Paint!

School and other projects have kept me from getting much posted, but we are nearing the end of the term, and I had some time to work on the ship in the last few days. I spent some time figuring out where the wires would go for the different lights, trying to avoid windows. Using greebles I glued in some guides to ensure the wires run where I want them. I also attached some tabs to support the white LEDs to create the overall window effect. The Kristal Klear came in last week and I tested it on some scrap (sorry no picture). It works well, so that will be one of the last steps before sealing.

wire guides and light supports on the lower saucer

wire guides and light supports on the lover engineering hull. I also glued in the shuttle bay doors as they have some special lighting needs.

wire guides and light supports on the upper engineering hull (which is upside down).

I also finished the texturing of the base. Overall I think it looks pretty good. Usually asteroids and barren rock moons and planets are different shades of grey. I worry, though, that with a grey ship it will become a bit to monochrome. I plan to try and bring some red and tan into the base to differentiate it from the ship a bit better.

The finished base

Another angle

After getting all the wire guides glued in I next mounted all the pieces that would have lights, save the saucers, and gave them three coats of paint. A primer, a coat of flat black to ensure the light does not shine through, then a coat of flat white to diffuse the light all around the ship. I need to paint on a second coat of the white. I did all of that with spray paint. I also sprayed the base with primer.

ready for painting

Primed and ready to paint

The lower saucer after the white paint

primed base

Later in the evening I broke out my airbrush for the first time. I mixed up some black acrylic and played with the brush on a box painted with the white primer. Mostly I was working on getting the feel for this new tool. Unfortunately it seems that the paint I was using had some larger particulate as after about 5 min of playing around the paint stopped coming out. I cleaned the brush with both water, and paint thinner, but no change. I then broke down the brush and discovered some blockage in the very tip. The hole is so small I cannot get anything in it to clear the blockage. After an hour of working at it I gave up. I have two new tips on the way from the company. I will just be sure not to use cheap acrylics in the airbrush from now on.

my first airbrush piece

 

Finally I spend the last few hours soldering the blinker circuits for the bussard collectors and the beacon lights on the saucer. I soldered the components to the socket made for the chip instead of a protoboard like I usually do as the chips will be inside the ship instead of in the base. The bussard collector chips will be in the nacelle, and the saucer chip will in fact be behind the navigational deflector in the secondary hull as that was the best place for it.

completed bussard spinner circuits

finished blinker circuit for the beacons on the saucer

I do have a small problem I need to solve. One of the nacelle halves is misaligned. When I dry fit it using the pegs and holes it is slighting off. I am not sure at the moment what I am going to do. I think the difference is small enough I can remove the pegs and it should glue together fine. If not I will have to do some structural rebuilding. We shall see. After that issue the next step is pretty much assembly, running wires, soldering the lights and all that jazz. That should be a long post, but I expect it may be some time before we get there. There is only 2 weeks left in the term, and I have another project that I need to have ready by the time we head to Medford after the term ends. 

misaligned nacelle

misaligned nacelle

Update from the shipyard

I know it has been a while since my last update. I did not get much done over Memorial Day weekend, and the ended what for me was a five day weekend by getting sick, so no modeling. I did get a significant amount of work done last weekend, I just have not blogged it yet. So, away we go.

First, the proper size brass pipes, and my contour putty, came in the mail. This means that the brass pipe holding the ship up from the base fits perfectly in the holes that are already present in the base and the ship! With that I mulled over what I wanted to do with the base. Normally i would by a project box at Radio Shack to become the base, but we no longer have a Radio Shack, and those seem somewhat bland for this ship. The model comes with a dome base, as I was not planning on setting the microchip circuits in the base, the dome in fact would work well. Then, as I am working on a star ship after all, I figured I would make the dome look like a planet. I hemmed and hawed over whether to just paint it to look like some alien planet, or to texture it to look like a large asteroid, or small moon. Texturing would allow me to better hide the switch and the power jack, plus it would be fun! So texturing it was.

I used an epoxy putty to do the texturing. This stuff comes in a tube with a white center and blue on the outside. You rip off a hunk and kneed it until the color is homogeneous. You then have about 15 min before the stuff hardens rock solid. I started with the crater that surrounds the switch and then started adding in sections little by little. I used some of my sculpting tools to make the small craters, as well as adding in two more craters. After the epoxy was hard, but not set, I used some sharp tools to scrape away inside the larger craters to create the look of impacts. I used several images from online to work with. I ran out of the putty so this is a work in progress at the moment. I need to get a few more tubes to finish up. The epoxy has the added benefit of adding weight to the base. It probably weighs twice as much now.

The base as it looks now.

After I moved to the ship itself. I have been stalling on cutting the windows until I knew how I was going to make them. I have a pretty good idea as to how, and it is in the mail now. So, I went about cutting the windows. For all of them I started with a small drill bit (I do not know the size) in my pin vice. For round windows I drilled out the center of the port. For rectangular ones I drilled usually two holes on the long sides. I then used a combination of my needle files and a new x-acto #11 blade to open up the rectangular windows. Some of them are a little rough, but on the finished model they will look fine. I also drilled out areas for the beacon lights, the impulse engines, the bridge dome, and the dome under the saucer. I attached the aftermarket piece for the under saucer dome as well. Finally I used the contour putty to fill in three divots that were in the underside of the saucer. I will sand these down, along with the raised lines as they are inaccurate.

the pin vice

Needle files

#11 x-acto blade

couture putty on the lower saucer (yeah, I know it is blurry).

Bridge windows

And one piece of the hull showing the different windows.

I think I have sorted out some of the painting techniques, but I need to practice with my new airbrush, which I have yet to turn on. I hope to spend part of this weekend learning how to use it. I will then experiment with painting techniques on those two kit-bashed federation ships I mentioned a few posts back.