Building the Starship Enterprise - lights and light blocking
Entry posted by Barry Ten
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Not of interest to the majority of RMwebbers, I'd suspect, but hopefully the management won't mind another installment in this very non-railway topic. That said, there's a lot of crossover here in terms of applicable modelling skills, and I'm certainly picking up some approaches that will easily translate into layout-related stuff, especially with regard to the use of LEDS as a general lighting solution.
With the saucer section finished, I decided to attach the neck and then begin getting to grips with final light blocking, as there won't be much scope for reworking areas once the decals have gone on.
As mentioned, there are quite a lot of LEDS in this thing - 20 in just the saucer - and it's a real sod to stop the light leaking out where you don't want it! The plastic is very translucent and I found that you need 2 - 4 coats of matte black depending on the area in question, and even then there will be hot-spots showing through which still need to be addressed.
I was finding it a bit hit and miss to fix these areas one at a time, until I hit on the obvious-in-retrospect idea of waiting until the evening, turning out the room lights, turning on the LEDS, and just painting any bits that shouldn't be there.
A test-blast of primer showed that it would be relatively easy to get back to a plain white finish even after spot-painting bits of black on the outside. I masked all the windows using Maskol liquid solution, which wasn't as bad a job as I'd feared.
Although my camera battery ran out before I could get a picture, I'm nearly ready with the secondary hull as well (lurking in the background in the second shot), including a dozen or so more LEDS and a fully-detailed shuttle bay, and I've also made a start on the engines, which are huge!
The kit is designed in such a way that there's only one practical assembly order, which does pose a headache or two in working out how to complete all the final wiring connections, with the one between the neck and the secondary promising to be particularly nerve-racking. I've installed a 4-way micro-plug in the secondary hull, which is how power will be fed into the whole model, but I wish I'd bought a second such plug as it would be very handy for the neck section! At the very least, there's a lot of soldering and head-scratching to be had with the wiring, a bit like layout electrics. It's strongly recommended not to build it in one piece and then attempt painting and decaling, and judging from all the various builds I've seen on the internet, that seems like good advice.
By the way, unless you want the Star Trek music going through your head for months on end, don't build this kit!
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