ST:TMP Drydock (WIP)

[Guest]

August Updates 2014

Okay! Back on track. At least somewhat. Because of the complexity of the Drydock build, you can just imagine how repetitive some of the work can be especially when there are 2 being built at the same time. WOW!

Never again. At least not 2 builds at once. Anyway this month I can report some decent progress. In the past updates, you have seen the overhead modules in their natural molded black color, then the next color went to Italian Brown, but that was never to be the finale color of the modules. In doing research for my original 1/350 scale dock I viewed as many production stills, behind the scenes photos and even the old trading card pics as I could get my hands on and I found what I believe to be the closest color match as possible for the final color of the dock. In many of the stills There appears to be a reddish tinge to the color of the dock. When I took pictures of my 1/350 scale version the colors seemed be quite close. I like that Rust color, so I am using this for the final color of the dock. But I will not be laying it on too thick. I want some of the brown to show through in a subtle way. This would also give it a more used and weathered look.

To start out with the painting I needed to fix almost all of the corner pieces of the modules. This being my first major resin cast project I did not get everything to line up exactly. But with some styrene and super glue I was able to fix all of these parts up. Next I wanted to add in all of the remaining anchor cones so that they could all be sprayed at the exact same time. This would mean less touch-up work later on. The reason I didn't add all of the cones sooner when I was assembling them early on was because I was going to use some of these cones to thread wiring through them for some of the lighting effect. But I now, I've come up with a new way to add the lighting which I will discuss in future updates. So anyway, I fixed all of the loose parts by either re-cementing or replacing them so that everything will be ready for the final paint job. Next I did some more masking of what look to be grill plates on the underside of the modules. I also masked off a lot of the side panels to give a little bit of a variety in color. Then I sprayed the entire model which took me just under an hour to do for each model. The spraying time was mostly taken up by doing all of the anchor cones.

There are some pretty good pics of the paintjob on the AUGUST UPDATES 2014 page.

After all of the masks are removed you can see the different colors on the underside and sides of the modules.

I was also able to start adding the starboard side panel frames to one of the models. This took some doing because I needed to added the support rods through the modules. After I had originally built each panel I had to align them with their proper positions mark all of the drill holes off one at a time to make sure all of these pieces would fit properly later on when they would be connected to the modules. To make sure I didn't mess up their order I needed to number all of the tiers so that they could be placed back into their original positions.

The Starboard frames are now anchored to the modules but they still need some tweaking. To finish all of that though I need to add in the lighting wires for the light panels. After they are all in place I can then make sure everything is squared up and then I can add the vertical detail pieces on the inside and the outsides of the frames. Once I get this done I can actually mount the Refit Enterprise into it's final resting place inside the Drydock. I really hope I can get to that part very soon! I've been looking forward to that very much!

Well, thanks for being patient on this build. I really needed the break last month. Hang in there. More is on it's way! See you next month!

Mark

http://www.NemVia.com

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[Guest]

September Updates 2014

Now that I have the majority of all of the details and pieces cast and for the most part painted, I have been able to assemble a lot of these individual pieces together and even start with the lighting process.

This month I received all of the rest of my dry transfers to add all of the letters and numbers to the backs of all of the light panels. They are now complete! After that I started assembling the power nodules to the light panels and then the tanks to the power nodules. I also started adding some mounting nuts for the tension rods on the light panels. I needed to redo them because the originals were not large enough for what I needed. So I had to add 8 of these nuts to each of the panels then later add 10 of these nuts to each of the panel frames. These are now completed.

Any of the missing anchor cones have now been put in place, then I finished putting the horizontal detail pieces then painted all of the details "Rust". This prepared all of these pieces for the next important step of lighting and wiring the panel frames and panel lights.

I have also added the box insert pieces to the overhead modules and cemented them in place. Next was the part that I've been wanting to get to for a very long time. The wiring of the light panels. For my 1/350 scale Drydock I used copper telephone wire and lots of LEDs. It was really a wiring nightmare because of how many connections were needed and later when the model was moved around or slightly shifted some of the panels would go out and then I'd have to find out were the break in the line was and re-solder everything until it worked properly. For this model which is about 1/260 scale, the pieces are a lot larger and easier to work with but I did not want to use LED's because of all of the soldering needed, so I'm, using a new technology for the panels which is becoming very popular for lighted models called EL Wire. This wire can be fed through all of the tubes, be looped around the spurs inside of the panels and then fed through to the next panels and so forth. The LEDs took several days to wire in. The EL wire took me less than 3 hours for one side of light panels.

After I threaded all of the EL Wire through I was then able to connect all of the panel frames together then put on the Vertical detail pieces on the insides of the panel frames. Right now I'm working on the outside of the Starboard frames and adding the Vertical detail strips on there as well.

