# Newbie Build of 1:350 NX 01



## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

I don't think I've seen an NX 01 build here. If there's interest, I'll update as I make progress and figure this ship out. I plan to do lights, paint for the aztec type patterns, the whole nine yards, but this is far from some expect build. Not counting a few planes when I was about 10 that were more glue than plastic by the time I was finished, I have only recently started to try modeling again. I have learned a lot lurking, and to be honest the NX 01 sort of fell into my lap, and I figured I'd use it as a "trial run" before I do the Holy Grail of the Refit.

In any event, if you're still reading, I'd be happy for any suggestions, comments, etc. you have as I go along. I'll likely have questions, and feel free to tell me that I'm about to screw up, or that I've already screwed up and here's how to fix it...

I'll explain what I'm trying to do, and what I've learned along the way. So here goes:


To start with, I have light blocked the saucer with Krylon Flat Black and then Flat White, right out of the can. I hope, after watching Boyd's Trek Works videos on the Refit, that the White will do a nice job of diffusing the lights on the inside. To see if I've done a good job getting the light block correctly, I simply take the section out on a sunny day and carefully look toward the sun, fixing the leaks I see.

After some paint tests, I have decided to try using three shades of car paint as the primary colors, all made by Dupli-Color:

1) Classic Silver Mica for the lighter main color and
2) Radiant Silver Metalic for the darker
3) Alabaster Silver Metalic will be for a few somewhat darker shades.

I picked these after not being happy with any of the attempts at custom mixing I did.

I painted the Radiant Silver first, covering the whole bottom (after priming), then applied the masks shown the attached pics. I gave a short second coat of the Radiant Silver to help cover under the masks, and am now waiting for it do dry. I'll paint the Silver Mica tomorrow and pull off the masks and post the results.


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## patriotsfan150 (Aug 11, 2009)

Looking good so far. Keep posting!


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

Main Aztec pattern on bottom is done. I used the masks by Andrew Skupinski, found at the Starship Modeler page, cut into Parma vinyl using my wife's Cameo Silhouette. I cut some random squares for the parts that his pattern doesn't include and just made something up. It looks pretty good, as long as you don't get too close. I was hoping that the contrast between the two colors wasn't quite so strong.


I'm going to let everything set overnight and then will start on the sanding. The top will need to wait for a week or so until the next shipment of the Parma comes in, though I'll likely start on the main cabin lighting this evening or tomorrow.

Now to start trying to figure out the layout of the nacelles and where I'll need to run the wires and put the warp engine lights...


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## Xenodyssey (Aug 27, 2008)

Always good to see another NX-01. Lots of hard work shown so far. I'm looking forward to seeing the lighting in action.


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

Thanks for the kind words, patiotsfan150 & Xenodyssey. I admit the NX 01 wasn't my favorite when the show was on, but it has grown on me as I've started thinking about this build. 

Here are the "cabin" lights. I borrowed TrekWorks idea of just putting the strips of LED lights on the top; the white interior diffused the light nicely. I am hopeful that once I'm ready to put in the windows, it'll even look better with the "glass."

(For those who might be impressed by the relatively fast progress, the kids are at grandparents until tomorrow, so I had two nice, quiet days to work hard. Now, the soldering iron has to be put up until 9pm, etc, so the progress will slow considerably.) Thanks if you've been following this so far.


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## TIEbomber1967 (May 21, 2012)

larskseme said:


> I admit the NX 01 wasn't my favorite when the show was on, but it has grown on me as I've started thinking about this build.


Yeah I know what you mean. I like the ship A LOT more now that the NX-refit added the secondary hull, it's a good look. I'd purchase the 1:350 secondary hull add-on kit, if it wasn't nearly $200 
Anyway... Looks good. You've made great progress and I look forward to seeing more.


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

Update. I have finished the main paint and lighting work on the saucer (I'm waiting on some LEDs for the red/green nav lights for the top). There are a few light leaks where the bottom and the saucer walls meet; I'll fix them and the ones that occur on the top as well once I'm ready to seal the saucer up.

For those of you know who this model, I have skipped putting the tiny little senor antennas on the gold panels. I tried one, and couldn't get them to look right. I scraped up the gold dome of the bridge in doing the lighting today, and so will have some touchup to do.

The Parma mask worked really well. It's a bit expensive ($3.70 per sheet), but with my wife's Cameo Silhouette, it cuts nicely; I left some of the masks on the upper saucer for 3-4 days (before painting) and had no issue with pealing.

