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"!