I'm now beginning the work on the Port side frames and lighting work. After I get this part detailed and wired I will be adding all of the Light Panel Graphics and Front parts of the Light panels. I should also be able to get one of the Enterprise models mounted inside the dock if all goes well. There's still a lot of work to get done but it's getting closer to being finished.

My target date for finishing this is about the end of October-November. But, we'll see. There are 24 New pics in the September updates page. Enjoy!

That's all for this month's update! See you in October!

Mark

[Centurion3RTR]

All i can say is WOW Mark, some very nice detailed work going on here bud. Can't wait for October.

Have fun, John

[Guest]

Hi John! Thanks for your reply! Well, here's what I have for October...

October Updates 2014

September has been another busy month for drydock building. I was able to spend a lot of time on the Light Panel frame fronts. I had to cut out all of the plexi-glass pieces to use as clear windows and a 3rd piece of plexi for the graphic decals. For each light panel there are 2 pieces of plexi. That makes 112 pieces for each of the panels. The plexi was then cemented in place. I then had to make all of the decals which amounted to the same number of pieces. There are what I'm calling left and right side decals for each piece. There's a slight variance between each of the decals, so I had to make sure they were all put on the appropriate sides.

I've also spent a great deal of time making the turnbuckle anchors and tension rods. One of my clients requested that this detail be physically bolted to the panels and the frames. So here's how the work load pans out for this month. There are 504 tension rods needed for each drydock. These rods connect from the light panel to the panel frames. I am using styrene rods because they are very light weight. I'm spraying all of these rods "Rust" before I cut them to size. This way there will only be a minimum of touch-up work to do. On each end of these rods will be an anchor with a loop on the end of it. (See pics of this process in the October updates page) There are 2 of these anchors on each of these rods so I need to make 1008 of these. 336 of these anchors will be for the center tiers of the light panel frames. The remaining 672 have to be made with the end loops on a slight angle because of the way the top and bottom tiers are of the panel frames are curved. As of this posting I have the 336 anchor loops finished and will be working on the rest later in the week. The hard part is keeping track of how many of these have been done. The other dock will have just the sleeve part of the anchor loop on them so it will look more like the filming miniature version. Later when I start adding the rods to the model I will be able to touch up the unpainted surfaces.

In other areas... because of how repetitive some of this work is it's nice to break off and work on something else for a while. For the last year and a half I've been contemplating on how I was going to build the work light arrays. On my 1/350 version I had no idea of how I was going to tackle this because of the complexity of these lights. In the end I wound up taking a piece of cardboard that had a mirror like surface on it. I cut it into a hexagon shape, then etched a lot of line into it and drilled holes for where the lights were supposed to be. I then back-lit this piece with 3 LEDs to make the lighting effect. Although I've hear some good suggestions of how and what to use for this array, such as a florescent light cover cut into a hexagon shape, it just did not work out for the scale I needed to build these arrays in. I have found some pictures of these light array panels and they were originally used in the unused TV series version of SThase II drydock as the side panel lights. They have a very complex configuration and I wanted to at least in some way be able to come as close as I could to getting these as accurate as possible. I stumbled on the simplest of solutions. At my local Hobby Lobby I came across a section that has all kinds of beads, glitter and most importantly of all Sequins. They were in various colors and I happened to notice that the silver ones had a reflective quality as that of mirrors or reflectors that are used in lamps and/or flash lights. JACKPOT! They had 3 or 4 different sizes, so I bought a couple of small bags. I notices that even though they are punched out into round shapes, the center of each sequins had a hexagon shape to it. So I lined up 60 sequins of 2 different sizes of each kind of sequins then measured out the overall size of both of them and decided I had a close match for the work light arrays. When lined up properly with the edges of the hexagon they reflect light similar to what is seen in ST:TMP. So I built 4 of these panels 2 for each of the docks.

I cut out a hexagon shape made from sheet styrene, sprayed them FLAT BLACK, then carefully cemented one sequins at a time until all 60 were lined up and in there proper places. Next I drilled out all 60 centers of the sequins so that one LED could fit into each of the holes. It looks great so far and I can't wait to wire them up and do a lighting test.

For the last part of my update: Since I was able to add the Starboard side of the light panels to the overhead modules I wanted to see how one of the Enterprise models looked inside of the dock so I snapped a few pics and put them into this month's update. There are 24 new pics on the "October Updates 2014" page on my site!Hope you like them. More updates coming next month! See you then! Have a great month!

Mark

[Guest]

November Updates 2014

Hey Everyone!

I have some glitches to deal with on my website this month.

For some reason I'm having trouble uploading photos to my site so I'm setting up the photos to be in the Forum thread until I get things up and running again.

