The Enterprise Incident

[noxioux]

OK, so I was really excited to get the new 1/1000 refit from Polar Lights.  The kit is great, the decals are great.  I guess I was too excited.

Anyway, I assembled and glued the model, proceeded to fill gaps, sand and primer.  Everything went without a hitch until I sprayed a coat of krylon flat white over a coat of krylon sandable primer.  Well, that particular can of flat white was bad--it's the same one that really messed up my swept-wing F4f.  It immediately cracked all over the whole model, and totally wrecked my progress.  In the process of stripping the paint and sanding, I ended up killing a good amount of the surface detail.  Then incident #2 happened, which was that the testors pearlescent lacquer didn't like the krylon primer--it bubbled and swirled, etc. . .  It was truly awful.  Please note here, I'm no stranger to using krylon on my models.  I've use about a bazillion cans of the stuff, and it's never done this to me before.  However, for anything I do in the future, I'm going to be awful careful how I use the krylon primer.

So the third time around, I stripped again, lost more detail, primed with Mr. Surfacer this time, and the lacquer went on without a  hitch.  Most of the aztec decals went on OK, although there was some ambiguity about what went where on the warp nacelles.  But, after everything I finally did get a finished model.  There are some serious problems with it, but in the end I regarded it as an exercise in applying the azteking decals.  If you don't get too close, it's OK.  One of the big mistakes was that I got the decals for the warp nacelles on inside-out.

But the kit really is pretty good.  I'm going to do another one, but this time I think I'll forego the filling and sanding, and follow the directions as a snap-fit, and paint and decal everything before assembly.  I have one of the 1/1000 NX-01's, and I'll be using some of these lessons learned when I build it up.

One thing I have to say about the kit is the engineering is pretty darn good.  For anyone who's built the old refit enterprise kit, you'll know how horrible the warp nacelle pylons are.  It seemed like a sideways glance would cause them to pop off.  Well, the pylons on this kit lasted through a huge amount of sanding, scrubbing and dropping and never once popped off or popped out of place.  Once on, they are really pretty durable.











I also have the big 1/350 kit in-process, but that's going slow as I'm going to try and light it up.  Maybe in a few years I'll have it done. . .

[sotoolslinger]

Nice Excellent save. I have had that happen with incompatible paints before. For some reason white paint always gives me problems

[BlackOps]

Looks like it came out quite well to me. Very attractive build. 

[philp]

It looks good in the pics.  I have to pick up one of these also (or maybe two and try to convert one to a Reliant).

I also have the 1/350th version and the lighting kit for it but don't have the room to devote to it right now.

I really like the 1/1000 scale ships and may have to pick up some of the Garage kits in this scale.

[John Howling Mouse]

That looks downright sexy!  Weird that you had problems with the Krylon primer...I haven't built a kit withOUT it in about 8 or 9 years and I spray every kind of paint and lacquer known on this little planet of yours over it without any trouble.

Now that I've gone and said that...   

[Devilfish]

Damn that looks good!!

I also have the 1/350 A and NX, and tbh I'm dreading being able to do them both justice.  Lighting kits reqd for both, definately!!