One last issue: My paint color idea was a bust. Though the bottom looks nice, I think, it couldn't exactly recreate it ever again. The brighter portions are still the Radiant Silver, but for the other, the Classic Silver Mica never looked the same. Instead, I hit it with a light coat of Tamiya Gray Primer. It still lets the metallic look through, but it a bit darker than whatever I did for the saucer bottom. (I still think I did what I intended on the bottom, but no other application ever looked exactly the same.)

I hope to start light blocking the nacelles tonight...


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## Xenodyssey (Aug 27, 2008)

I'm going to borrow this idea of using LED strip lights when I get around to building my Voyager kit. It seems to work very well!



larskseme said:


> Thanks for the kind words, patiotsfan150 & Xenodyssey. I admit the NX 01 wasn't my favorite when the show was on, but it has grown on me as I've started thinking about this build.
> 
> Here are the "cabin" lights. I borrowed TrekWorks idea of just putting the strips of LED lights on the top; the white interior diffused the light nicely. I am hopeful that once I'm ready to put in the windows, it'll even look better with the "glass."


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

Yes, the LED strips have been quite simple and effective. The plastic windows do a nice job of catching the internal lights, and the lights are bright enough that you can't just look in a window and see the maze of wires.

I plan to use a single section (3 lights) of blue for each of the impulse engines, and a strip of 9 for the warp nacelles. I hope to be able to squeeze the warp ones into the "roof" of the nacelle and shine them down into the clear plastic for a nice effect. It looked pretty good in a mock up I did, but there's not a lot of room once everything is glued together.

Looking forward to seeing your Voyager Xenodyssey.


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## sbaxter (Jan 8, 2002)

This seems like a good opportunity to ask the community at large — on the original release of this kit, was there ever a "best practice" method for correcting the ill-fitting nacelle? I believe it was just one of them that wasn't right, IIRC. I was looking through my cache of kits the other day as I'm getting back into the hobby actively, and was surprised to find that I have two of the original kits; I only recalled buying one until I found the second one.

No one ever paints it this way, but the actual CG model for the series had a hint of copper in all the silver (I _believe_ the _Columbia_ went without the copper). I still plan to make a mix of custom Alclad colors with some copper added whenever I build mine.

Qapla'

SSB


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

I found the misaligned nacelle last night during a dry fit of the nacelle to the pylon. I'm not sure what *should* be done, but this is what I did:

The semicircle cutouts on the correct pylon both lined up with the edge of a bump, so I assumed that the misplaced one would as well. I also measured as carefully as I could with a ruler where the hole should be and made a mark on the pylon and puttied the old one. My dry fit this morning looked decent, but I'll not really know until everything is on and I'll see if the nacelles look right. At least to incorrectly placed hole looks like it'll be covered by the nacelle anyway. 

As is likely clear, I'm making this all up as I go along, so I'll be interested to see if anyone who actually knows the best way to fix this problem.


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

One question for those of you with lots more experience: My wiring of the lights often leaves a maze of wiring on the inside--I've included a picture of the upper saucer to show what I mean. I assume that well-done lighting jobs have a lot less of this. Are there any tricks you use to keep things more organized? I have learned through the process that it seems to make a lot more sense to do as much wiring as possible "off to the side" and then install large units at once, but this leads me to always overestimate the amount of wire I need, figuring it is better to have too much than too little. 

Thanks.


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## hal9001 (May 28, 2008)

Hey, what's this mess? A newbie comes along and shows me up? Why, I otta....

Seriously, looks good! _Anyone_ that actually gets to build models puts me to shame!!

I've picked some good tips from this build, thanks!

Carl-


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

Thanks, hal. I appreciate the nice comments. It's been a lot of fun building so far, but I'm starting to enter that territory where I have something half decent going--at least as long as you promise to stand at least 3 feet away at all times, and don't yet look at the mess I made of the port pylon. Now, though, I'm getting nervous. I feel like one stupid mistake could easily ruin everything. A few days ago, I couldn't find one of the Warp Core transfer junctions (the gold colored parts on the ridges even with the bridge). Two frustrating hours later, I found it happily sitting in the corner of the box where I'm sure I'd looked 5 times before.

Now, I'm worried that the seem work/light leaks will eventually doom me, so wish me luck.