In this month's update I've been working on the part of this model that I've been dreading, but need to complete. The assembly of all of the tension rods with turnbuckle anchors and nuts and bolts. There are 9 pieces per tension rod and there are 2,268 pieces that need to be put together on just the Starboard side of the dock alone. Each piece has to be cemented in place and aligned to each of the panel frames and light panels. Rather than just drilling holes into the Light panels and panel frames and running the tension rods through each of the holes and cementing them in place as I did with the 1/1350 scale PLE Dock My client has requested that the bolts on each of these connection be visible to give greater depth of scale to the final model. Detailing is very important to my client so this once again will slow down the completion of the Drydock. There is one shot of this detail that was visible in ST:TMP when the Enterprise was leaving the dock and the little dude in the space suit was waving good-bye to the ship. I now need to touch up all of the ends of these rods with Rust paint which will blend everything together. The pics show how this detail looks.

Another setback is the light panel lighting effects. After putting some reflective paper into the panels to defuse the light I discovered that this lighting effect would not work at all because you can see the EL wire behind the defusing paper. Bummer. I had to remove all of the EL wire and put in LEDs as I did with the 1/350 scale dock. So I'm now adding reflective tape to the backs of the inside of each light panel and will then have to hard-wire all of the LEDs in place. Not a very easy task at this point at least not with the Starboard side panels. Well, live and learn. We'll see how far I can get with this within the next month or so. December is a very bad month for me to work on this project so there may be very little for the January update to show. But, enjoy the pics. I will try to have them set up on photobucket for now.

That's it for now.

See you in a month.

Mark

[monica]

wow some great starch build going on very well done with it,

[eddiesolo]

Another set of excellent work Mark, looks amazing despite the set back.

Si

[Guest]

Okay, I was able to get the November updates loaded on my site just FYI. Sorry about the delay. Should be somewhat back to normal now! Thanks for your patience.

Mark

http://www.NemVia.com

[Guest]

February Updates 2015

HELLO EVERYONE!

My apologies for the long interval between updates! December was a killer month for me as far as work goes! On top of that my mom had some health issues to deal with and then I was able to welcome 2 new grandson's into the world! Yes, that's a total of 7 grandchildren now! WOW!

Now on to the matters at hand! As I said December was a "Didn't even look at the model" kinda month, But January was a lot more productive! I needed to get the armature ready for the Enterprise so I can marry both of the models together. I needed to do some major grinding and cutting in order to get the Armature to fit into the saucer section. The curvature of the lower hull became a bit if an issue. I needed to cut out 2 grooves on the bottom part of the armature in order for it to fit into the hull. I also needed to add some more holes into the armature in order to allow the wiring to run through to the Modules and down to the control panel that I will be adding to the model later on.

I also put together the Port side panel frame structure and ran all of the wiring through it so I can add the LEDs to it later on. After I finished this I started putting together all of the LEDs that will be used in all 56 of the light panels including the ones in the Overhead Modules. I also test fitted the Port side Panel frames to the Modules to see how they will look together with the Starboard side. So there was a lot of soldering going on during the month of January and there will be a lot more to come.

In other areas I finally got to the point where I needed the modules to be standing in their upright positions so I can get more of the model assembled so I started working on the display base. We had a couple of 40 degree days out by us so I was able to go into the garage and start working on the base. For the most part it is assembled together as you will see in the update pics for this month. The top of the base however is not permanently attached to the model as of yet until I can get all of the wiring and controls in place.

I've also started working on some additional lighting rails that run along the bottom of the lower tiers of the panel frames. This lighting is much like the ones that are on the bottom side of the Overhead Modules. There are also 4 more rails, 2 on each outside of the middle light panel tiers that will need to be made and mounted to the frames. Coming up will be some work on the mooring tractors on the bottom of the dock as well as some work that will be done on the work light panels and the work cranes. It starting to come together little by little but it's looking good and I feel good about is being accomplished! There are 23 new pics on the FEBRUARY UPDATES page for this month! Hope you enjoy! And I'll see you once again Next Month!

Take care!

Mark

http://www.NemVia.com

[Guest]

[Guest]

Sorry About the mis posts. Check out reply #24 that's the current update.

[Guest]

March Updates:


For this month's update I was able to get a lot more wiring done for additional lighting effects. I have 25 new pics in this month update page. On the outsides of the dock there are 2 rails with lights on them that run the entire length of the dock. They are more accent lighting than anything, but they are there. I've also built 2 more rails with lights on them that run along the bottom sides of the dock. These are more visible in the movie. I have also started building the Mooring Tractor Beam emitters which steady the ship while it's inside the dock. There are 4 of these that are seen in the movie and they are located on the bottom of the dock as well. There are also a few more details that need to be built before I actually mount the ship inside the dock. These include 6 outside mini panels (For what they are used for I have no idea, but you can see a great shot of them when the Enterprise leaves Drydock and the little dude is seen doing flips as the ship goes by) and I will be starting some work on the work crane and work light assemblies. These will be far different from the ones I made for the 1/350 scale dock. I will be making a master mold for these crane pieces so I can save some building time. I will also start work on the Gangway docking platform as it needs a lot of detail work on that. This piece might have to be made into casting mold as well. She's starting to come together even more and I'm hoping this will wrap up in the next 3 or 4 months if there are no more delays. Keep checking for the latest updates and I'll see you again in a month.


