Hello, there! It's been awhile, I know, but I really needed to get my work area in order so I could get back to work on one of my all time favorite Enterprise kits, namely the AMT USS Enterprise refit!!!
This version in particular is from their Star Trek VI release. I am planning on painting it with all of the battle damage she sustained from the cloaked Klingon Bird of Prey's torpedo blasts! The challenge will definitely be in the painting of the kit for me!
One thing I wanted to mention before going on to the photos; the main point of this kit for me was to make the model a bit more accurate without resorting to aftermarket kit parts. I just want to say, I'm not against them; in fact, I highly recommend them! Especially Lake Monster (formerly DLM), Paragrafix, and others! Lake Monster in particular makes a lot of affordable resin add-ons that will make your kit stand out!
There's not a lot you can do about the AMT kit's many proportional inaccuracies, save for a few aftermarket items. The good thing about the kit is, despite all of it's flaws, it still builds up into a reasonably nice model straight out of the box! There are a few things a budget modeller (like me! 😁) can do to correct a few of the inaccuracies;
1. The photon torpedo tubes! The two flat rectangles that take the place of the photon torpedo tubes in the kit are insufficient! I fashioned my own launchers from two bits of rectangular styrene tubes and added smaller bits of sheet styrene to accentuate them!
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| Torpedo tubes with added detail on the left, a sample of the original kit part on the right |
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| Torpedo tubes with added detail on the left, a sample of the original kit part on the right |
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| The detailed part in place on the neck of the kit |
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| The detailed part in place on the neck of the kit |
2. The lower sensor dome! Probably my biggest gripe about the kit, the lower sensor dome on the movie model is supposed to be bigger than the one that sits on top of the bridge! I made a bigger one by cutting off a nacelle end cap from an old TOS Enterprise kit, glued that to a piece of round styrene that was then sanded to conform to the curves of the new dome, and then added 4 pieces of styrene bits for added detail!
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| The larger dome after being cut, glued, sanded, and details added and then glued into place |
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| The dome on the right versus the sample of the original kit part on the left |
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| Samples of both the bridge and the lower sensor dome piece. You can plainly see the bridge dome dwarfs the lower sensor dome. |
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| And the sample of the bridge part next to the bigger lower sensor dome. You can't tell in this picture, but the new lower sensor dome is indeed bigger than the bridge dome, the way it should be. |
3. The saucer windows! There are six bay window sets that are supposed to be glued in on the saucer edges, the configuration of these are slightly off... by ONE window! Fortunately this is easily rectified with some drilling and putty!
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| The sample of the original kit part on the top, and the kit part on the bottom that is glued into place and putty applied. The windows on the bottom should be spaced evenly underneath the 4 center small windows on the top row. I drilled the new window out and then used the same sized drill bit to make all of the rest of the windows more uniform. |
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| This is just me drilling out the windows that are located near the impulse deck on the back of the saucer. These are just represented on the kit as circles that are barely able to be seen. |
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| The windows on the opposite side of the impulse deck. This is where the recreational deck is located. These should be square instead of round. I will end up going into these with a small square file to shape them out and then will take a few passes with a hobby knife to sharpen them up. This window configuration is not represented on the kit, it was merely molded as a copy of the opposite set of windows. |
4. The landing pads, cargo doors, and docking bay doors! These were omitted from the original release, and never corrected on any of the rereleased kits! Fortunately, these can be corrected via some simple scribing techniques;
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| Sample of the original kit part. The part omits the landing pad and cargo bay door on the left top part of the saucer, and the docking bay doors to the right of where the lower sensor pallet is supposed to go. |
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| The details after being added, these were added by cutting into the plastic with a hobby knife and then going over them again with a scribing tool. The black lines were added to make sure they were in-line with the others. I think I got them pretty close, considering this was all done by hand! |
5. The impulse engine vents! These are simply not present on the kit part. They can be replicated by cutting out the flat parts and replacing them with ribbed sheet styrene pieces, or by scribing them into the existing panels (which was hard for me to do, as it was simpler for me to cut out/replace);
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| The sample of the original kit part on the top, and the modified part glued into place on the bottom! The "vented" parts are just ribbed sheet styrene cut and glued in place of the "flat" parts, which I cut and removed. |
These are just a few of the minor things you can address on the kit, and doing so is not only relatively easy, but will help make a starship you can be proud to display on your shelf!
I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that this model will be painted and together by the end of February! Wish me luck! 😅
Edit; So, yeah, didn't get done by the end of February! 😅 I have posted a part 2 to this, a few updates! Hoping to be done by March 25th, though! Wish me luck!
Here we go on to part 2!
~Sean Kneeland, aka Zakuformer
