CultTVman: Kirk Schermerhorn's Warbird

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	Kirk Schermerhorn's Warbird


		The forward section was done by hand drilling about 250 holes with a pin vice and individually super gluing .5 mm fiber optic strands through. you can see the fiber optic "whiskers" on the outside that will be trimmed flush after painting. To light the fibers I simply attached a small piece of light sheet to the end of the fiber optic bundle with some silicone rubber. You can see the strands glowing in the picture taken with the lights on, and the picture with the lights out shows just how much a dime sized piece of light puts out!


	For the rear section I drilled about 150 more holes. The fiber bundle was to big to allow assembly of the two halves, so I had to paint the inside black, clip the fibers off flush, and put two light sheets inside back to back facing out.


	For the warp engines I again used Light sheets. I placed some green filter material behind the clear engine panel and backed that with one continuous sheet of white light sheet bent around at the front to light both sides. I discovered that even the white light sheet has a lot of blue to it, because even with the green filter, it still glows blue when lit.


	Having completed filling and sanding the warp engines and front and rear hull assemblies, I next attached all of these to the inner half of the upper wing.

Next I connected all the wiring and tacked the wires in place with dabs of clear silicon rubber. I also painted the insides of the two upper wing halves black in the vicinity of the light source for the fiber optic bundle for the forward hull.

Finally I attached the upper half of the upper wing. The fit of this kit has been pretty poor, so I'm now looking at a whole lot of filling and sanding before I start on the lower wing. Send you more as the work progresses

painted black to block the light

priming the model with a neutral grey

painting the base coat of dark green

masking the model for washing and more paint

Well, I guess most people who have been following my WarBird project know that I had a major setback on it when my light Sheet overheat and damaged the rear section. I had painted on the base color and was very pleased with my mix. I had not had much success masking the fiberoptics for painting, so I just painted over them and was drilling through the paint with a 0.5mm bit in a pin vise to expose the fibers. This was actually working very nicely (see photo of forward section) until I noticed that the plastic at the rear of the model was melting! I was lighting the Lightsheet at the highest voltage I could, and it caused it to generate a lot of heat! (lesson number 1- always drive your light sheet at the lowest possible voltage!) I surveyed the damage and discovered that the plastic of the fiders melted into the plastic of the model and now very few ports were left visible (see attached picture). I also discovered damage to one of the light sheets in the warp nacelles when I removed the masking over it. (see attached picture) So, the game plan now? Battle damage! I plan to put a hole in the rear hull and use the underlying light sheet to make it look like its burning or blowing up or something like that. I also want to burn some kind of phaser scar on the Nacelle, and pass it off as a damaged nacelle that isn't quite totally destroyed.

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