Thanks!
MSgtUSAFRet wrote:It looks like you pretty far along with the build. What's left beyond that painting and decals?
Good question... specially because, yeah, it
looks close to being finished (heck, I look at it assembled and think that I can't be
that far from being done).
First, it is just set together (dry fit) or taped (on the side away from the camera). I do this mainly to make sure that everything is working together correctly.
The primary hull is pretty far along. I need to make the upper and lower sensor domes, and then I'll have most of the parts I need. I recently added a second hole for an additional screw to hold the primary hull to the dorsal. I wanted to make sure that there was more stability (structurally) before the eventual gluing of those pieces together.
The top of the dorsal needs a bit more gap filling to make it an even better fit to the contour of the primary hull. It is close, but could use a little more work.
The deflector/sensor assembly on the front of the secondary hull, those are all parts for the masters. They are there to make sure that they are matching the design correctly before I invest a ton of time making molds to cast the final parts. The dish is a test casting from the mold I made off the dish master, the spike is a stand-in as I haven't started on that part yet.
The rear of the secondary hull (around the hangar bay) needs adjusting.
I recently used Aves Apoxie Sculpt to get the top and bottom parts of the nacelle support pylons to match the contours of the secondary hull and nacelles. Like the dorsal pylon, this is meant to get a good fit, but things aren't glued together yet.
I wasn't happy with the forward nacelle cap assembly, so I started over from scratch and sculpted a new master. I made a mold of it and the parts you see in the last set of images are test pulls from that mold so I can see if I fixed the problem I was having with the original parts.
The detailing on the inboard channels of the nacelles has been a pain. These are very unique (to this model) and I've spent more time trying to replicate the original parts than nearly any other part of this model. I think I'm getting close to having the parts I need, so that (more than anything else) should push the build forward significantly.
On the decal side, I have the lettering drawn up (I've had them for more than three years now), but I keep cross checking what I've drawn against newer references of the original decals. While better references have confirmed that my original drawings were very accurate, I've been waiting to actually assemble the graphics from the decals until I get much closer to being ready to apply them to the model. Plus it isn't just making sure that all the lettering matches the original decal sheet, I need to make sure I know exactly where everything goes on the model's surface if I want to replicate the original studio model.
And lastly, there are all the flaws of the original studio model that need to be cataloged and replicated on this model. That has been a fun job because given the level of noise on the reference photos, I need to (in many cases) confirm a flaw's existence in two or more images. Even now, if you look closely you'll see holds in the primary hull that were drilled into the original model for hanging it that aren't part of the actual Enterprise design.
So yeah, it looks a lot closer to being done than it really is. And because it is lower priority than the two shuttlecraft models I'm working on, I haven't dedicated that much time towards it (of the time I
can dedicate towards building models right now).
