1:350 Star Trek U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701

Way back in August 2020 I started working on this kit. I've actually had this kit for 5 years but never thought that I had the skill level to build it. I also have had the masking set from Orbital Drydock for the same amount of time. Turns out that letting vinyl masks sit that long aren't a good idea. More on that later.

First thing to do was fix the inaccuracy of the bridge module. As it comes it is too low and too far back to properly project a light onto the registry. So I sanded down the raised details of the windows and built them back up with styrene. I was then able to position it more forward so that the light will clear the edge below. 

Next up was inserting the brass window frame for the Observation Lounge. A little filing, a little putty, lots of patience. 

I used scotch tape to hold it in place from the outside then glued it from behind with white canopy glue. Once that was dry I puttied around the outside edges and sanded it all down as smooth as I could.

1:350 Star Trek Pre TOS era ship S.S. Columbia Finale

I got the painted styrene piece mounted to the base. Then I got to getting the decals applied. I designed the decals in Illustrator and Jack printed them for me on some decal paper. I also used some extra decals that had left over from various kits.

1:350 Star Trek Pre TOS era ship S.S. Columbia

My friend Jack Holczer 3D printed a 1:350 scale Daedalus Class ship from the Star Trek universe and he sent me a kit. I have never been a big fan of this design but I wanted to build this up because its something that a friend created.
While developing the iconic look of the original USS Enterprise, Matt Jefferies came up with this preliminary design as well as many other variations. One of the ones that I like is the one with the engines down (upside-down from what we know as "correct"). That is the ship that I am going to build out of this kit. I was going to name it the USS Icarus (Son of Daedalus), But I decided to go with S.S. Columbia. This ship was mentioned in the original pilot episode of Star Trek starring Jeffry Hunter (The Cage). The S.S. Columbia survey vessel crashed on the planet Talos IV 18 years prior to this episode. It was never seen on screen, so I decided that this is what the Columbia looked like.

 Two things that I will change are the length of the hull and the length of the engines. I think both are way too long so I am cutting the hull in Half and cutting three sections off the engines.





3D printing with filament (vs resin) doesn't produce a very smooth surface. Lots of sanding was required to get this thing down to a sort of smooth painting surface. Even then I couldn't get all of the striations out as they run too deep. Its just an inherent part of the material.

So I decided that it was going to be an older, weathered ship. The paint scheme is very much influenced by the rough texture. I'm using Lou Dalmaso's trusty Aztec Dummy painting masks for the panel effects. I started with Tamiya XF-72 Brown, then XF-59 Desert Yellow, them XF-23 Light Blue. I went back over the panel lines with some more XF-72 Brown using a 0.2mm airbrush. Then I went over the whole thing with Flat white until the details were just barely visible.

Then it was time for some lights! I opted to put white styrene behind the windows rather than have them open and filled with something like Micro Krystal Klear. I think it looks much cleaner and more in line with the filming ship props from the 1960s.

One big 10mm Red LED flanked by two strobing RGB lights. It gives a nice effect that there is something going on behind the translucent red end caps. I haven't had much success adding video to this blog, but I'll give it a try for the next post.

I put all the lights into the body, but I didn't take any photos for some reason. So next up was the end cap for the back of the ship. I was going to need some blue lights for the impulse engines (big holes around the outside), Red, Yellow and Green for the optical landing system under the hangar door. Rather than run wires for two red, two yellow and a green LED, I filled the holes with Tamiya clear red, yellow and green paint, then lit behind with one white LED. I had some problems with the blue light leaking into the white so I came up with a compartment system as you can see below.

As the master of piss poor planning, the inside of the hull was crammed full of wires for the lighting strips that are illuminating the windows.
Some of the strips were too close to the edge to allow the end cap to go on. I also had inserted a very large lead fishing lure as a counter weight for to the Ball that will be on the front of the ship so there wasn't any room for all the shit I had added to the end cap for light blocking. I was really worried about shorting the electronics out if I shoved it in there and something touched something else. So I did a little rearranging and I got it to barely fit. I mean Snug. I was surprised that everything still worked when I was through!

 

 After all of that I wired up some blue lights for the ends of the engines and glued them into place. I almost went with pink but it was too much. Best to stay with a unified look.

I opted to not add running lights to the ends of the nacelles as there were none on the original USS Enterpise. As this is an earlier ship I figured they wouldn't have them either. Plus I was being lazy and didn't want to do all of that work. That's the real story. Ha!

Macross "Robotech" SDF-1 Finale

Okay, I was finally able to dedicate some time to getting this one done. I got the legs on with much difficulty. It was a very tight fit even after sanding down the areas before glueing. Since the model wasn't designed with lighting in mind, the wires barely fit through the opening. During this process I broke off the nose piece and the bridge, knocked off a foot piece and cracked the seam on the side of the main body. This is usually where I have to fight the urge to throw the whole thing on the ground in an irate fit. But I got it all fixed and pulled through.

Next up, I got the ships attached. This was a little easier than the legs, but not much! There wasn't a lot of room to solder the wires and get them stuffed into he body without causing some trouble with other wires or the LED and fiber optics inside. But I managed to get it all together while only shorting the lights out once!

While looking around the web for ideas I came across a guy who used a plain old pencil for his weathering, scraping and chipping effects. I decided to give it a try with good results!

Since that worked so well, I used a silver Prismacolor pencil for the highlights on the thruster arrays. It was way easier than masking them off and dry brushing silver paint.

Macross "Robotech" SDF-1 Part 3

Just a small update for today. I haven't been doing much work on this due to the death of a friend and memorials and such. Hopefully I'll get a good chunk done this coming week.

I got the bottom thrusters masked off and painted those black. I thought that the decals for the red stripes looked cheesy so I opted to paint them on instead.





















I screwed up the spacing between the stripes on the two "Shoulders"; they do not match. I'm going to leave it, though. I would have to sand them down and start over completely and I just don't think its that crucial.

I did the same for the yellow stripes on the bottom thruster arrays. Because it was an afterthought (that I almost opted to skip) I had to do a lot of masking to make sure that I didn't't get any yellow overspray on anything else!

Macross "Robotech" SDF-1 Part 2

Continuing with the Macross saga...
I did a few things out of order and had to kick myself in the ass, but I got through it alright. I really just stumble through this stuff and hope for the best.

As I mentioned before, I decided on the lighter blue "As seen on TV" color. But I wanted to add some detail and realism so I used my leftover Excelsior painting masks from Lou Dalmasso at Aztek Dummy. The camera doesn't really pick up the depth of the effect; you can see the dark and light variations under the blue in person.







I decided that I wanted to get the ships finished before doing anything else. I did some pre-shading and laid down the red Hull color. Then forgot to take any pics for the following steps until I was done!

Don't judge me too harsh, those things are tiny!

I used the paint masks to add some panel details to the command section and the "Legs". After applying Mr. Super Clear Semi-gloss I used the Tamiya Panel Line Accent Wash to add some weathering detail. For some reason I cannot find a lacquer Clear Gloss to use in this step. I had been using Future floor polish in the past, but that takes a week to harden up (most of the time). I used the Tamiya TS-79 semi-gloss on the star destroyer build and it worked just fine. A guy at my local hobby store recommended the Mr. Hobby version as it plays nicer with decals. So I gave it a shot. It seems to work but I will need to try a real Gloss on the next project to compare.

I did the same process with the masks and some grays on the white parts of the body.

Then I masked off the white areas and I did the same with the blue areas using some darker blues and grays. As before, the camera doesn't pick up the effect very well.

After the masking all came off I was not displeased!