The Starfleet Museum group build

Hey Woody, be careful with that drill between your legs. You could slip and be singin' Saprano real easy!!!

They are going to be the bulges on the conduits(?) on top of the saucer section. They need more shaping before I glue and blend them in. What are those for anyway?

Very nice, Woody!

What are those tubey things for? :)

Here are a few more pics of the dorsal hump that houses the shuttle bay. It looks better when it's not in three different colors of paint.

QUOTE: Originally posted by The Syko Ward Dude! Woody, that looks awesome! I haven't been able to even get the saucer section looking right yet. How did you go about doing it? This really is my first scratchbuild and any advice would be appreciated, from anybody. Anyways, I'm still trying. I left the saucer section aside for now and moved to the nacelles and am making those out of balsa and then thinking of vacuum forming them. How does balsa hold up to vacuum forming anyway? Will it crush or distort? Well, gotta get back to work. Great work from everyone so far. I hope to have something up soon. The Syko Ward

I first cut out two circles of 1/8th inch thick styrene. One circle at the diameter of the top lip of the saucer section and one the diameter of the bottom. I used a drafting divider to scribe the circles into the plastic. Not only did this give me perfect circles but it also left a small dimple at the very center. I then used that dimple to drill a hole that a two inch long bolt would fit in snuggly. Next I glued the two circles together so the center hole was in perfect alignment. I slipped the bolt back in so the bolt head was on the small circle side. On the other side I screwed a nut on so it all fit together snug but not too tight. I placed the bolt in my cordless drill. I then placed a course sanding drum in my Dremel. Holding the drill between my legs I rotated the saucer section slowly while using the Dremel to contour the area between the top lip of the saucer and the bottom. Light pressure and a steady hand is what you need for this part. After the unwanted material had been removed I took the bolt out of the drill. I used my homemade putty to fill the seam where the two sheets of styrene met. After this had set up good for about 48 hours I placed the bolt holding the saucer section back in the drill and turned the puttied edge againt a large nail file and then 600 grit wet or dry sandpaper untill it was smooth. After scribing the detail in it is as you see it.

As far as balsa as a vacuform mold, it will work fine. I soak my balsa parts with thin CA to harden them for casting or vaccumforming. I hope this has been helpful.

I have a starcrafts USS Pateur w/ base and decals for teade or sale(prefer trade for maschinen Kreiger).
It is the same scale as the Excelsior and Enterprise B.
If interested email me at stipps@ntelos.net

Dude! Woody, that looks awesome! I haven't been able to even get the saucer section looking right yet. How did you go about doing it? This really is my first scratchbuild and any advice would be appreciated, from anybody. Anyways, I'm still trying. I left the saucer section aside for now and moved to the nacelles and am making those out of balsa and then thinking of vacuum forming them. How does balsa hold up to vacuum forming anyway? Will it crush or distort? Well, gotta get back to work. Great work from everyone so far. I hope to have something up soon.

The Syko Ward

I'm not trying to show Ketr up or anything, I just thought I'd share what I did in about 30 minutes the other day. It's the Wasp Class that I'll be working on as soon as I get my materials from Plastruct.


My Daedalus would be close to finished if I could ever get the conic section on the front of the engineering hull done, and done right...

Hey Andrew nice progress there. I'll have to remember the spoon thing, after scratching one into something all the left over bits can go into making the Woody goop. Now that is truly maximizing the use of materials.

Matt

Sounds like toes are being stepped on. Ouch! I hope its resolved.

It's amazing what you can do with plastic silverware. I keep several bags of different colors in my supply cabinet.

Thanks for the kind words about the shuttle bay.

Masao, That whole situation is very strange.

QUOTE: Originally posted by Woody I guess the fee wasn't too high. Yeah I saw the optional nacelles but the TOS nacelles look bad to my eye. As a kit it is very nice looking. Unfortunatly this might cause my Avenger to not be released as a kit as I'm exchanging emails with Starship Modeler in hopes of them producing and selling a kit (kits-?) based on my Baton Rouge masters. I had hoped to do the same with the Avenger. I'm sure they won't want to market two kits of the same ship in the same scale. I'm really pretty bummed about it.

I sent a PM to LindaSmile at SSM. She said she didn't know anything about any kit of Avenger. Supposedly John Lester handles all the kit masters, but I haven't heard from him. I also sent an email to Alfred Wong but haven't heard back from him yet. I still don't know who's behind this.

Dang Woody the shuttle bay looks great!!! The bay door detail is outstanding Looks like your rework paid off.

Matt

Shuttlebay looks great Woody! Keep up the good work.

The spoons aren't perfect, but they're close... And pretty easy to work with. I've made some dandy spats for a Flash Gordon rocketship out of them in the past. I really should just carve the warp pods out of balsa and vacuform them to do it right. I'll try one with the spoons and see whether it works. I will post some pictures! Some of the other parts I'm using are the nosecone from a Heller Ariane V, a mess of bombs of unknown origin, a tiny plastic cup, half of a planet from an educational toy, and a part from a concrete snap-tie.
Andrew

Andrew: Spoons! Whatever works for you.

QUOTE: Originally posted by Larry_Dunn I have a question -- is it better to make the kit look as close to the Museum imagery as possible, or can you vary it by "superdetailing" (well, you know what I mean) and the like? The little D7 I am building is a cute kit, but even when cleaned up it will be pretty crude. Then again, so was the ship on TOS! If I start adding non-canon things to it to make it look a llittle more like a huge ship than a tiny toy, is that in the parameters? (What I would probably do is look at some of the K'Tinga stuff floating around out there and try to interpolate which of that stuff might have been on a more-detailed basic D7, if that's not too unclear.)

