# Correcting the PL Refit Torpedo Bay



## marc111 (Nov 10, 2005)

OK, I know this is partially insane, but I got to wondering if it was possible to correct the PL Refit Kits torpedo bay clear piece.
Studio Model for reference








Issues:
1) The pillar with the 6 columns is a hexagonal pillar on the left. It should be a circular pillar with 6 ringing lillars and be on the right. It also lacks a raised circular detail at its base.
2) Likewise the slender pillar with with the pipe coming off the side and down that is on right should be on the left.
3) on the right bottom surface of the slanting center detail there should be an added square detail pith a pipe going up to it.
4) The flat fins coming out from the sides of the bottom verical slanting detail are supposed to be pipes that come out and make a right angle bend.
5) Finally on the 2 small bosses below the larger bosses with the circular details at the extreem left and right of the piece are missing a small circular detail on top.

First I cut off the hexagonal pillar and the slender pillar at their bases flush with the surface.

To make a correct pillar I cut a piece of 0.030 rod stock and the under a microscope glued pieces of .007in (6lb test) fishing line to the 0.03 rod to make the surrounding pillars effect. Then the ends were carefully wet sanded smooth.

I used a leather punch and smoe carefull sanding to cut a disk of ,005 stock to make the circular boss the pillar sits on. This was then glued in place. Finally the finished pillar was glued in place.

To make the slender pillar and pipe I first softened a 0.020 rod with liquid glue and then bent it in a 90 degree angle. This was then glued to the side of a 0.030 pillar to make the assembly. Then this as glued in place. You will knote that it lacks a thickening at its base that is in the studio model. I plan to add that with some apoxie sculpt if I can.








I noticed in the Christies closeups that on the right underside of the slanting center detail there was a small box with a center dome and a pipe leading downwards along the "wall" To make this I made a 0.030 x0.030 box, cut some 0.010 x 0.020 stock down to 0.010 square for the pipe. and added a small slice section of the 0.007 fishing line on the box's outer surface for the tiny circular detail. This was then glued in place.








On the bottom half the flat flanges that represent the 90 degree pipes were drilled out with a micro drill and then gently carved with an exacto knife to turn them into 90 degree pipes.








Finally I cut some 0.005 thick sections of 0.020 rod and glued them on top of the small rectangular bosses at the left and right ends of the piece as these were also missing.








have I proved my insanity yet?

Hope you find this interesting and helpful,
Mark


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## Gunstar1 (Mar 1, 2007)

Awesome! I will follow suit and do exactly that. One more thing to consider though - the end of each tube - it is portrayed as a solid rectangular tube with surface detail on the PL kit, but it should really be a separate piece (a rectangular "collar" that is connected by thin "vanes" (5 on top side, bottom side, and 3 on left and right sides)- another example of what I'm trying to describe would be the engines of the Star Wars Y-Wing - and A-Wing, where a separate circular collar is suspended by several parallel structures. Make sense? Because of the hassle with that I was planning on building the whole photon assembly from scratch.

You can see it in the Christies pics, and there are screencaps from STIII that show the light coming through those spaces as well.....


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## marc111 (Nov 10, 2005)

Gunstar1 said:


> Awesome! You can see it in the Christies pics, and there are screencaps from STIII that show the light coming through those spaces as well.....


Thanks! Good Luck with yours. I understand what you mean about the gap look. When I look at a screencap of the photon torpedo firing in STTMP I can not see any evidence of glow out those gaps along the sides.

Could you please post the STIII screencap so I can see the effect properly. I only have VHS of ST3.

Thanks,
Mark


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## Gunstar1 (Mar 1, 2007)

Alrighty - The attachment is an image of 3 screencaps - STTMP in wormhole (I could see it clearly when it was paused, but my capture program compressed it too much), STIII, and Reliant STII (to show that it is a consistent design ploy).

Also linked are christies auction pics of the portion of the enterprise that was created for STII, used also in STIII (which is what is in the screencap) and finally used in STVI - funny - you can still see a remnant of the STII-III battle damage on the interior. The starboard tube "collar" is busted off, but here you can clearly see that the red translucent film does cover just inside of where the debated (I hope no longer) gaps are between collar and tube.




























It looks clear to me. The TMP shot is very low light and grainy, but if you look really closely (on your own DVD) you can see the interior of the tubes glowing, and then a shadow on the inside created by the gap.

Anyway, looking at these images, and then your posted pic of the 8ft model, you should be able to see it there too.


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## starseeker2 (Jun 13, 2008)

Those are the nicest shots I've ever seen of the big deflector dish model. Bonus: the port side of the 2000, whose windows I've been trying to find for years. 
Amazing detail on the big model, tho it doesn't necessarity match the "little" miniature. I can't believe most is that they actually put the pod/shuttle airlock latch detail inside the hatch area. What a beautiful piece of work. Somehow I missed seeing these photos before. Where the heck did they come from??? Thanks for posting!


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## Guy Schlicter (May 3, 2004)

Great shots.For the longest time I have painted my AMT/Ertl 22 inch Enterprise and Enterprise A torpedo bays flat black.They are clearly Intermediate Blue.


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## bigjimslade (Oct 9, 2005)

I point out that this model is substantially different from the 100" studio model. The front detail is completely different. The shape of the neck is different. The lower grid line has a different location.

I say this only to illustrate the futility of anal accuracy. Unless you pick one model at one time to use, you can never get a 100% match.

If you look at the model in STTMP era, it looks like the torpedos are is black.At later times, they appear blueish.

When I did the computer model of the Enterprise I did some mix and matching so it is an artistic creation in some ways. For example, I created versions with the grid lines as they are on this model and as they are on the 100". I decided the 100"'s looked better. However, I took the grill from this model as it looked better.

