Don't Play With Me Cos You're Playing With Fire.

   My next build is D-Whale's Freedom class USS Firebrand. This is the progress so far:-

    This one has a massive amount of damage so (as previously mentioned) I'm going to try fitting flickering yellow LEDs inside the hull and the nacelle. The black areas in this diagram show what chunks will be removed:-

   I should be able to thread the wiring through the neck and out the hole at the back of the nacelle - it has a black coating so (hopefully!) it shouldn't be too obvious. With the upper hull complete I cut the parts for the lower hull and neck:- 

   I had to discard the dark support pieces for the neck to make way for wiring. With both halves and the neck formed I pushed a darning needle through the lower hull for the LED prongs to slide through. I also marked the cut lines for damaged sections:-

     Before connecting the hull pieces I had to work on the nacelle:-

    The central areas of the blue piece had to be removed as the nacelle will be housing another LED:-

    I forgot to take photos at this stage because there was a lot of wrestling going on. The structure on the top of the nacelle had to have a central slice removed and then was thread onto the extension wiring of LED 1. I had to build the rest of this structure around the wires and then connect LED 2 in series with LED 1.. After that I built the nacelle around the wires and bulb - or tried to... It is bulging a bit in one area because I stripped too much wire from the battery connecting extension, but fortunately it's also in an area of extensive damage so it might work out alright in the end. I thread the battery leads through the largest damage holes after ruthlessly stripping out as much of the innards as I could. I also had to add a bit more card to insulate bare wire. After the wrestling match I had this:-

       I'm going to leave the neck hole open and blacken some of what is showing - it's much better looking damage than sticking on a picture. I'll fill the rear holes with pinpricked damage printout, but leave the front starboard hole, as the combination of ragged card and bare wiring should be quite effective when some of it is blackened. I'm also going to attach the starboard hull chunk with wire so that it looks like it's falling away. A few filaments of wire wool and some shredded offcuts should prove useful as well.
   With all the extras added the result is this:-

    The buckling on the nacelle adds to the sense of impending doom. And now the poor wee beastie is on fire:-

    The rest of my day has been spent wiring bulbs and tying up fibre optics and sanding other fibre optics. Here's a wee taster with a very rough filament straightener:-

    The obvious wire on the Borg phaser will be replaced with something less invasive once the PVA sets properly. The yellow LED had to be replaced. I have the new one wired up ready for attaching Federation phasers; I'll have two coming from the Yamaguchi (the blur on the left of the pic) and one from the Saratoga (which was also mounted today). The Kyushu was also mounted and attached to a Borg phaser, leaving one more for the Buran (still to be built).