If I were you, I'd detail as much as I could. My schematics are pretty basic, with greater emphasis on general outlines than on surface details. So, if you stick only with my schematics, you'll end up with a pretty boring model!

Here are a couple pics of my shuttle bay section.

Slow progress continues on the Torsk, and I'm distracting myself by building a Chowder as well. Consider this my official declaration! A picture is up at:
http://groups.msn.com/ModelersAndHobbyForum/starfleetmuseumrevisited.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=777
Andrew

QUOTE: Originally posted by Larry_Dunn I have a question -- is it better to make the kit look as close to the Museum imagery as possible, or can you vary it by "superdetailing" (well, you know what I mean) and the like? The little D7 I am building is a cute kit, but even when cleaned up it will be pretty crude. Then again, so was the ship on TOS! If I start adding non-canon things to it to make it look a llittle more like a huge ship than a tiny toy, is that in the parameters? (What I would probably do is look at some of the K'Tinga stuff floating around out there and try to interpolate which of that stuff might have been on a more-detailed basic D7, if that's not too unclear.) Don't be afraid to tell me no if it's not! I either get an easy build, or an interesting challenge -- either is fine with me. I've got a tank to finish, but after that it's back to the battlecruiser. Thanks.

I say put what ever level of detail you want in your build. I personally like a detailed model. Do it which ever way makes you happy.

thakyou vey much Woody, i'll be doing more ships from the Museum the designs from Masao are very cool

I have a question -- is it better to make the kit look as close to the Museum imagery as possible, or can you vary it by "superdetailing" (well, you know what I mean) and the like?

The little D7 I am building is a cute kit, but even when cleaned up it will be pretty crude. Then again, so was the ship on TOS! If I start adding non-canon things to it to make it look a llittle more like a huge ship than a tiny toy, is that in the parameters? (What I would probably do is look at some of the K'Tinga stuff floating around out there and try to interpolate which of that stuff might have been on a more-detailed basic D7, if that's not too unclear.)

Don't be afraid to tell me no if it's not! I either get an easy build, or an interesting challenge -- either is fine with me. I've got a tank to finish, but after that it's back to the battlecruiser. Thanks.

Ketr, Those are beautiful images.
I wish I had your talent so I could do similar images of my USS Kraken.

QUOTE: Originally posted by Masao QUOTE: Originally posted by Woody I guess the fee wasn't too high. Yeah I saw the optional nacelles but the TOS nacelles look bad to my eye. As a kit it is very nice looking. Unfortunatly this might cause my Avenger to not be released as a kit as I'm exchanging emails with Starship Modeler in hopes of them producing and selling a kit (kits-?) based on my Baton Rouge masters. I had hoped to do the same with the Avenger. I'm sure they won't want to market two kits of the same ship in the same scale. I'm really pretty bummed about it. I don't know who commissioned the master. All I know is that I wasn't consulted at all. I wonder if a fan ship-designer has any rights if a kit of his design is being manufactured and sold. I guess not.

Well there is the good and bad of it. On the good side fan based art work and designs are protected by copyright laws. However the down side is that the legal cost in defending those rights combined with the laws of multiple countries would be so high it would hardly justify the expense.

That's why we are always seeing recast and unauthorized kit runs, the idea is they can get away with it just long enough to make a quick buck. The only people they do back down from is the ones they can't afford to fight i.e. Paramount or Lucus.

It is sad when you think how much is gained by something as simple as communication, just ask.

Matt

QUOTE: Originally posted by Woody I guess the fee wasn't too high. Yeah I saw the optional nacelles but the TOS nacelles look bad to my eye. As a kit it is very nice looking. Unfortunatly this might cause my Avenger to not be released as a kit as I'm exchanging emails with Starship Modeler in hopes of them producing and selling a kit (kits-?) based on my Baton Rouge masters. I had hoped to do the same with the Avenger. I'm sure they won't want to market two kits of the same ship in the same scale. I'm really pretty bummed about it.

I don't know who commissioned the master. All I know is that I wasn't consulted at all. I wonder if a fan ship-designer has any rights if a kit of his design is being manufactured and sold. I guess not.

Ketr: Thanks for sending the renders. If you have anything else, send them along!

Depend on what you want, these days the sofware gives you so much control that sometimes you can lose yourself in the process, yet the steps are as follow: selct your subject, get as many reference as you can, model it in 3D, clean it, unwrap it for texturing, make the textures, put the textures in the 3d model, test the textures, light it and finally render it, of course you have to think in the backround for the image, that of course is another whole process, in all, in average about a week, but as I said, depends on your subject and of course in your skill, this model in particular is very easy to do because is made of a lot of simple "primitives", spheres, cylinders, etc.

Wow very cool images ketr, thanks for sharing those. So how long does it take to put a 3D image together?

Matt

Krechet Class from Star Fleet Museum

You could always cut you sleep time down to 2 maybe 3 hours a night, drink tons of coffee and do your own garage kit of it. I'll sign up for one right now!!! You are right about the nacelles though. The Connie ones look way wrong

Matt

I guess the fee wasn't too high.
Yeah I saw the optional nacelles but the TOS nacelles look bad to my eye. As a kit it is very nice looking. Unfortunatly this might cause my Avenger to not be released as a kit as I'm exchanging emails with Starship Modeler in hopes of them producing and selling a kit (kits-?) based on my Baton Rouge masters. I had hoped to do the same with the Avenger. I'm sure they won't want to market two kits of the same ship in the same scale. I'm really pretty bummed about it.

I visited SSM after visiting here and saw the link to Alfred Wong's master. It certainly wasn't me, since I'm just a poor university instructor. A friend of mine had actually asked Alfred about the cost of commissioning an Avenger but it was pretty high (based on a wel-above-minimum-wage hourly fee, as is appropriate).

The master comes with an alternate, non-Connie nacelle.