Star Trek TNG:- "Yesterday's Enterprise" Diorama - micro build log

   Since I'm extremely limited in the amount of space I have, I do quite a bit of recycling of diorama ships. Some dioramas are left intact (eg The Battle of Wolf 359", "The Tholian Web), but others will be reused. I'll be recycling the Enterprise D and the Klingon birds of prey from "The Defector" and making a new Enterprise C. One of the bop's will be blown to bits and I might have a go at simulating phaser fire hitting shields. The tricky part will be the rift.
    Well, here goes with the USS Enterprise 1701-C by Clever Santoro. As always I'm starting with the upper saucer:-

   I've printed this design twice so that I have a template for cutting damage sections to underlay before fitting everything together - I found this to be quite effective for fairly minor surface damage when I built my USS Constellation. 

   For the damage I used a marker for the hull breaches then cut through and glued a damage printout to the underside. The scorch marks are made with a black pencil. I was hoping that the marker would leach through from the back, but (of course!) it didn't. When the underside of the saucer was joined I did the same for it:-

and then moved on to the nacelle struts and secondary hull. 

    This is where progress almost grinds to a halt due to mega-fiddly parts:-

   I'm almost done with the Ent C - just a bit a blackening left to do on the nacelles:-

   Due to the insets, I've decided against insetting the battle damage on the nacelles as it would've made an already complicated build practically impossible to construct. Zooming in on the photo also shows fairly slight misalignments as huge gaping holes! lol The actual model is just over 2" in length so that massive crack is barely noticeable.

   I'm trying an experiment this time around. I tried to build a cloaked bird of prey, but gave up in disgust because my superglue turned out to be crapglue. I gave the glue another chance on a warbird with the same result so I'm using tape now. If it looks passable I'll stick (no pun intended!) with it.
Skip's design is a very much simplified one so I'll use it as a guide. By taping the template to the back of the plastic I get the lines to score and the outline to cut round. Here's the head as an example:-

   This design has a slightly different shape to Zosho's and I'm doing quite a bit of trimming to keep this one in line with the decloaked warbirds. It might need some reworking at the back, but this should be easy enough since I don't have to worry about texturing. The head and upper wing look like this:-

   The cloaked warbird is finished. Using tape hasn't detracted too much from the model; it's probably better than the result I would get by using superglue. The size and shape are close enough to Zosho's that any discrepancy can be put down to the optical distortion of the cloak - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

   I've made a start on the backdrop. I pinched three starscapes from interwebland and for Narendra III I used the Venus Magellan globe from the USGS website:-

  Extra detailing provides a bit of cloud cover, as well as smoke coming from the remains of the outpost. I've also placed a flickering yellow LED in a cone inside the globe.It might have been a better idea to do this before gluing the globe to the backdrop! For the clouds I just pulled some cotton wool so that it was really thin, then I attached it to the right angled edge of some clear packing from a flash drive:-

   I cut a hole slightly larger than the Ent-C in a sheet of card after attaching a starscape to both sides. I then cut five more holes large enough to hold blue LED's and wired them through the back of the box before gluing on various thicknesses of cotton wool and attaching one side of the partition. This is the Ent-C leaving TNG time:-

and emerging in it's own time:-

   So far I've mounted one warbird. I had to cut into it's head to mount a green LED and bore a hole through the front for a fibre optic filament. More work needs to be done on the filament as it still isn't glowing properly.

   And the Enterprise-C is immediately under attack:-

   I've added a shield to the Ent-C:-

    I found a handy piece of plastic packing with a good shape,punched a hole in it for the fibre optic filament to hold it in place and used a dab of PVA for stability. I then mounted the other warbird from "The Defector" and the cloaked warbird:-

   I still need to build the fourth warbird and it'll be mounted more centrally. I reckon I'll have the last one firing torpedoes.

