1/2500 Scale Trek Modeling Goodness

Modeling Subjects Science Fiction
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OK, been a while since I’ve posted any new model stuff here, but here ya go.

I’ve gotten back to Trek again after a short hiatus of mostly building Battlestar Galactica stuff. I’ve gotten my focus back and am working to finish some few Trek models here and there. First up has been a Sovereign, an E-D, almost my entire Klingon Fleet and some few Fed and Romulan stragglers. Those are still in-work, but as the paint dries on those, I construct more.

My Trek focus has come back to an idea I had about a year or so ago to do several Mirror Universe Trek ships. For the full -background story on that, see this thread at The 2500 Page Forums: The Terran Empire - Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall…

Anyhow, I’ve got several new ships that are at the primer stage now and will go in to the queue to be painted. First batch is in the pics below. Identification of ships from the below pics follows.

Upper Left: Guenther-class dreadnought. I used a spare (at the time!) PNT Models Avenger hull mated to a modified PNT Models Indomitable secondary hull. I built up the connecting area w/sheet stock and putty to raise it up a bit, giving more clearance for the pylons. The upper nacelle and pylon assembly is a spare “second” from the VA Miniatures Jenghiz-class destroyer. I cut the nacelle from the “neck”, reversed the neck after sanding it to fit the upper hull of the Avenger, then glued the nacelle in place. This one is to be named the U.S.S. Kristiansen, NCC-3601.

Middle Left: is one of two ships I’m calling the Kumari-class Fast Destroyer (DF). I took the basic Stingray-class destroyer hull and added a warp nacelle/pylon assembly from a Furuta Constellation/Stargazer mini. I also added one of the VA Mini’s weapons pods that comes w/the kit to give it a dual punch. My thinking is that this weapons pod allows for as many as four photon torpedoes to launch at once - sort of the predecessor to the photorp system that we see later in TNG whenever the E-D fires a “full salvo” or “spread” of photorps. I have made up two of these and this will be either Kumari, NCC-3100, or Zardoz, NCC-3110.

Bottom Left is the Andor-class Missile Cruiser! Love this thing! One of the fellas at The 2500 Page Forums 'bashed one out of a Refit kit, molded it, cast it and traded a few extra’s and I got one. Want more! NEED more! The kit nacelles I got w/it were going to require more work to get them looking good than I was willing to put in to them, so I took the lazy-route and gave it a pair of VA Mini’s “seconds” nacelles I had that need only minor touching up. I sanded down some of the scribed detailed panel lines so that it wasn’t quite so prominent, puttied & sanded pinholes, some airbubbles and pour stub marks, then let it sit overnight for the putty to more fully cure. Sanded, primered and then assembled this morning.

Top Middle: Cyclone-class thru-deck cruiser by RogueWolf - eventually to be for sale from Millenia Models Int’l. He designed it to be more of a TNG/DS9 Era ship, but I think it works well as a Movie Era ship, too. I’ve not decided for sure what to name this, but have been thinking of giving it the name Fujita - the man who developed the “F-Scale”, used for identifying the intensity of Tornadoes, Tetsuya “Ted” Fujita of the University of Chicago who developed the scale. No clue I’ll give her for a registry, but I was thinking possibly late 2290’s/very early 2300’s so 1xxxx sounds like a winner to me.

Top Right: Refit Excelsior-class heavy cruiser. This one is actually going to be a Battleship from the Mirror Universe. The weapons pods on top of the saucer are similar to those on the Kumari-class above - capable of firing up to four photorps at one time, as well as has two sets of phaser emitters on it. This ship has been named I.S.S. Kodos, NCC-2244.

Bottom Right: Stingray-class cruiser from VA Miniatures. I’m calling it a Frigate, tho. This one is going to be the U.S.S. Duke, NCC-1999. I opted for the two nacelle, two weapons pod variation and will use that for all of them that I might build of this particular class. I want one or two more of these, too.

More to come.

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I got one of these most excellent “Multiverse SpaceDocks” (available thru Starship Modeler) while in Chicago a couple of weekends ago for “LesterFest” (10th Anniversary celebration of Starship Modeler) and finally got around to working on it the last two nights. Here’s a couple of teaser pics of what I’ve got done so far…

The white piece in some of the pics is a second from one of the previous years Resin Drop’s at WonderFest. It’s from the Roger Young kit. It’s to be the “Command & Control section” of the drydock, have the offices and living quarters for a lot of the workers, as well as some conference rooms and the like. I plan to make further modifications, as well, such as a possible superstructure on top of the dock and some boarding stations on the inside sort of like what was on the TMP Drydock.

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Nearly finished. Well, construction is pretty much finished except for some touch up.

I’m going to call this a part of Griffworks Shipyards for my little cornor of the Trek Multiverse. Well, it’s one of the 13 Drydock facilities that are used by the Griffworks Shipyards Corporation in Earth orbit.

The thing on the back of the drydock is two of the pieces from the Large Death Star Tiles that are sold in the SM Store, cut at the halfway point, then glued back-to-back. That is the factory area where the components of the starships being built are fabricated. It saves a great deal of time and money by having the fabrication facilities right there at the drydock where initial construction, refurbishment or major refit takes place.

