I got lucky while at work i had a job and the gentleman had a Star Trek The Next Generation Enterprise and he gave it to me at no charge. And i just picked up a Star Trek IV Enterprise from ebay for 40 bucks.
I havent built a Star Trek model in years. Looking for some help from you all. I want to build them up right and i want to light them. Any sites you guys know for aftermarket parts or how to light up the ships would be appreciated.
One of my main questions is when you cut out the windows what do you use to represent the windows just clear plastic?
well i will have plenty of questions for you all thank you for your help.
i think he is more excited about the model than me .
I’m not creative enough to give you direct links here, but you may want to check out Federationmodels.com and Starshipmodeler.com. Federation Models is an online retailer, and Starship Modeler is a site similar to this one, but focused on Sci Fi.
As a severe addict of the Starship modeler forums, especially the star trek one, I feel compelled to warn you that many, but not all, of us contributors to those forums take our Star Trek modeling very seriously. The warning isn’t that you wouldn’t be welcomed, hardly, but once you go down the dark side of trying to make your AMT/Ertl sow’s ear better, you may never finish another model. wink for the humor impaired. But seriously, sometimes its best to just build your Starship Enterprise OOB and be happy that you finished it. There is nothing wrong with just building it and painting it.
I am inclined to agree with ajmadison.I have built many Trek and SW kits over the years as they have been released. While I have good results, it took a lot of work, and those are pretty much out of the box with nicer than average paint jobs. I lit one kit and that was enough to turn me away from lighting others. I built the Enterprise E when it came out; it is a fair kit, and looks nice when well assembled and cleanly painted. Spray some clear coat over your decals ifyou think they may fracture, mine did.
thanks for the advise all i think i will forgo the lighting it looks very difficult on the D version just got the star trek IV version A . will build out of the box.
thanks for all the sites but i am having difficulty finding aztec templets for both are they usually self made or can you buy them for these kits.
the other question any clue what scale these are they dont say on the boxes.
I am not sure if Kalmbach Publishing is still selling it but there are two sci-fi modeling books. I beleive one of them is Science Fiction modeling and the other is something like Starships of the Frontier. The Science Fiction one has Star Trek models, Battlestar Galatica, and Star Wars models. It has instructions on lighting models (especially Enterprise TNG model) and it has an article on accurizing the Enterprise from the movies. If you can not find this anywhere PM and I will get it copied for you. Someone here may actually know the names if not, when I go home I will get you the correct names of the books. I just picked up a Klingon Bird-of-Prey and the books tell me how to build it up looking as if it was right from the shows.
I have not done this myself but I have heard that a good look for this model is to paint it duck egg blue and then hand paint the aztec following the kits raised lines with Future. Gives a nice subtle look.
For the windows I believe the fiber optic kit called for a hole drilled in the top and bottom of the window and fiber optic fillament was treaded thru all the windows. If this is your first kit lighting, I would get a TOS enterprise to start out with. It’s much more simple and will help get the essentials down. That and they actually have whole wiring kits for it.
