuit in your kit where it could do untold damage. Again I speak from experience, and had to dig into a built kit to rewire it correctly.

once the circuits are tested, then it’s time to attach the LEDs to the light boxes and finish sealing them up. At this point it’s time to proceed to the next step.

Test Runs

Once you’ve got the light boxes fixed up, run the wiring, this is the time to run another kind of test. Plug everything in and turn it on! Now, you’ve got lights. If everything worked, hopefully it’s looking impressive. Now you want to turn off the lights and check for light leaks. Try to seal up as much of your model as you can, and if you see any thing that is lit that shouldn’t be then now is the time to fix it.

In my case, I found a section that wasn’t getting lit properly from one of the light boxes and had to redo it. That’s why it’s always a good idea to test and then test again. This can be harder if you’re doing something fancy and you won’t be able to really test it till it’s completely sealed. Still, you’ll get the best result if you thoroughly check that everything lights up the right way before you seal it all in.

  • Testing for light function and light leaks

Painting and Finishing

Once I finished up the testing. It was onto the painting. I mixed up a batch of light gray paint, just off white really. Basically, a couple of drops of black in a short bottle of Tamiya White Enamel. A star destroyer is pretty simple paint wise, so I basically used that as the main paint coat. After that I finished it off with a dark gray wash to make all the details pop.

With the main painting done, I trimmed all of the fiber optics and put down a matte clear coat. I also put in some magnets on the edge of the wings to help hold them in place.

And that’s it. A lot of work, but the result hopefully speaks for itself. I do need to get better with the photography though. Maybe that’s next on the list for practice.

Nov 14

Models for sale

To make room for new kits and fund future builds, I’m trying to sell off some of my kits.

 

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Feb 06

AMT Klingon Cruiser ( Vor’Cha )

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After sitting in my model stash for 15 years, I decided to finally build the Klingon cruiser that debuted in the Next Generation.  I’ve been holding off until my skills and time could hopefully do it a measure of justice.  I always liked this design as a heavy compliment to the smaller bird of prey ships that the Klingons were known for.

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Apr 26

Modeling- The Kazon Raider

After deciding to take a break from some of my other projects, I decided to build a quick model to keep my practice up and relax a bit with a kit that I didn’t overly care about.  My closet is sadly full of kits that I resist building simply because I don’t feel that my skills are good enough to do justice to the subject.  So after around 15 years on the shelf, I decided to attack the Kazon Raider.  I have to say I’ve never been a big fan of the Kazon, either as an ‘enemy’ race on Voyager, or in the designs of their ships.  I owned the kit simply because it was on a closeout special at a Kaybee Toy’s outlet store for like $5.  I’d also heard horrible things about the kit, and so I was curious to confirm them.

First, the horror stories were not misplaced.  Every seam on the kit needed to be sanded, and sometimes puttied to bridge the gulf between pieces.  Every joint needed to be puttied to fill in huge gaps where the pieces came together.  In several cases I needed to sand off tabs and free fit pieces so that I could get them to sit right, especially the long tail fins.  I think the only kits I’ve put together that were worse was a couple of small scale Airfix military kits.  Now, all of that said, it gave me an excellent chance to work on my putty technique.

Once the putty and sanding was complete, I went to painting it.  I decided that I didn’t like the light tan that was used on the show, so I laid down Model Masters Enamel Dark Tan as the base hull color.  All the details were painted with Military Brown and Gunship Gray.  Finally, I did a rather heavy dry brush of Armor Sand over the whole of the main hull to add texture over the smooth surface.  If I were ever to do the kit again, I’d probably try to scribe on some paneling and details as there are few molded details beyond a few stick on pieces and the engine parts.  Once the painting was finished, I added a flat coat of Testors Dullcote Lacquer.  This was the first time I’ve used Dullcote and I feel much more confident using it in the future thanks to this kit.

Overall, I had fun with the kit, despite its flaws, as much for the fact that I wasn’t looking to make a showpiece.  I’ve also gained a bit more respect for the design, with a few adjustments I think it could have been a much more impressive vessel.

Dec 15

A History of the Vectan Empire

I’m hoping to being writing periodically on my various alien races, for today I’m opening this with a bit of History on the Vectan Empire.  This will probably prove more interesting as background information for the new book I’m presently working on which occurs in the era of the Vectan Republic.  Hopefully, you’ll find something interesting here, if not check back next time and see what I’ve got myself into.

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Dec 09

A question of Utopia

Of the critical comments I’ve received on my work so far one of the most amusing to me is the question of a utopian future.  I will admit that I am an optimist, and that works into my writing at times.  While I certainly don’t think that a utopian future is guaranteed, I think it is certainly possible if we want it.  I’d argue that it will take a change of attitude, especially among Americans if we want to achieve such a future, but what we might lose will pale in comparison to what we can gain. Continue reading

Dec 01

My first author interview!

Howdy folks,  as the very few of you who currently follow me may know, I had the luck of bumping into the good people at Seattle Geekly while I was at OryCon this year.  For those of you not in the Portland area OryCon is the Portland area Science Fiction convention.  Seattle Geekly is a Seattle area podcast that focuses on matters of interest to the geek community, so in addition to checking out my interview, there is plenty more to listen too including authors you may be interested in and geekish event that may interest you.  So hop over to Seattle Geekly and check them out!

Link to the episode with my interview at Seattle Geekly!

Seattle Geekly homepage!

Nov 24

How could zombies beat the army?

How could the military fail to survive a Zombie Apocalypse like the one presented in The Walking Dead?  This is one of those questions I like to run through my mind, and was spawned recently by some forum discussion I read on this very topic.  While I would generally say that the US military stands a good chance of surviving a Zombie outbreak and likely preventing a full ZA event, I can see several scenarios that would essentially eliminate the US military as an organized and cohesive fighting force.

First, let me establish some parameters.  For one we’re only dealing with The Walking Dead style zombies, relatively slow, stupid and terminally aggressive.  The modern ‘fast zombies’ as seen in the Day of the Dead remake or the more recent World War Z would be exceptionally difficult to fight.  The other parameter is that I am trying to establish a set of conditions that would prevent the military from continuing to operate as a large scale organization.  Even in the worst scenario I can imagine small groups of soldiers being able to maintain a functioning group and protect small areas, but at that point I would be hesitant to refer to them any longer as members of the US military, even while they may be upholding the finest traditions of the service.

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Feb 16

Modeling the Bucket ( Battlestar Galactica )

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As a way to relax, I sometimes like to build models.  I don’t do it as often as I’d like so my skills are often rusty.  For my latest effort, I dove in and built the Moebius Models Battlestar Galactica.  Aside from a few issues adjusting the ‘head’ of the ship, it was a pretty easy build.  The parts fit together well, with the only bad seams inside the flight pod bays.  I filled those in with green putty and sanded them down.  That was a first for me, but it was easy and I liked the results a lot better than leaving the gaps!

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