TMP Enterprise & Enterprise-A Tips

Recently I discovered an old Starship Enterprise (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) kit in my mother's attic. This was something that I had not touched since my late teens. It was essentially unassembled and was waiting for an older, and hopefully more skillful assembly.

The first thing I encountered was the random panel detail that was first released on this release of the kit. This MUST go! I have seen several articles, including the one in Kalmbach's Spaceships of Fact and Fantasy, that mention it is best to fill these with a putty and sand it flat. Unfortunately this usually has mixed results, see the closeup pictures and you will see what I mean. I decided to use the same approach I was using on another kit that was found in the attic with this one the Enterprise-D, and sand the unwanted detail off. Yes this is VERY time consuming and tedious, but starting with 150 Grit wet/dry, and working up to 600 Grit wet/dry gave me a beautiful smooth surface to the saucer especially. The dust generated can also be collected and used with a glue like Tenax-7R to make a perfect filler putty.

The next item is on the upper saucer half. The B/C Deck (the part you glue the bridge to) is at the wrong angle in the rear(the section where the windows are). The windows for the observation lounge are also too small and rounded. Thankfully yhe plastic is molded pretty thick here, because a significant amount of shaping and changing has to be done here. The Angle at the rear of the lounge should be the same as the rest of the B/C Deck structure, about 45 degrees. File or sand this area down, being careful not to go through the plastic. I actually came so close, that I added some Milliput epoxy putty inside the area to strengthen it. Next I opened the windows up. They should have a fine divider, less than 1/16" between then and the corners should be squared off a bit. Since the whole area should be a bit more round due to the angle change the windows should be adjusted on the top and bottom to have a straight line in parallel with the shaping of the bottom and top of the deck structure. Milliput or similar epoxy putty can then be used to seal the windows if you are not planning to light the model. For lighting, try using some clear resin like Ultra-Glo from Micro-Mark, or Enviro-Tex from your local hobby shop. An alternative is Micro Krystal Klear to build up the windows. I decided to use a "Wireless Illumination" method on this build of the Enterprise-A. An article describing this procedure can be found at the Starship Modeler site.

more to come soon