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

*Nacelles!*

One nacelle is "done." I spent about 4 hours last night taping for the painting. Basically, I painted everything silver and then covered all but the raised portions, painting them with a thin coat of gray for the two toned effect. You can see the result on the second picture.

This afternoon, I wired up the first nacelle. The blue is a strip of 9 total LEDs, mounted on the inboard side of the "roof" to shine down between the two clear windows. The red nav light is just a 1.8mm LED, while the two white are the original clear pieces shipped with the model with a white LED chip glued to their base.

Bussard lights: I just used a red and an orange flickering 1.8mm LEDs, set right at the bulkhead that separates the front part of the nacelle from the middle. I'll try to take a movie of it and post later. It's not terribly exciting, but has the basic effect.

What you can't see in the pictures, of course, are the many light leaks along the seams. Those will hopefully be taken care of after kids go to bed tonight, but. Those of you who have been following this build are about to see how much of a newbie I really am. Seams are not my forte at all.


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

*Bussard Lights Video*

Here is the link to the Bussard Lights video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK_9SRibcVA

The light completely washed out my poor cell phone camera, but the reflection in the table is pretty close to what it looks like in real life. The flickering LEDs were bought at modeltrainsoftware.com. They do a fair amount of LEDs that come pre-wired with the correct resistor.

I have also puttied the seams and am letting them sit overnight. I used painters tape to mask off the areas just away from the seams so the putty doesn't bleed over into any panel lines, etc. I also tried my best to score back out the "end caps" on the nacelles where there are a number of parallel ridges, but we'll need to see tomorrow how good of a job I did. Part of me is starting to look forward to my Refit build. Since there are so many fewer windows, I plan to put much larger sections together before I paint. I just didn't trust myself to be able to mask the open nacelles of the NX 01 and not get paint all over the clear parts--or to mask off all of the windows on the suacer when I did that earlier.


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

*Decals... really?!*

So I now have the major components each built, painted, and wired: saucer top, bottom, rear strut top & pylons, lower rear strut, and nacelles. I decided to go ahead and put on decals except where two parts will later join together since, for example, I think it'll be a lot easier to do the bottom of the saucer now rather than having to turn the entire ship over and worry about cracking some part or bending the pylons. I started on the saucer top--mostly because it is kinda cool to put that "USS Enterprise... NX 01" on.

"Hey," I thought, there's only a single decal sheet. This'll be no problem. Then, I read more carefully. "Use 80 copies of #52 around hull." This is just for the saucer top. There are 102 copies for the bottom. I guess I know what I'm going to be doing for the next few weeks...

I'll try to remember tomorrow to take a few pics of the nacelles with the lights off so you can see my fairly sad putty/repaint job.


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

*Yuck!*

Well, here is some of my bad nacelle putty work. The little ridges on the "tail cone" section stymied me completely. I tried to use tape just to the left and right of the seam, then putty and while still soft, work back in the ridges with a scribing tool I have, but the results weren't pretty. In addition, you can see that the seam on the other side of the nav light, though it should have been simple, doesn't look too good either. Time to sand, sand, sand, and try again, I guess. Any hints on how to do this would certainly be appreciated.

On the plus side, I have all the decals on the non-nacelles--yes, all 200 some copies of decal #52 and have glued the top and bottom struts to their parts of the saucer. I've included two fun pics with the lights on. (Maybe I'll just have to figure out how to displace it with the nacelles somewhere you can't see clearly.) I really hope that the top and bottom go together smoothly, though somehow I don't think it'll occur without at least a bit of difficultly.


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## charonjr (Mar 27, 2000)

I'm not sure which episode this was. Post Xindi attack, end 3rd season, I am guessing. This is a screen cap HD showing the end of the nacelle. It is depicted here as being smooth. Not sure why the model kit has the ridges.


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## charonjr (Mar 27, 2000)

BTW, my kit has both engines drooping. It's kept me from even wanting to try to build it, because I can"t imagine how to correct 3 dimensionally. Brain injury issue, I'm afraid. I read what you posted. Can you take some pics and post them for me, so I can see what you did, please?


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

charonjr said:


> BTW, my kit has both engines drooping. It's kept me from even wanting to try to build it, because I can"t imagine how to correct 3 dimensionally. Brain injury issue, I'm afraid. I read what you posted. Can you take some pics and post them for me, so I can see what you did, please?


