Star Trek Enterprise NCC-1701 "Into Darkness"

Because of large surfaces I preferred the rattle can for primer. 

Because of use of a lighting set I drilled holes through the impulse engines. 

Some holes had to be made to let the LED's through. 

To prevent light leakage, especially with a white plastic, the interior was sprayed matt black. 

Painting clear parts with clear paint. 

After the black layer you can spray a silver layer to help reflect the light inside. 

Detailed masking of the front bulb of the Bussard collector. 

Together with Tamiya masking tape I used Humbrol Maskol to get into the diffucult curved parts. 

I'd done a previous Enterprise TOS with lighting, though this one was more complicated and I had to mix a 3V and 12V circuit, and I'm not an electronics engineer 🙁 But there are some very good tutorials on LED on the internet. 

Testing the 12V circuit. 

Use of LED strips 

The individual LED's had to be installed with a resistor. I think this is the kit where I (finally !) discovered the hot glue gun. What a tool ! 

Blue LED's from the Artemis Designs lighting kit. 

Lighting test OK ! 

Lighting of the upper saucer section. 

Combination of LED strips (12V permanent light) and individual LEDs (3V blinking with module). 

I ran out of white glue sticks, so I used the coloured ones that came with the glue gun (in this case the blue). 

Luckily this is not 230V AC ... 

OK, lighting test passed. 

Closing them up and start puttying and sanding. 

The "neck" was difficult to get the seems right. 

LED test for the dish. 

Spaghetti colore  

Assembly of saucer with lower hull. 

A lot of long seems to fill and sand. 

Assembly of upper and lower saucer sections. No more access to any of the LEDs ... (nailbite) 

This is a model with difficult to reach angles and curves. 

More filling and sanding ... 

First clear gloss coat. 

First kit decals. 

I started the bottom side of the saucer with de Aztec decals from Acreation Models but it was a disaster (see the gaps ; also very thin, and rather poor print). So finally I dropped the idea of the Aztec pattern not to ruin the whole model. 

The kit decals worked out fine. But the circular ones were a real challenge. It took me ages to get a decent curved line. So far the most time consuming decaling on a kit. 

Note the slightly wrong curve of the black line above the "U.S.S.". Some moments it was a pain in the *** (wrist) 

I fabricated a box from scraps of plywood for an elevated stand to hide the blinking LED module and battery pack. 

And painted it black with acrylic from the tube. 

Wiring through the wooden stand. 

Unfortunately, at some point, the blinking module broke down, so now I have static navigation lights instead of blinking 🙁 

LED there be light ! 

Due to too much handling of the assembled kit (which is quite heavy) some of the seems got open and resulted in light leakage.