Anyhow, enjoy…

http://members.aol.com/griffyards/Griffyards03.jpg

http://members.aol.com/griffyards/Griffyards04.jpg

Still needs another coat of primer, then painting. I also need to figure out how I’m going to display this. My initial thinking is to mount it to a plaque of some sort, but I’ve not yet decided. Need to do that soon, tho…

Anyhow, I’ve ordered a second of this kit and will make it a mobile drydock along the lines of that seen in the old FASA Star Trek RolePlaying Game and the Jackill’s StarFleet Reference Series. Not sure what sort of nacelles to put on there just yet, but was leaning towards a pair from a 1/2500 scale Enterprise-B along w/substational superstructure on top.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Appreciate any input.

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I gotta git me one of those!!![:D][8D] The spacedock is great! I have the
1/2500 Enterprises (AMT sets) which I’m slwly workin’ on. YOu’ve goven me an idea[:I]

Looks good & I’ll be watchin’ this thread!!

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Thanks! The kit is $38 from The Starship Modeler Store and I highly recommend it. Well worth it, IMNSHO. I purchased a second that should be showing up any day now.

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I’m trying to keep myself away from the 1/2500 Trek stuff cause once I start… Let’s put it this way, Mom may regret finishing the upstairs ceilings in something that lends itself to hanging models. I had to use space models up there since I painted the night sky in glow in the dark paint on it. As a scratchbuilder and a Trekkie Geek, I do love your work.

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Nice collection Griffman! I’m partial to the neat-o thru-deck carrier. I wonder how one in the scale of the gods would look(1/1000)? [;)]

Oh and it’s good to see you back Cassibill! [:D]

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Hi, Woody. School is back in session. Star Trek is 40 today.

Here’s a neat scratchbuilding idea: in one of the Corps of Engineers novels, one of the guys was designing a specialized ship for the Corps. The forward part of the saucer would open to space (like pincers kinda) and another ship could be pulled partly (or completly if it was a smaller class) inside for repairs. A module (like the Nebula Class) would function as a materials storage. Depending on the job, the modules changed. Like in Nemesis when the Enterprise’s forward section was smashed up, this ship would had picked up a module of ship materials and rendezvoued with the E. It would have simply opened the forward saucer, towed the E in, locked on and went to work. As the saucer was restored the tractors were to switch to repulsers and the E would have moved back to make room for more of the saucer to be rebuilt. The E never would have had to return to spacedock, it would have come to them. Think of the difference that would have made during the Dominion War.

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Are most of those futura (japanese company?) ships from the movies and tos in 1/2500? I just got a little USS Grissom for less than 10$ and repainted it. It looks about right to me. Any comments welcome.

Todd

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Just how big are those?

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Futara box sets.They are mostly the same scale as the Polar Lights “matchbox” sized ships. They come in random box sets so you can’t tell which ones you are getting. Ebay has em all the time and they are generally for sale in Comic stores and game stores etc. They are well detailed and painted though.

-TW

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Oh, no. Hardly any of them are Furuta Mini’s. Those have scales all over the place and none are 100% 1/2500 scale.

That particular Furuta Mini is about three times too large. For a good idea on what scale those are, go check out the Star Trek Kit List By Scale for the complete list and scales.

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Griffworks, very nice job. Did you scratchbuild any of those? Very nice looking fleet. I wouldn’t mind seeing some of the Klingon fleet you mentioned.

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Hey JG, as usual most impressive work, I like the space dock too…Just won’t work with my 1/350 Enterprise :wink:

Good to see you in production mode!

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Thanks. None are completely scratchbuilt, no. A few have major sections that are scratchbuilt, but most are either straight kit builds or kitbashes.

I’ll take some up-to-date pics and post them to my site sometime this weekend.

Thanks JG! I appreciate it.

There are two other space docks available thru SM, dude. Neither are close to what you want/need for the 1/350 scale Refit, but I’ll bet you could work something up based on their pieces/parts.

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I recently purchased a 1/2500 scale Constellation-class model from one of my fellow 1/2500 Fanatics. It’s the first release of the Starcast Models/TM Lindsey Models Constellation and it’s not too bad, really. MUCH better than the craptacular Furuta Stargazer mini I’ve been using as a sort of place holder, which is all I’ve been able to get my grubby meat hooks on!

Anyhow, I really modified this kit. I took the pylon assemblies from one of my Furuta Stargazers and modified the main hull to accept them. I then cut off the “pods” that hang down from the bottom aft section of both kits, putting the Furuta pods on the TM Lindsey hull, making for much more accurately sized and detailed pieces.

A pic:

Furuta Stargazer and Starcast Models Constellation-class. The well-butchered Furuta mini is on the left, Starcast parts I lopped off in the middle and then the underside of the Starcast hull showing the mod’s.

More to come, eventually. That’ll include those Klingon Fleet pics I promised earlier.

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September update for my website! It’s a WIP, tho. I need to write the HTML for Page 4, which will have pics of my various Fleet Shelves as they currently stand.

September Workbench Update

Enjoy.

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OK, I finally finished the update for September late last night. Page Four contains pics of all my shelves w/the bulk of my models - those that I wasn’t immediately working on at my workbench. This is likely my last update 'til sometime after mid-February.

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Wow that is a lot of starships! Nice collection.

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Thanks, Chris! I was just going thru my unbuilt stuff, reorganizing it so that it’s easier to get to by Era and “government” and realized that I’ve got almost half again as many unbuilt! [:O]

I’m gonna need some more shelf space, methinks…