Sure, I'll try to get some pics tonight. Are you asking primarily about the misplaced hole in the nacelle? I'll try to get a few pictures showing what I did, and the dry fit of the nacelle into the pylon--at this point, I'm still only hoping it'll be basically straight. I'm not sure how much fore/aft dropping I'll have, but I'll try to be clear on what I have done/do to fix it.


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

Oh, charonjr, I meant to add that your post came at pretty much the perfect time. I'd completely forgotten that I'll need to go back and paint the bulbs on the back of the nacelles gold. Thanks!


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## charonjr (Mar 27, 2000)

That would be fine. Just need to visually understand your fix so that I can do it too. BTW, I am really impressed with what you are doing!


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

*Nacelle Issues*

So, it is the port nacelle where the hole was drilled incorrectly. The rear semi-circle hole is factory drilled about 1/8" to far inboard. What I did was putty the original hole and sand smooth before painting. In the first picture below, that hole is just barely visible just below the round edge of my tweezers. I then cut a new hole for the post. To do this, I put a small dab of black paint on the post on the pylon and lined up the correctly drilled hole with its post. I used the paint to drill my corrected hole, but purposefully made it a bit too large so I'd be able to move the nacelle a tiny bit in case I was off a smidge. 

Charonjr, let me know if that answers your question, or if there's more you'd like to know or see.

In the second pic, you'll likely not be able to see the incorrect hole, but you will notice that in my dry fit, the front post grabbed and then tore off when I removed the nacelle. Yuck! I'm open to any suggestions on what to do now. I figure I'll just use a lot of CA glue and stand holding the nacelle in place for a nice long time, but if anyone has a good suggestion, please help.

For the last pic, you can see the test fit of the nacelles. (The starboard one went on and off without a hitch, of course.) Both tend to droop away from the center of the ship, but I think if I'm careful shoring them up that'll take care of itself.


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## charonjr (Mar 27, 2000)

larskseme, thank you very much! The pictures make plain what needs to be done. My hands shake a lot these days and I was afraid making shims I couldn't cut would be necessary.


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

*Been a little slow*

I've been fighting off a sinus infection for two weeks, so not much progress until this weekend. I got the final wiring done--except for the nacelles, got her set up on her base and all ready to glue the top to the bottom this evening, except that when I went to take the lid off the glue, the entire glue tip ripped right off... Hopefully, after a trip to the store after work tomorrow, I'll have it glued together tomorrow.

I also got some more light blocking done. There were about 5-6 leaks around the saucer sides and the bottoms, as well as the gold sensor thingys. I simply put an insane amount of canopy glue around the bottom Friday night and let it set until this morning. Then I just painted a nice layer of Testors flat black where I needed it. There is one place that I couldn't seem to reach from the inside, and I'm sure I'll have more than a few leaks once the top is attached.

Hopefully, by the weekend, I'll be ready for the final touch-up painting and be done. I'd guess something like 70-75 hours of work so far, though I'm sure those of you who have some experience could do it in significantly less.


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

Finally got the top and bottom together, but it was ugly. The starboard pylon came unstuck from the strut, some of the pegs didn't align really well and there are massive gaps, especially in the strut area. To top it off, I really showed my newbieness--look at the middle RP in "ENTERPRISE" right there on the front of the nacelle. (Pro-tip: Don't touch decals that you've not really covered--maybe not even then--with glue on your fingers, even by accident.) Fortunately, I think I have fixed it with a black paint pen my wife found in her scrapbooking stuff.

The pylon seems to be stable now that the top and bottom are setting together, but there's a nice gap now on the top that'll need to be filled. It'll be an awkward angle to sand and repaint without it looking too awful. At least I'm learning a lot for my next build! I wonder now if it'd would have been worth it to just spend 2-3 days cutting out the little circles to mask off the windows and do all of the building first, then paint. There're just so many windows... When I do my refit--after a good few months break to not worry about glue, paint, wiring--I have Orbital Drydock's mask set, which includes the window masks. I plan to try to do at least the whole saucer and whole secondary hull before I paint Hopefully, the gray "collar" where they join will let me cover any gaps there.

This was actually the part I have been most nervous about since I started. I understand why the model needs to be designed this way, but having all of the parts of the top and the bottom to line up exactly was always going to be a challenge for me. I hope when I'm finished I have something reasonably nice, and not something that looked like I tried, but ultimately failed.


Now to let her sit overnight and pull the closepins off tomorrow and see if I have one ship, or still two halves.


