Melbourne Mayhem.

   I was going to make the next ship the focus of a lot of attention, but then twigged that it wouldn't get any attention because the bulk of the primary hull has been blown away. This one will be the Excelsior class USS Melbourne. I've started on Clever Santoro's design, but it's causing me no end of headaches so far. I began building the nacelles:-

   I thought this would be the most awkward part of the build, but they actually went together quite smoothly. From there I moved to the primary hull and got so far before hitting a wall.

   A connects to B connects to C, etc, but why?!? What goes in that gaping hole? How do those bits on the sheets fold into that shape? And how the hell do they connect to everything else without warping it?

   At this point I'm seriously considering looking for another design - not because it's a bad design, but because I'm working at a scale of ~500m:2" and too many parts become dust-sized specks and I'm trying to mould strips that are 1/2mm thick and I just can't figure out how it goes together!?! Hopefully everything will fall into place with fresh eyes for my next build session. Just in case, I'm looking for an alternative, simplified design.
   I hate, loathe and despise this ship. I never did like the Excelsior class and the only reason I picked it for the USS Melbourne was to avoid having two Nebulas/Nebulae. I've cobbled together a passable approximation (good enough for my purposes) using parts from the USS Enterprise B kit and fiercely trimmed parts from the USS Excelsior kit which I printed slightly too big. I also had to edit the USS Excelsior parts to bring the colouring closer to the Enterprise by zapping the gamma saturation a few times in XnView. There are no more build log photos, just a few end results:-

   I'm far from happy with this one and if I never see an Excelsior again it will be too soon! So I've decided that it will be the target of the tractor and cutting beams from the cube. If the light show doesn't pull attention away from the flaws then I suppose I'll have to resize the USS Excelsior design (again!) and start from scratch - then I can feed this one to the Doomsday Machine . Nah... I'll just angle it so that the mess on the underside isn't seen...

The USS Ahwahnee.

   The next Wolf 359 ship I'm building is Paragon's Cheyenne class USS Ahwahnee. It seems to be named for the Ahwahneechee tribe originally living in the Yosemite Valley, although they were not Cheyenne. This is another of the ships that I've decided will be undamaged. These are the cut parts for the upper half of the hull:-

The underside has the same basic structure with the registry altered accordingly.
   This model only has three pages of parts at full size, but I'll still be discarding some of the parts. I've used thin paper strips again for joining adjacent pieces. So the upper saucer looks like this:-

   I remembered after gluing all the sections together that the windows should have been recessed, but I must admit that I doubt very much that I could have cut them with any kind of accuracy anyway. I decided to work on the nacelles before the struts. The brown and blue parts of the larger pieces will be removed and have the separate pieces inset by gluing them on the back:-

   With the nacelles formed the struts could then be cut out:-

   And as always, I have a handful of bits and no idea where they're supposed to go! Time to scour interwebland for reference pics...
   There is absolutely no consensus with this ship - pick ten sources and you'll get ten configurations! So I took the bits I wasn't sure of and put them where I thought they looked OK:-

    The result is a USS Ahwahnee at a tiny fraction over 2" long:-

   I hope it does the Ahwahneechee proud.

   Which, of course, it wouldn't! It was pointed out to me that I'd buggered up the upper nacelles and fitted the struts upside down. Here's the 'refit':-

I Shall Call Him My 'Mini Me'

   Two down, eleven to go. Next up is the Oberth class USS Bonestell. This will get the most complicated/intricate/fiddly ones out of the way first. The vast majority of the parts from the original design are redundant at this scale - no internal support is required and many parts are microscopic!

   Here's a comparison shot of the original design build with it's 'Mini Me:-

   The sliver of card on the ruler is the build size this time ;-).
   I'm not following the instructions this time - that would be an exercise in futility. Instead I'm picking out the largest parts and, using the larger model as a guide, attaching smaller parts as necessary:-

   The problem this time is the lack of contrast on the printout; without my magnifying specs I wouldn't have a hope! lol 
   Rounding the final bend:-

Onto the home straight:-

And I have a 3/4" bundle of joy:-

   This will be the smallest of the Wolf 359 fleet.

With These Rocher You Are Really Spoiling Us...

