For the last two days I have been working on the final touches to begin assembling the Enterprise sub-assemblies. Things are going well, so far. Yesterday I wired up the engineering hull with lights. I used three originally, well four if you count the one on the upper half of the hull. The far back one is glued to the clear rod that makes the shuttle bay window and the dome over the bay. The fourth light is in the neck. Once again I was thrilled to see that my planning paid off by allowing me places to run wires to keep them relatively out of sight from the windows. After dry fitting the parts with the lights on I discovered that I needed one more night up by the deflector dish. I added this under the light for the upper half. Now all the windows glow with about the same light. I also realized I forgot the plugs for the nacelle lighting, so had to go back in and add those. Again, the wire routing was a big help.
Original wiring on the lower engineering hull.
With lights!
The shuttle bay window and dome.
The upper hull with the added light.
Without power
Everything connected and working fine.
With the wires for the nacelles now.
Today I began by gluing the two halves of the upper engineering section together. I was planning on gluing the saucer section together as well, but needed to add color to two small lights on the bridge. I used the Krystal Klear with some food coloring (as instructed on the bottle) to try and make a kind of gel to convert the white light to red. Well, that did not work so well. The fiber optics I am using there just barely were pink. So back to the drawing board on that one. I ended up adding two 3mm red LEDs glued strait to the ship. I then painted them over with black paint. I will need to do several coats to be sure the red light does not leak and change the white light that comes out for the bridge. The little red lights look great though.
Krystal Klear with red food coloring.
Curing on the inside of the bridge.
The LEDs before painting.
LEDs with a coat of paint. (The power is off, there are still a few light leaks.)
That looks better! (Before painting the LEDs.)
I then went back to the engineering hull, gluing the top and the bottom together. I had to do some finagling to get everything just right. There are some gaps, but that should be easy to fix with a little putty. After that cured I glued in the deflector dish housing and viola! The engineering sub-assembly is assembled!
Beginning to assemble the engineering hull.
Top and bottom joined.
Completed hull!
After that I started on the nacelles. I hot glued the bussard spinners into the housings for the clear parts that I got from a third party. Once that cooled, I was able to run the wires down the pylon to later connect up with the micro plugs (something I will do later). I then glued the bussard housing to the already glued nacelle. Following that I did the same for the other nacelle. Both spinners still work, so that is a relief. I put one of the bussard covers that has a single coat of a frosting spray on just to get a sense of what it will look like. A few more coast of frosting and things should he good. I have not added the end caps, and the saucer is still in pieces while I wait for the paint to dry.
No comments:
Post a Comment