Enterprise NCC-1701 Refit- 1/1000 scale

[trekriffic]

Fun with decals!

So far I've finished the aztecs for the upper saucer and the deflector dish. I'll save all the registration markings, phaser banks, and saucer rim reaction control thrusters (hope that's what they are called) for last once I've applied and sealed the aztec decals.

All I have to say is thank god for Solvaset! And white glue mixed with water:




For the most part, the upper saucer decals went on without too much fuss. Only one or two had minor fragmentation issues and those were easily dealt with by patching gaps with the extra decal bits I had left over after trimming the rearmost pie slices to fit around the back of C deck:

Rear of A-C deck housing showing the officer's lounge window frames. Most of the decals on B-C deck fragmented into 2 or 3 pieces even after coating with liquid decal film. Luckily I'm good with puzzles:



The deflector housing aztecs are complete:



Someone said on another forum that the deflector decals had to be put on before gluing the housing to the secondary hull and now I know why.
What a friggin' pain the uppermost decals were to trim and fit around the base at the front of the dorsal!
I hadn't counted on Round2 not printing the decals to fit around the neck so had to trim them myself since the deflector dish was already glued on solid. Then one of them started breaking apart and I had to splice leftover bits together with tweezers under the photon torpedo launcher overhang.
Oofda!
Got her done though and the splice job is decent enough although not flawless.
It's fairly inconspicuous unless you know where to look for it which I do of course.

Underside of the saucer ready for aztecs:



I painted the dome with flat white mixed with a little silver.
I also brushed on a mix of white feathered into azure blue aroud the rim of the dome. The floodlight ports were painted using gunship gray after masking off rectangular white shapes to simulate the lights.

So all in all I'm very pleased with how this is going. At this rate I should be finished in another 2 weeks considering I spent about 6 hours so far.

 

[ModelMakerMike]

What do you use the white glue/water mix for?

 

[ulvdemon]

Your build makes me want to try and tackle this model. It's looking great, keep up the excellent work.

 

[trekriffic]

What do you use the white glue/water mix for?

For decals that just won't lay down on their own. Mix a drop of white glue with a drop of water and brush it under the decal. Press down with a microbrush or paper towel until the decal stays down. Works great! For decals that I have to piece together I also like to brush on some liquid decal film over the top after it's dried.

 

[Grendels]

Nice tips with the decals.

 

[ModelMakerMike]

Yes, thank you. I hadn't heard of that one before.

 

[Quaralane]

Definitely coming along very nicely

 

[trekriffic]

Definitely coming along very nicely

Thanks Q!

Yesterday I started decaling the lower saucer and after applying the two sections that flank the centerline in the front I noticed with some chagrin that the blue-grey inscribed hatches/panels were not accounted for with the decals so I had to put on the brakes and paint the panels before proceeding with the rest of the decals:



I let the paint dry overnight then went back at lunch today and finished the rest of the lower saucer decals:



I trimmed away almost all of the light blue inside border on the two rearmost sections that flanked the neck as I had already painted those areas blue-grey previously. This made fitting them around the neck much easier than would otherwise have been the case.

 

[ModelMakerMike]

She's looking ship-shape!

 

[Quaralane]

Excellent progress.

 

[trekriffic]

Spent about 9 hours aztec decaling over the weekend...

This is my decaling setup. I have separate metal mixing cups for MicroSol and MicroSet. The little ceramic cup is for my white glue and water mix. The large white bowl is from a Healthy Choice Cafe Steamer meal. I use various and sundry cotton swabs, scissors, tweezers, and microbrushes to do the job:



Finshed the impulse engine deck. After the Set and Sol dried I gave the decals a good brushing with Solvaset to really tighten them down. Then I brushed on some Future to seal and protect them:



The dorsal/neck was finished:



I had to add some extra light blue-gray decal bits to the top and bottom of the decal on the front as the kit decal was too short. Luckily I had some of the same color decal left over from the decal at the base of the warp pylons which I had painted. The red stripes didnt reach all the way around to cover the front and back edges either so I had to add some red decal stripes from my stash left over from another Trek model kit:



The decals for the front sides of the nacelles have to curve over top and bottom and it took some work to get them to lay down. Here I am tamping them down after brushing some white glue mixture under the edges. It took a good 10 minutes each before the glue set up enough to get them to stay down. So that's 10 minutes x 4 decals or 40 minutes altogether going back and tamping down while I worked on other areas:



The front and undersides of the nacelles completed. You can't see them from this angle but the lower inside facing decals needed to be trimmed to fit. Basically they were too wide to fit between the top of the pylons and the bottom edge of the warp grills:



I discovered that there were no decals for the yellow parallelograms that wrap around the tips of the two nacelle fins so I masked and brushed them with yellow Testors enamel. Still need to paint the red dots and I think there is a red border too which I can add using leftover stripe decals from the stash. Thankfully I've learned never to throw out unused decals; they can come in handy for use in situatiosn like this:



That was it for Saturday.
Sunday I finished the nacelles and secondary hull. Still need to apply the outer warp pylon decals then I'll seal the decals after they dry with Glosscote followed by Dullcote. Then I'll give her a rub with pastel chalks. Then more Glosscote before applying the rest of the registration markings, phaser strips, reaction control thrusters, etc.