   With the Borg cube in spacedock I've started on the Ambassador (hence the Rocher advert snippet) class USS Yamaguchi by Clever Santoro following the instructions for the Enterprise C. I would like to say that this is a straightforward 'follow-the-instructions' job, but it's proving to be a bit of a nightmare due to some of the essential pieces being a micron thick - OK, slight exaggeration, but not much; there are pieces that are under 0.25 mm thick and there's no work round on this one. Just how much of a masochist am I? - lol. The saucer is straightforward though:-

   Again, I'm using thin paper strips to seamlessly (in theory) connect the rings:-

    The brownish strips in the original design were discarded as they were unworkable at this scale. Instead I've drawn them in with a fineliner pen. The surrounds for the bridge sections are approximately 0.5mm thick which is another reason why I like working with card; it doesn't get mangled with the tweezers ;-). The saucer section is almost complete and I've started on the secondary hull and nacelle supports. The uncut piece had to have the insert glued in situ as the bottom line must be around 0.1mm thick.

    The real brain damage comes next with the nacelles and more particularly the rear end of the secondary hull. Brain damage? Who am I kidding? I'm loving it!
   I was spot on about the intricacy of the rear end. Some pieces are so thin that they are splitting just from handling - fortunately it hasn't been in really obvious places - yet! lol

   The secondary hull had to be gently eased into shape as it was fitted and I hit a bit of a problem when the instructions seemed to kind of peter out. I suppose it's easy enough to work out what goes where by referring to the ortho's that were included in the download though. Next came the dreaded nacelles:-

    I've left a margin around the long blue bit for ease of attachment and to add a bit of stability for curving everything. The light blue tops have to be inset using grey borders and it was painfully slow cutting them out - they're ridiculously thin, but unfortunately they're also essential parts.

    Getting one nacelle this far has taken longer than everything else put together. After this I reckon all the other ships will be a walk in the park - even the miniscule USS Bonestell - lol. At some points I was just sitting staring at parts wondering 'How the hell am I going to attach that?!?' It's coming together nicely though and I don't suppose there's any huge rush needed ;-).
   I've used these parts for the nacelles:-

    The bussard pieces in the original design are unworkable at this scale so I've used blobs of blu tac, shaped and coloured red. And 3 1/2 hours later:-

   Ideally the saucer section should have an internal disc of thick card as it got a bit misshapen when connecting the neck. The secondary hull needed a massive amount of poking, prodding and wrestling to knock it into a proper shape - the nacelle struts especially were kind of like a donkey's hind leg. I can't say that I recommend building it at this scale as it was absolute blue bloody murder! I would recommend building it full size though :-). The end result is a USS Yamaguchi measuring 2 1/2" from bow to stern and I'm very pleased with this length - I was expecting it to be closer to 4"!

From This Time Forward, You Will Service Us.

   Now that I have a backdrop for the diorama it's time to move onto the Borg cube. There's one face of the cube which has more going on in it than the others so I'll show the log for it. Most of the Federation/Klingon fire seems to be concentrated in one place and I've cut out a large hole for this:-

 

I also cut smaller areas which are black on the surface to try to have a more 3D effect. With the other sides I just stuck a black square to the back, but I used smaller black sections with this face. Ssince the cube will be the main load-bearing component so I've glued balsa strips around the edges for stability and more will be added to hold batteries, switches, etc. An additional 'frame' was built up on the back to give three depths of damage from phaser fire.

    An additional layer with darker sections removed was added, again in an attempt to give additional depth. I was going to add more layers to bring out the lighter areas, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to put in so much effort for an effect which is actually almost negligible with 200gsm card:-

Spot the difference? No, me neither! Instead I'll concentrate on areas which draw the eye to them and have more going on.

   I've used a production photo of the Enterprise A which had extensive damage, and moulded this into the three layers of the hole. The rim was then blackened with a marker pen. A nest of wire wool has been glued in the deepest part of the hole with a huge glob (very technical term) of PVA which I'm leaving to dry overnight before I cut and sculpt filaments. I have some other ideas for this area - watch this space ;-).

    More of my stock of balsa has been assimilated today:-

    I've been building the frame inside the cube as I add more faces. Additional beams will be required to  mount it and for holding batteries. The main damage hole has been completed. I pulled out filaments of the wire wool then added paint graded from red to yellow. As a finishing touch I cut out some very small pieces, blackened the backs and glued them around the hole to give an additional feeling of debris being blasted out.

