USS Enterprise Model Build – Part 10 – Assembly
So finally all the soldering and wiring is done – yeah ! And now I have to figure out how to put all the pieces together as with all the wiring everything sort of has to come together at the same time.
I was very much looking forward to the assembly but the more I wrapped my head around it I was also dreading it a little bit….
Assembly test
At first I used masking tape to temporarily put everything together to get a feel of how good a fit I had and to get a sense of the exact order I should assemble all the parts.
As it turned out the wiring inside the nacelles is a really good fit and so I glued the nacelles together first – of course always double and tripple checking that the lights still work : )
I realised later that some glue spilled over the seams which I had to sand off and fix later. Here’s the sanded off nacelle before it was filled with putty and re-painted:
Next in line are the covers that go on the connecting beams for the nacelles.
Preparing the stand
The deluxe lighting kit did provide a rather large round plug which did not really fit into the base. As my friend had some custom plugs available we decided to install a thinner plug.
At first I planned to connect all the power wires inside the main hull and only have one lead that goes outside the model. I later decided to lead all the wires outside of the model and to solder them together on the outside. It just seemed easier to me that way.
Saucer assembly
Glueing the saucer was also straight forward. I got only very small seams along the edges and decided not to fill them with putty later.
Hull assembly and installing the fu+@*”*%ing weights
Even though I like the build quality of this model a lot, Revell really cut a huge corner by just putting a little “insert 90g of weight here” icon in the instructions. First of all I had a really hard time finding a small enough and then heavy enough weight that would fit – especially with all the added wiring and circuitry.
I decided to go with these small weights that are used for fishing. The idea was to put some hot glue into the back of the hull and then just “drop” these little lead balls in there until it is all filled up.
So I went ahead and did this but realised that I was covering up a lot of the windows in the back of the hull. Here you can see the back of the hull with all the added weights. Yes it does not look pretty.
I ended up removing some of the weights as they were blocking the light for the back windows.
I need four hands !!!
The most tricky part was getting all the weights, wires, power cables and the circuit board for the nacelles into the main hull. I also added some black electrical tape to the seams in the top and bottom of the hull to minimise light leakage. This really worked out well put it was a real pain in the butt as the tape would get bunched up while trying to fit both halves together.
But in the end it all fit together rather well. I did get some seams at the top and bottom though which I will need to fix later with putty.
Connecting the nacelles to the main hull
Once the hull was one pieces and all the lights still worked (yeah!) I went ahead and glued the nacelles to the body. I wish Revell would have done this a little differently. There are very little and small surfaces provided for glueing and it took me several tries to get all the pieces glued together perfectly.
I also did not have clamps that were big enough to press down on the top of the hull so I had to do this by hand for 15 minutes…..
And as you might have guessed, the last step was to glue the saucer onto the main hull.
A day later the bloody saucer detached almost by itself with very little wrongdoing on my part. I might have to switch glues as the standard Revell glue does not seem to be the best choice. Any tips ?
So yeah – now the main assembly is finished. The nacelles are not 100% aligned with each other but I figure that’s just the way it is with these plastic parts. I guess I’ll have to live with that.
Now this leaves me with more or less these next steps:
- Fill all the seams with putty
- Repaint with the same color mix that I had prepared for this in the beginning
- Apply front dish assembly and all the other missing small pieces
- Put on a clear coat
- Apply all the decals
- Attach the wires to the base
- Power it up
- Put it on the shelf : )
- Uhmm – I guess that’s it
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