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<\/a>A little dab here…<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>…and a few dabs up here<\/p><\/div>\n
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<\/a>The wiring needs protection too, so some improv paper envelopes help keep them covered.<\/p><\/div>\n
First, before getting into the nitty-gritty, I protect the exposed lights (the front floodlamps and the rear anticollision strobe) and the wiring that connects all that lighting work.\u00a0 A nice bubble of Humbrol Maskol (or whatever your favorite masking product might be) over the small lights covers that.\u00a0 A little bit of masking tape around the warp crystal assembly on top protects that one.\u00a0 For the wiring itself, I made a small paper envelope just by folding some regular Xerox paper and taping it shut.\u00a0 I want to make sure those wires retain their labels and colors, so that envelope is pretty crucial.<\/p>\n
<\/a>The nacelles don’t go together altogether cleanly, and it’ll take some sand-fill-sand to get them flush.<\/p><\/div>\n
At the front of the nacelles where the bussard collector mates with the two side halves there are some fairly significant ridges and gaps, and these require a bit of elbow grease to sand down into shape.\u00a0 Those were my first goals here, and with a bit of time and work they settled in.\u00a0 I puttied the gaps up with Tamiya fine putty, and re-sanded till smooth.<\/p>\n
<\/a>The rears were a bit gappy too, though less so than the tops and bottoms.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>The PE was probably the cleanest fit of all the parts here, ironically.<\/p><\/div>\n
Next, the rear of the nacelles also had some rather ugly gaps, and the PE rear cover had a little teensy gap line all the<\/p>\n
way around that needed addressing.\u00a0 I filled the gaps with Tamiya, scraping the excess away with the edge of a razor, and went at it with some 600-grit sandpaper to clean up the remnants.\u00a0 The outboard fins also needed some help, so I treated those the same way.\u00a0 Getting putty into that tight little angled corner on the top was probably hardest, and getting it cleaned and flush with the surface was a bit of a challenge, but a good razor knife can work wonders in this regard.<\/p>\n
<\/a>An example of ‘masking lines’ – these shown are pretty minor, bad ones can build up a significant height and be a pain to get rid of.<\/p><\/div>\n
The tops of the nacelles were next, and these had some really serious ledging issues \u2013 not gaps, but places where the two parts simply don\u2019t fit flush with one another.\u00a0 I used 120-grit sandpaper at first to get them as level as I could, then 600-grit to fine out the scratches from the prior sanding.\u00a0 Feeling for the ledge with fingertips generally reveals if you\u2019ve done a good job here, and later when the hull coat is reapplied any fine ledging will be shown as the paint dries.\u00a0 As you\u2019re doing this, it\u2019s likely that you\u2019ll end up sanding away your light-blocking if you did it on the outside, so mask off the clear parts and reapply as needed.\u00a0 It\u2019s also good to remove the masks once you\u2019ve done one or two coats and reapply masking afterwards, in order to avoid paint buildup in \u201cmask lines\u201d on particularly long-used masks.<\/p>\n
<\/a>After all the sanding, a fresh topcoat of white was added. Looking nice!<\/p><\/div>\n
Once I was satisfied that all the parts were smooth and matching their partners, I re-masked all the black areas and hit the whole thing with a fresh coat of white.\u00a0 Came out looking good, and what few spots remained that still needed smoothing became very evident. A little more sandpaper and another quick blast of white, and everything looked fine.<\/p>\n
On the front of the engines to either side of the Bussards there is a marking in duck-egg blue that extends under the \u201cchin\u201d of each nacelle.\u00a0 On the kit parts, this is demarcated with a very shallow trench in the plastic (you can see it in the above pic).\u00a0 This trench didn\u2019t exist in the film version, and although I left the trench on the thruster corner of the fin (that trench didn\u2019t exist in the film either, but it\u2019s so small that it won\u2019t be noticeable), I decided to fill this trench in.\u00a0 I used \u201cPerfect Plastic Putty\u201d to do this job \u2013 it\u2019s a water-soluble polymer putty that goes on white and dries pretty quickly.\u00a0 I roughed up the inside of the trenches with some folded sandpaper (to give the putty more surface to grip to) and applied with a fingertip, then cleaned off the excess with the back of a knife.\u00a0 Once it was dry, a little sanding and everything was totally smooth.<\/p>\n
<\/a>The forward blues and silver line were added here, some black and white cleanup followed.<\/p><\/div>\n
I then masked it up and airbrushed the duck-egg blue on the front, and also on the inside of the forward sections of the inboard and outboard chillers.\u00a0 I used shining silver on the band that stretches from inboard to outboard across the face of each nacelle.\u00a0 Once these were cleaned up and dried, I reversed my masking and went back to check the black chillers on both sides (masks are not always 100%, and some white did bleed through).<\/p>\n
The fin tips where the thruster ports are got painted with some signal yellow by hand.\u00a0 I also tried to fill in the holes with gloss clear acrylic, but they refused to fill \u2013 the paint just kept draining away into the interior.\u00a0 I\u2019ll try again later once everything is dry again.<\/p>\n
In the instructions for the kit, those forward rounded sections of the chillers are supposedly copper, but in TMP they\u2019re quite clearly black.\u00a0 I hand-painted them with matt black while doing my corrections on the regular chillers.<\/p>\n
Finally, once everything was dry and clean, I applied a light gloss coat to the entire nacelle, all around.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to do the decals on these just yet.\u00a0 Decals will have to wait until all my subassemblies are done, because I have some special paints I want to use on the decals themselves before application, and it\u2019ll require me to do the entire set to make sure I don\u2019t miss any spots.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, once dry, I sanded away any discolorations, and went back to reapply a few spots where the duck-egg blue came out a little funky (something about Testors\u2019 version of that color just doesn\u2019t seem to want to go on evenly).\u00a0 A second zap with gloss coat, and then I\u2019ll bag them and move on to the next parts.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s it for this episode \u2013 next go around we\u2019ll start on the officers\u2019 lounge and the recreation deck!<\/p>\n
USS Enterprise \u2013 Build Log Part\u00a010<\/a><\/p>\n USS Enterprise – Build Log Part 12<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Build Log – Part 11 It\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve written this log, so my apologies go out to anyone who\u2019s been waiting…hope it wasn’t too long. When last we were here, the nacelles had just been wired, all … Continue reading