Being a fairly old kit, the sprue attachment points are huge, and there were a couple of ejector pin marks to sort out – the big circular depression on the base of the nacelle pylon.
A smear of putty and some careful sanding later, and it disappeared under a coat of primer:
The warp nacelles were a pain to clean up the seams, as the joint goes right across the corrugations. It took a lot of careful scraping and trimming to get them acceptable. The one in the foreground is done, the rear one shows the blobs of liquified plastic squeezed out from the joint still awaiting treatment.
The engineering hull presented a challenge, as there should be a prominent recess all the way around the chines. One side of the hull was badly moulded, so I had to build up the mating face with plastic card to ensure the gap for the star drive was even on both sides.
Next I turned my attention to how to display it. These kits don’t come with a stand, as I assume that the makers thought they’d be bought by kids who’d spend all their time flying them around the living room to the accompaniment of whooshing noises. (Actually, I’m not sure what sound the Enterprise does make, but I bet Mark could imitate it – you should hear his TARDIS impression!)
I bought a Tamiya stand off e-Bay, which I cleaned up and sprayed with grey primer and modified it by carving out the mounting point to fit snugly against the underside of the engineering hull, and adding a piece of square section brass as the support.
I broke out the square drill, made a hole in the underside of the hull and used epoxy resin to attach a larger diameter square section inside, at a suitably dynamic angle.
This allowed the Enterprise to be firmly attached to its stand, but still be detachable for safe transport or warp drive fantasies…
A coat of matt black later, and there’s the stand awaiting final assembly.
