Enterprise C - Paint before or after construction???

[seral1969]

I'm having trouble deciding when to paint the clear parts of my AMT Enterprise C...

Construction is a snap, but painting the clear seems difficult...

Should I paint before constrution, or after???


Thanks in advance...

[TREKKRIFFIC]

After in my opinion. I built the same kit some years ago and it can be a real bear. You may want to wire it up with LED's in place of the grain-of-wheat bulbs included in the kit. I built mine before I knew about LED's or I would have gone that route myself. I painted after assembling , puttying, and sanding was completed. Of course, you'll want to mask the windows, bussards, warp grills, and impulse engines either with liquid mask or tape before priming. Don't do what the instructions recommend with scraping the paint out of the window slots; you'll end up with a lot of crappy lookign ragged edged windows that way. I would recommend a coat of white primer first (to evenly distribute the light inside the model)followed by flat black and then a few coats of grey primer to block the light. Light leak can be a major problem with this kit as you can imagine. Also be careful not to bang the edge of the saucer against your worktable accidentally as the clear styrene is more brittle than the opaque styrene. I ended up having to mend several chips along the saucer edge as I went along because of this.
Anyway, that's my advice for what it's worh; I'm sure others may have a different view which is fine.

Here are a few pics of my Excalibur made from the clear kit:
http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r259 ... r-AMT5.jpg
http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r259 ... r-AMT4.jpg
http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r259 ... r-AMT3.jpg
http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r259 ... r-AMT2.jpg

I tempered the baby-blue pastel colors (yuck) by overspraying with gloss transparent silver-blue metallic before removing the masking then I applied a few coats of dullcote to tone down the gloss.

[seral1969]

Mine didn't come with LEDs at all...

I just have the AMT/Ertl Enterprise C, Nnot the Yamagichi...

Yours looks GREAT!!!

I may use your photo as a guide...


Thanks...

[TREKKRIFFIC]

Mine didn't come with LEDs at all...

I just have the AMT/Ertl Enterprise C, Nnot the Yamagichi...

Yours looks GREAT!!!

I may use your photo as a guide...


Thanks...

LOL
I totally misread your post ! Clear parts threw me off. Good luck on your C. It''ll be a lot less of a chore than that Yamaguchi kit. Glad you liked the pics.
Here's a link to a popular website with more pics of the studio model:

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/scans/ambassador1.htm

Note there are some subtle, some more noticeable, differences between the Yamaguchi and the C, mainly involving the deflector dish, lower sensor array, lifeboat hatches, bussard cowlings or lack thereof, etc.
My Excalibur follows the Yamaguchi design more so than the C so bear that in mind if you use my pics for reference.