Klingon D-7 Battlecruiser (post-surgery build)

This was mostly built during recovery from surgery, and I’ll get my excuse out of the way up front – I can’t focus my eyes very well at close distances. That’s why I chose to work on something that doesn’t have very much fine detail on it.

The only bit in focus is the paint booger.

This is the Polar Lights 1/1000 ‘Romulan Battle Cruiser’, POL897/12. Of course you all know that this ship is basically a Klingon D-7, because as I understand it, the original Romulan Bird of Prey model was lost/misplaced/destroyed/unavailable after the first season. (The remastered version of ‘The Enterprise Incident’ uses a computer-generated BoP in place of one of the D-7s, but we won’t go there.)

Some Thoughts on Vallejo Surface Primer

A lot of people online seem to really hate this stuff. Others report that it works fine. I’m somewhere in between, so just to confuse things, here is my experience with using it, but no real conclusions.

The item in question

Stuff I like:

• Easy to spray. Put it in a large-nozzle airbrush, crank it up to 20psi, and hose it on. Thinning (with Vallejo Airbrush Thinner) is not needed, but you can dilute it down a bit if you like.
• Water cleanup (mostly.) A bit of thinner makes it clean up easier.
• Dries to a very smooth surface.
• Available in lots of colors. (Skeleton Bone, Ultramarine, 4BO Green, White, etc.)
• Can be mixed with Vallejo Model Air/Model Color and presumably other acrylics.
• Can be brushed on with good results.
• Dries pretty rapidly.
• Can be lightly dry-sanded to remove runs and goobers.

Stuff I don’t like:

• Dries on the airbrush needle tip something awful. Adding flow improver doesn’t seem to help much.
• Tends to pool at inside corners, and pull away from outside corners.
• Needs a fairly high pressure and large nozzle to spray, which could be an issue if you’re trying to paint detail. (But then, why are you using a primer for that anyway?)
• Doesn’t adhere very well to bare plastic, even after pre-washing. It sticks great to Tamiya spray can primer, but if it’s already primed. . .
• Doesn’t like being wet-sanded. Tends to come off in sheets.
• Hard to clean if left to dry on a paintbrush.

Conclusion:

None, as I stated up top. I’ve been using this most recently because it was the right color. I won’t go so far as to throw it out, and for small spot-fills using a brush it’s pretty good. It’s thinner than the grey Tamiya Liquid Surface Primer in the square bottle, and sometimes that’s the consistency you need. I just haven’t been able to get consistent results using it as a primer for plastic.

It’s possible that the formula may have been updated since I bought this bottle several years ago. And as always, your results may differ from mine.

Update

Due to some upcoming projects by the Biological Research and Freaks of Nature department, we expect there will be no updates for a few weeks. (Last time they tried something like this — whatever ‘this’ is — we had Animal Control in here for two months trying to get rid of all the frogs.) So here’s a couple of photos to document current progress.

My neck in a vise. (note: get new caption writer.)

Tenor uke neck, in progress, some rough carving done on one side. Hard to see here, but he neck does taper from the 14th fret down to the nut. (when viewed from above.) Nut width is planned to be about 1-7/16″.

D7 ready for paint

The Polar Lights 1/1000 Romulan Battle Cruiser, which also includes alternate parts and decals for a Klingon D7. This will be a Klingon version. Lots of discussion as to what the ‘correct’ colors are. Plan is to use three tones of grey, unless it looks bad, in which case I’ll do something else. The color coat should cover those white specks on top of the hangar bay with no trouble.

You know it’s handmade when. . .

one of your heel slots was cut in the wrong direction and had to be redone.

No one will ever see this (unless the neck gets redone) but it’ll still bother me.

Rough-shaped neck. Very rough.

Note to self – get a new rasp handle. Consider spending more than $4 on it.

Not gone, just really slow

Starting a tenor, Spanish cedar neck. The plan is to use the Hana Lima ‘Ia plans (since they worked well last time) with a Spanish heel. I have some Engelman spruce for the soundboard, and East Indian rosewood for everything else. But for now, I just have a mess of glue.

Cut to rough size

Scarf joint ready for smoothing

Heel stack glueup

I thought I had a photo of the scarf joint glueup, but I can’t seem to find it now. It wasn’t important anyway. Scarf joint was cut on the table saw using an angle jig, and smoothed with a block plane. It still needs to be thinned down a little bit.

Drawers

I finished putting drawers in the workbench back in November, but neglected to post anything about it at the time.

Oh, I do not like this new WordPress editor. Ah; found the old one. That’s better. I prefer to see the controls available to me, thank you very much.

I guess this is done, since I’ve been using it for six months and it’s covered in junk.

Bass, completed enough

It’s as done as any mass-market instrument you’d buy in a store, only more expensive and lower quality. Materials info after the jump.

front view

the side no one looks at

Front and Back

I thought this was a good idea, but it turned out less than great.

They say the back side is for the player.

Finishing, unfinished

Not much visible progress. Doing the French polish thing.

Everything looks better with proper lighting.

It looks a lot better in photos than in person. It’s only shiny if you get the light hitting it just right.

Baby Steps

Not a lot of progress, what with holidays, vacation, and other projects. Although many are restricted to their homes and not working, I’m still putting in 40 hours a week. It’s just from my dining table instead of an office.

As noted last time, I forgot to leave a way to get the ground wire from the bridge to the control cavity. So here’s that done:

Bass body with new (and improved?) holes.