Mark


http://www.NemVia.com

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[Guest]

April Updates 2015


This months update is quite extensive as far as the work done on the Drydock. To begin, I started by opaque-ing the Tractor emitters Flat Black. This took several coats because of the thinness of the styrene plastic. I had to make sure there would be no light leaks. I then painted the emitters Rust. But reviewing some of the Behind the scenes pics of the Drydock miniature and a few other sources I will be updating that color to a light brown color. I was then able to solder the wiring in place and connect it to the main frame of the Dock. All of the lights are working. I also was able to do a lot of touch-up work on all of the added pieces of styrene especially on the light panels and all of the detailing work around the entire panel frame assembly as well as all of the tension rods and turnbuckle assemblies. They are now a uniform Rust color. In addition to this I've also added the completed mark lighting rails that run along the outsides of the panel frames. These were soldered into their circuits and then painted to match the rest of the dock. The test lighting on this came out really nice!


The next part, or parts I was able to work on were the Cryo-tanks or whatever they're called that run along the bottom of the lower tier of the panel frames. There are five tanks per cluster. I scratch built 5 different kinds of tanks with various smaller tanks attached to them. I then used this as a master for making molds. I needed 120 if these tanks for 2 separate models. I cast all of these in black resin then sprayed them a Light Gray primer. They were then detached from their main sprues and put in a pile on my work bench. Then I randomly selected 5 of these tanks for each cluster. These five tanks were attached to 2 mounting bands which allowed the tanks to form a half circle grouping. I then attached all of these clusters to the 6 separate joints along the bottoms of the lower panel frames. They turned out rather well. After I cemented them in place I did more touch up work on all of the tanks.


Another area I worked on was the work crane and work light turrets. These had to be built by scratch. I had purchased a mini-lathe specifically for this project and now I was finally going to use it. I took two wooden wheels that I purchased from Hobby Lobby and put them on the lathe and was able to create the basic shape for the turrets. The turrets resemble mini Jupiter II's from LIS:TOS. After a nice light sanding they turned out perfect, but I found out that they were a bit too large for the scale, so I bought more of the wooden wheels in a smaller size and re-lathed 2 more pieces. It only took about 20 minutes to get the right shape. I then carved out a notch in one of these wheels. This is for the Boom arms that will extend out to the ship. The other wheel was made for the Gangway Docking Port. There are 2 docking ports on this piece and one on the work crane piece. I wanted to add some lighting effects on these turrets so I cast them I clear resin to all I would have to do is opaque the pieces and scrape of the paint where the lighting effect will need to be seen. The castings turned out very good. I am currently opaqueing them and then painting them a light tan color. There are 2 pieces for each of these turrets, this eliminated the need for me casting piece in a 2 piece mold, which is a lot of extra work. BTW there are 5 turrets for the work cranes and 2 for the work lights. I will alos be adding other details later on including the booms for the cranes and wiring and lighting as well as other small details. Most of this will be scratch built.


Another area I've started on are these 6 panels that run along the outside of the dock. There are 3 on the outside of each middle tier. Only 2 of them are really visible in the Drydock scene when Kirk and Scotty are in the travel pod. The only really clear shot of these panels are from a larger scale miniature that was built for a close up shot when the Enterprise is leaving the dock and the little dude is doing summer-salts as he's waving goodbye to the ship. These parts will also have a small but noticeable lighting effect. I started this by cutting up some very thin clear plastic into squares. I used a behind the scenes photo of this as a reference as to how large these panels will be for this scale model. I have added some masking tape for the parts where the lighting will show through. There is some minor detailing that will be added later on, but this too is turning out very good.


Last but not least, I am also working on connecting the armature to the Enterprise. This armature will connect the Ship to the Dock. There will be a lot of tweaking for this armature because of the weight of the ship. It has to sit in the dock very parallel to the panel frames. So hopefully this will be something to look forward to in next month's update. Otherwise there are 33 new progress pics in the April Updates 2015 page.


As always, enjoy the pics, comments and/or suggestions are always welcome. Take care and I'll see you next month.


Mark


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[Richi72]

This is one impressive build Mark.


Great job


Cheers Richi

[Guest]

Stunning, the workmanship is simply amazing