    On the other side the Ent-D and a bop have been mounted:-

    So Scotty said, "Ye cannae break the laws of physics,Captain!" Who cannae?!? lol The phaser fibre optic will be straight once the PVA dries and I pull everything into position. Here's another from above:- 

    ​A yellow LED mounted inside the bop body doubles as an explosion and a light source for the phaser:-

   There's a bit of difference in the building of the last warbird compared to the build outlined in the "The Defector" post...
    I've punched holes through the location of the torpedo launchers:-

and through the layer beneath. I then threaded fibre optic filaments (of enough length to reach the LED at the rear of the box) through these holes so that they'll project from the rear of the ship:-

   The upper wing was completed with two filaments for torpedoes and one for the front disruptor threaded through:-

   I punched a hole through the top of the head and cut a notch where the filament should exit at the front:-

   Meanwhile, in the TNG time, I've mounted the other two bop's and added filaments to them which I've threaded through the Ent-D's shield and out the back of the box. These are a couple of preliminary pics - the filaments still have to be tightened and blackened from the shield to the box wall:-

   A very slight transverse scrape with sandpaper is enough to turn the filaments into a beam. For the torpedoes I glued 2mm green, bicone beads over nicks in the filament. 

   The fibre optics get sent to me in a coil and straightening them is a nightmare! I've done what I can and this is the result:-

   The shield is a section taken from the packing of an Asterix The Gaul flash drive. I didn't want to stick the fibre optics to welding rods with these really small birds of prey because-
1. they'd be really obvious
2. their weight drags everything out of position and
3. there was no way for me to glue them in situ.
    Here's the TNG era scene again from a different angle:-

and a bit better focused.

   And finally, the Ent-C returning to Narendra III:-

   ​This one takes a total of six lithium cells to power all the LEDs. I suppose I could've used the mains adapter from the Wolf 359 diorama, but that would've needed a lot more wire than I have available at the mo'.

Star Trek TNG:- "The Defector" diorama - micro build log

   Although I've not posted anything for a few days, I've not been idle. I have three Klingon birds of prey built. For the build log on these refer to my "Delivering Humpbacks" entry. These are courtesy of spaceagent-9 - thank-you! The Enterprise D design is from the Lower Hudson Gift Shop and is by Erik J.

   The Enterprise is a kind of 'painting by numbers' job since instructions are included in the download - so it's just a case of following them.

   There aren't many parts and it's a very quick build. ​So now I have three bop's and a USS Enterprise 1701-D.

   I now have two of Zosho's (Novice Cardmodel Designer) Romulan warbirds to build. The parts for the upper wing port side top are as shown below:-

  I joined the strips with thin strips of paper glued to the underside so that a fairly smooth surface can be achieved. It takes much longer, but I prefer the results. With the port side done I moved on to the upper wing starboard side top, internal shapers and profiling section:-

   With the halves connected I cut the central span and the leading edges:-

which gives the top of the upper wing. I then cut the trailing edges and the pieces for the centre of the underside:-

   The pieces for the underside of the upper wing are shown here:-

which gives a completed upper wing like this:-

   Starting on the upper side of the lower wing, the pieces are as follows:-

   Having previously built this model at a smaller scale (approximately half this size) I know that I have a wrestling match to look forward to when connecting the upper and lower wings. There was also an issue with the top of the 'head' which will need to be addressed in order to ensure that everything ends up flush.

   Continuing with the lower wing:-

the finished upper part looks like this:-

   Then it was time to start on the underside of the lower wing:-

   Progress is kinda slow as each piece has to attached and allowed to dry individually. Also, the leading and trailing edges can only be attached to a maximum of three strips at a time. And, of course, I'm having to do all this twice!

   The finished lower wing is below and the sides are ready to be connected:-

   This left me with the back section and the head to be built:-

   The last sections were completed:-

et viola! Two Romulan warbirds:-

   I'm out of ink so I set a starscape as my desktop background until I can get something printed off. I tried to build a cloaked bird of prey using various pieces of clear plastic. I tried for three days, but it just didn't work. The plastic stuck to the tweezers, the tweezers stuck to my fingers, the plastic stuck to my fingers, the tweezers stuck together - but would the plastic stick to the plastic?!? 

   Anyway, here's the stand-off in The Defector:-