Stay tuned! V'ger is just around the corner and Kirk and company are all over me to get this baby launched!

 

[Quaralane]

"She'll launch on time, e'en if we hae to 'aul 'er oot wi' our bare 'hands"

Excellent work with all those tricky decals.

 

[trekriffic]

Thanks Q!

So last night I spent some time tidying up the decals on the secondary hull and nacelles.

For the nacelles this consisted chiefly of poking bubbles with a pin, pressing out any remaining water, and applying Solvaset to tighten them down flat. This morning I went back and found some more so did more of the same. It takes time with so many curved surfaces to get the decals where I want them. I think all the bubbles are finally gone now though.

The secondary hull was fun. Sunday I managed to get all the decals down but then after brushing on Solvaset the edges on some of the decals started curling up! Frack! Decals just don't like to stick to curved surfaces.
So I ended up using white glue to hold them down. This added another hour or so to my decaling session since I had to keep tamping the decals down until the glue set. After the glue dried I coated the entire secondary hull with liquid decal film followed by Future. Finally finished around 7 PM so spent about 6 hours altogether Sunday on aztec decals.

Last night I went back with Testors enamels and a fine tipped brush and filled in some gaps between the base of the warp pylons and the strongback; funny that the decal was too small to cover what it needed to cover. Anyway, my colormatch was dead on and you can't even tell where the decal ends and tha paint begins.

Here are a few pics:

 

[trekriffic]

Update...

After finishing the aztec decals I gave her a spray of Dullcote and rubbed the hull with Tamiya silver pastel chalk.
Here's a pic of the upper saucer after the port half has been rubbed.
It's hard to tell in this pic but the pearl effect is very subtle; just enough to mute the underlying aztecing a tiny bit:



Rubbing the nacelles:


After her rudown I gave her another spray of Glosscote in preparation for the final decal application.

The hardware references over on SSM showed what looked to be a hatch of some kind just in front of the phaser bumps above the hangar bay doors.
The kit didn't include any decals for the spine so I found a "hatch" in my leftover decal stash that looked to be the right size and shape.
It was bright yellow though so I gave it a coat of white acrylic thinned with Future to look more like the white/amber color in the picture:



There is also a red circle around the beacon light above the bay.
Not sure if I can paint that or not and I don't have a decal to fit it.
I may try using a piece of tubing and dipping it in paint before pressing it gently down around the beacon.
If I'm steady enough it woud leave behind a red circle.
I may need to practice the technique a bit if I decide to try it.

Here's the "Enterprise" insignia on the fantail edge.
The kit decal was curved too much as the edge is not bevelled as much as the decal designers apparently thought which looked stupid so I removed it with alcohol and used a decal from my stash.
It's a little oversized but I can live with it and at least it goes straight across without bending upward at the corners:



For the port side saucer rim gangway hatch I wanted a white background. The kit decal is on clear film so if I'd just laid it down as is you'd see stripes through it so... I found an old sheet of US Airforce decals with white bits on it and cut out a rectangle.
The kit decal will go on over the white decal once I seal it with Future:



One word of caution about the kit instructions regarding the rim stripe/window decal placement.
The instructions show the saucer underside with placement of the rim decals in relation to it.
It mistakenly instructs you to place the decal with the double row of 4 large rectangular windows near the impulse engines on what would be the port side looking up from underneath.
Those windows are actually on the starboard side of the saucer.
I thought I had screwed this up believing the instructions were correct (when I was placing the decals I got confused and thought I was looking at the upper saucer so I placed those windows opposite of what the instructions called out) but when I checked the references I realized that my placement was correct and the instructions were wrong.
The windows on the port side are different from the ones on the starboard side so if you screw this up any purist who knows the refit would immediately catch it and kick you out of the starfleet modeling corp.
So... I lucked out I guess.

I should be done with decals by tomorrow then she'll dry overnight and get her final clearcoats on Sunday before she launches.

Thanks for all the support and comments!

 

[Cash]

gj

 

[trekriffic]

Here are a few pics after a shot of Glosscote.
Good enough to launch on her mission to intercept the V'Ger cloud.
I'll take more and better pics this weekend when Kirk and company return and she can get her final satin semi-gloss treatment...

Dorsal view of saucer...


Nice view of the purple warp grills...


I used some leftover black decals trimmed to fit the openings of the photorp launchers. That really added to the realism IMO...


Starboard profile...


Closeup of the top of the fantail.
I added some extra aztec decals to the spine and painted the red circle around the beacon...



If you haven't guessed, I took these in bright sunlight so y'all can see the true colors.

 

[Quaralane]

She's one fine looking lass.

 

[Grendels]

Looking good!

 

[biomedchad]

Fine job. I have this one in the stash. Thus will be a great reference.

 

[Glorfindel]

Man that thing is small.