In any event, as one of the 3 areas of "busy-work" on the 100", the area around the torpedo tubes lends itself to artistic license on the part of the modeler.


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## Flux Chiller (May 2, 2005)

Guy Schlicter said:


> Great shots.For the longest time I have painted my AMT/Ertl 22 inch Enterprise and Enterprise A torpedo bays flat black.They are clearly Intermediate Blue.


Under nice lighting they are yes, but they still look dark as hell in celluloid. I'm still painting mine black as night....most sinister part of the ship. Superb design..


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## marc111 (Nov 10, 2005)

Gunstar1, Thanks for the images. As an indicator the large Engineering hull section photos are indicators but cannot be relied on. They diverge on too many points, including the details of the torpedo bay , from the 8 ft studio model. Whole structural details are different. The screen caps that are clear are of the large detail model as they show details of torpedo bay structure that do not match the studio model. The grainy shot from STTMP may agree. I will check my DVD on the large screen.. Those are incredably small places to mask. I shall have to look and see if its possible, Or if the paint could be scraped away after light masking and painting.

Thanks again. I also will be shading my bay way towards black as I like the on screen look.

Regards,
Mark


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## Gunstar1 (Mar 1, 2007)

Context guys, context - 

I did state that they (STTMP screencap and "large" miniature/STIII shot) were different models, but I also said to take another look at the initial pic Mark posted, and the fact that the Reliant also has the spaces/collar setup - Sure a model shop even like ILM does not stay 100% accurate on different scale buildups, but they do that so that it does look like one is standing closer to a very large spaceship. They DO however keep major details consistent enough to get the point across. In this case, the point is that there are suspended pieces extending from the tubes.

I've said this before in numerous posts about lighting - no one will be able to replicate what is seen in STTMP because it was shot in very low light - how gray the ship looks is because of lighting combined with camera aperture settings (they did that because the ship was so darn sparkling that it made it difficult to do clean matte composites) The lower light-intake then makes things like the warp engine grilles, photon tubes, pylon intakes, lower planetary sensor areas and such look black instead of a medium blue. They never shot the ship the same way after TMP, and so all the areas that looked black before now (STII-VI) look more blue and more visible (detail) because of the camera letting in more light. 
I'm not going to light the ship, I'm going to do a paintjob that will make it look as if was a screencap - the basecoat will be a spectrum of grays where even the areas lit by spotlight are not 100% white - the darkest shadowed areas of the "white" hull will be almost 85% black, and ambient light from on-ship sources will be taken into account, as well as shadows cast on the hull by compound curves etc. The translucent pearl coats will sit on top of that, as well as a completely re-created decal set that takes into account the light changes - reds and blacks will all shift with the light and dark of the paint job. I wish I could spend the time on it right now so I could share my vision!

Back to those photorps - Mark I think the best bet would be to shave back the tubes then add the collar n' vane pieces (very thin styrene). That would be accurate to how they did it on the studio model


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## bigjimslade (Oct 9, 2005)

This is how I have it....exploded.


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## Steve Mavronis (Oct 14, 2001)

^^^ Cool illustration. What did you make that with?


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## Jafo (Apr 22, 2005)

great pics!


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## bigjimslade (Oct 9, 2005)

Steve Mavronis said:


> ^^^ Cool illustration. What did you make that with?



Turbocad. (I have the entire refit done to that level of detail).

On the original, it appears that the gap here is only about 0.02"...so it's not going really going to show up in 1:350.


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## SteveR (Aug 7, 2005)

You are mad, sir! Maaaaad! Both of you! All of you! Maaaaaad, I tell you!!!!

But in a good way.


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## marc111 (Nov 10, 2005)

Big Jim, I would agree the gap looks close to 0.02 on the PL kit part. This makes for a very small set of spots to mask to allow the red light to show through. I wish we could see this bettter. When I look at my STTMP DVD, to be honest, I can see know sign of any light leaking along the sides of the of the ports. But when I look at some of the cristies photos from the side you can clearly see small slots with exactly the same level of darkness as the interior of the main port. 

I do not really want to reconstruct the fronts. I will probably spend some time with the microscope and see if I can mask this or scrape it free in a way that makes sense.

Thanks for all of the feedback everyone,
Mark


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## Gunstar1 (Mar 1, 2007)

This should prove it.

You can see the upper wall of the white hull through the gap on the starboard tube. This was taken of the 8ft studio model just after filming finished for TMP


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## starseeker2 (Jun 13, 2008)

From the photo above:


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## Gunstar1 (Mar 1, 2007)

starseeker2 said:


> From the photo above:


Thanks, though it should be obvious either way.

Everyone a believer now?


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## marc111 (Nov 10, 2005)

Well I definately am. This may be worth doing some delicate paint scraping after wards to expose the corect spots. Thanks for the nail in the coffin guys.

Mark


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## bigjimslade (Oct 9, 2005)

I've always been a believer...


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## Gunstar1 (Mar 1, 2007)

hooray for the faithful!

Speaking of your awesome renderings, could you provide a couple more angles in this thread for the photon-aware-followers to further illuminate us on our quest for the holy grail of model-builds?


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## bigjimslade (Oct 9, 2005)

There are some more views

http://www.colosseumbuilders.com/enterprise/ComputerModel/Neck

It has not been updated recently.

I will point out that this is one of the areas of the ship that requires some artistic interpretation. There are not many good reference photographs of this area for the studio model and there are quite a few differents between that and the neck blowup model. I tried to get the major structures correct and took some liberties made some simplifications to the details.

I have seen some work on this areas where people simply stole from other plans. I looked at other plans but, if I could not verify a detail in photos, I did not use it.


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