   For the top I've done what I should have done with the other faces if I'd had a larger supply of thick card. I glued a face onto 1mm thick card then cut out some black sections and stuck all this onto a completely black sheet. I glued another face to 2mm thick card, removed the darker sections and small areas where black bits had been removed on layer 1 and joined them. Finally I edged some of the offcuts from the second layer and glued them on. The result is much more three dimensional:-

    Before joining the faces I also punched small holes through most of the green areas with a darning needle; these were needed to thread through fibre optic filaments from a green LED/fibre optic hair extension kit. When the filaments were through the needle holes I placed a glob of PVA around the inside to hold them in place and clipped the outer end flush to the face. I was going to use 0.25mm fibre optic filaments for Borg fire, but it was too thin to stand up to either sanding or scraping with even a fingernail. Hopefully 1mm filament will be more successful - otherwise it's back to the drawing board and a crash course in how to turn LEDs into beams. The result so far is this:-

    So the cube is now in spacedock until I get the additional parts delivered. Which reminds me - I'll need a blue LED for the Borg tractor beam...

Resistence Is STILL Futile...

   My next project is a diorama of the battle at Wolf 359 - had to be done. Didn't it? Hmmm...
   Most sources agree that there were eleven identifiable ships out of the forty sent against the Borg cube by the Federation. I'll be building six hulks and five intact:-

• USS Buran - Challenger class
• USS Chekov - Springfield class
• USS Firebrand - Freedom class
• USS Kyushu - New Orleans class
• USS Melbourne - Excelsior class and
• USS Princeton - Niagra class

with battle damage and:-

• USS Ahwahnee - Cheyenne class
• USS Bellerophon - Nebula class 
• USS Bonestell - Oberth class
• USS Saratoga - Miranda class and
• USS Yamaguchi - Ambassador class.

In addition to these I'm adding a damaged and intact Klingon K'Tinga, as well as (of course!) a Borg cube.
   The backdrop will be a photo of Wolf 359:-

   The Ambassador class is the largest of these ships and I'm aiming for a length of 2" for the USS Yamaguchi; this will make the length of the USS Bonestell 1/2" and should make the Borg cube 1' to an edge. Since printing a 1' cube would take four A4 pages for each face I'll be adopting a wee bit of poetic licence and reducing the edges to 8". I'm starting with the USS Princeton as it seems to be the most complicated to build with battle damage.

I discarded the two black structural support pieces as they aren't needed for models this small. All the tabs were removed to avoid unnecessary bulking-up.

I've tried to follow the damage of the onscreen production models as near as possible. The black line shows the largest section of damage to the saucer.

The bussard housing isn't needed for the port nacelle.

Lather, rinse and repeat ;-).

Many of the pieces are proving to be redundant at this scale, and others have to be omitted for ease of cutting with my mini scissors. The result so far has taken three days and I'm not even half way through the design! This is going to be a loooooong process - lol.

    It looks like my progress has been better than I thought - the Princeton should be finished tomorrow!

​

The bit that looks like a windsock hit by a hurricane is the beginning of the secondary hull. I find it easier to use thin strips of paper rather than sitting cutting endless tiny triangles. The paper strips are ~1mm wide btw.

The secondary hull suffered major damage at each end so many of the strips weren't used and the deflector didn't have to be built.

I've used the paper sheet of battle damage that I printed. Before I glue the rim of the missing chunks, I scrunch up a cut section of damage, unfold it and then push it into any nooks and crannies in the cut out chunks with a fingernail. When the glue is almost dry I cut around the edges of the paper at an angle so that the cuts are frayed, and then blacken the edges and try to leach black into the surround of the holes. My 'Cheapo-Productions-Presents' scissors only cut cleanly if the blades are perpendicular to the surface being cut, and the frayed edges produced by angling the blades is particularly effective at this scale.

These are the last pieces that need to be cut from the original design; they are additional detailing for the upper nacelles. I fill the damage holes of each of the major sections (primary hull, secondary hull and the three nacelles) before joining them and now I'm only left with one nacelle's detailing to shred a bit at the back, and the other nacelle waiting to have a substantial hole torn out before it is attached.

I'll have to construct some type of base before making any more ships. Due to our five crazy dogs I don't like to have any ships lying around waiting to be mounted as the youngest dog (aka The Doomsday Machine) has a tendency to flatten stuff!The four sheets for the backdrop of Wolf 359 are already printed so I need to find a cardboard box with a side that will take four sheets of A4. I already have plenty of balsa wood for a support and for reinforcement inside the cube, but I'll have to have a rake round for some more wire for ship mounts.
    The USS Princeton is now finished - woohoo!

       The finished model is bigger than I would have liked at 2 1/2"; this  means that the Yamaguchi will have to be almost double the length I wanted it to be to remain in scale - maybe I can find a work around for this. It also means that the Borg cube at 8x8x8" will be much smaller than it should really be - An Ambassador class ship of 526m reduced to 2" equates to a Borg cube measuring 12x12x12". It' a good job that I can fall back on artistic license!