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Building the Classic Enterprise
Part Two
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The vacuforming process was also employed to build the Hangar Bay assembly located within the after portion of the Secondary
Hull. Here you see one of the three triangular shaped access doors set into the sides of the hangar being worked prior to being CA'ed in place. These little door wells were vacuformed as well.
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Wherever possible I made use of production stills to aid me as I did the detail work. Here, just such a photo was used to good
advantage, helping me to get the Hangar Bay overhead lighting and 'tractor beam' projector housing right. For the overhead lighting I built a translucent piece from clear plastic sheet, marked it with
pen and set it into a well atop the cylindrical Hangar Bay structure. Set onto the 'walls' of the Hangar Bay are the 'viewer gallery' and 'docking control stations'.
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Long before I got to the priming and painting stage I built this little half-circle sheet filling/priming/painting mask equipped
with a handle. This mask was used to protect the installed and pre-painted hangar element from putty and over-spray as I addressed the outside of the model with filler, putties, primer, and paints.
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The completed Hangar Bay sub-assembly set into the stern of the Secondary Hull. I have yet to fill the semi-circular seam gap
between the two structures with filler and putty.
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Here you see the set-up for vacuforming of a large model part. In this case one-half of the Primary Hull. I sat the plenum on
the kitchen floor with the shop vac set up right next to it. The plastic sheet, sandwiched between two wooden frames, was placed into the pre-heated oven and heated until soft enough to be shapped. Once
the plastic was seen to sag, the Oven door was opened, the frame quickly transferred to the work and then slammed down onto the plug used to shape the plastic sheet.
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Note two of the wooden plugs used to give shape to the Secondary Hull and Warp Engine nacelles. To the extreme right are some
turned wooden masters used to make RTV rubber tooling. As each vacuformed piece was trimmed away from its backing plastic, it was joined with its opposing number and the seam between them bonded with CA
'gap filling' adhesive.
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Open gaps between the bonded vacuformed structure halves were filled with CA adhesive and then the adhesive sprinkled with
micro-balloons to form a tough, shrink free 'filler'. The brown micro-balloons can clearly be seen on these assembled vacuformed 1701 structures. Internal circular frames were inserted within the Warp
Engine nacelles and Secondary Hull to increase the rigidity and strength of these sub-assemblies.
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Constructed from heavy styrene sheet a 'pylon support crutch' was made. This fitting handles the loads imposed by the Warp
Engines upon the Secondary Hull. The relatively heavy Warp Engines, sitting at the end of long moment arms (there pylons) impose a great deal of stress at the pylon/Secondary Hull interface plane. The
pylon support crutch worked to absorb and contain all stress loads induced by the Warp Engines, preventing cracks at the pylon/hull interface point.
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As the major vacuformed sub-assemblies took shape, they were cut and grooved to fit one another. Here we see a trial fit of the
interconnecting Dorsal piece between Primary and Secondary hull assemblies. The Dorsal piece extends entirely through the Secondary Hull - it forms the main structural component of the model through
which the collected loads pass.
On to part 3 or back to the introduction
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