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

*Finale!*

(Long post. sorry)

Well, I've done as much as I can. Overall, I am moderately pleased -- kind of like how I felt while watching Enterprise -- some good ideas, some bad ideas, some flaws in execution.

My original idea was to chronicle a build by someone who'd never done anything more than 2-3 of the snaptite 1:1000 ST ships, pretty much just following the direction out of the box. Maybe a few of you learned something, at least what not to do:

What went well: 

1) Saucer painting. I used the masks on the Starship Modeler page and my wife's Cameo Silhouette on Parma vinyl. That was easy and not too time consuming. The painting of the struts also went fairly well, though I made my own "masks" out of lots of little pieces of painters tape. My ship is not as silver as I planned, but still has the general look.

2) Lighting. The strip lights worked great on the inside of the saucer and for the nacelle blue lights. I also like the flickering red/orange I put in the Bussard collectors, but if I were to build again, I think I'd use 2 of each in each nacelle. I also used just 1.8mm LEDs for the bottom nav lights (and no plastic from the model, but for the top, painted the lights clear red/green and glued a small LED chip of the right color to each. I really like how that looks. Except for the strips all of the other lights come from ModelTrainSoftware.com. They come pre- resistored and ship fast. 

Not so well: 

1) Glue/model making. The front of the saucer set pretty well, but the back and struts didn't go together well at all. I had a gap of maybe 1/8 inch or more by the time I got to the back of the ship. I think some of that was the amount of light blocking paint I used on the inside--I know now to go back and sand/shave down the pegs some. Fortunately, the putty saved the day. And a lot of canopy glue to a lot of light blocking. If I build her again some day, I'm definitely going to do the struts top and bottom together before I put the saucer parts together.

2) Starboard nacelle. As you can see in the pictures, it is not aligned correctly. In fighting to get the rear to seal, the pylon broke free. I *thought* I had it back right, but once I put on the nacelle I saw the problem. I didn't see anyway to fix it, so I'm struck with it. I'll just have to be thoughtful about how I display it, I guess. To top that off, while installing the thin pieces that go along the nacelle, the last one pushed the clear warp coil back off its peg. I "fixed" it by wedging a bit of extra plastic underneath.

I guess some of that is to be expected. The painting, with good masks and patience is fairly straightforward, and is reasonably easy to do. 


Thanks to all who have followed this build and especially those who made suggestions and comments. Tomorrow or the next day, I'll post a few pics of the mistakes that are still visible, but for now, just a few from my photobucket page where she looks good, along with a pretty cheesy video.


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## barrydancer (Aug 28, 2009)

*Looks awesome, man.*

I'm so jonesing to get started on this one. It's next on my list if and when I finish my 1/350 Refit.


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

Thanks, barry. I've enjoyed the recent updates to your Refit thread as well. I've marked it for that day in the far future when I attempt her.


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## Maritain (Jan 16, 2008)

She looks great,well done!


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

As promised, though a week late, here are a few of the "clearly, he's a newbie" pictures.



In the next picture, the impulse engine housing the the lighter gray. The darker gray is 1/4 inchs of putty to fix my huge gap problem. 

In anything other than a camera flash light, the two grays look basically the same, so I've decided that I'll not try to match the colors any better.

The one really bad mistake was the starboard nacelle alignment. You can see it clearly here:



(The pylon came loose as I was trying to get the top and bottom of the struts to stay together. I didn't realize I'd not lined it back up until it was too late.) I was pretty carefully on the previous pictures and video to only show the best angles (and to keep the light low).


Overall, I think I spent about 100 hours on the ship, though a fair amount of that was redoing something I'd done wrong.

As a final side note, I have been collecting a few of the new Eagle Moss "diecast" ST models. I found the NX01 to be very accurate and helpful. The aztec pattern on the saucer is essentially correct. I've noticed that it and the Enterprise D both seem to have basically the right aztecing. The refit has none whatsoever, while the Excelsior, Reliant, and Stargazer that I have have "fake" aztecing -- i.e. some panel variation colored in, but essentially at random, rather than try to replicate the actual ship.

Thanks again for all of the positive comments and helpful suggestions. Both in this thread, but also all over the site, I've appreciated how much people are willing to share, and how much just lurking around can help.

--Lars


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## Trek Ace (Jul 8, 2001)

You shouldn't be too hard on yourself in regards to this kit. The 1/350 NX-01 is notorious for it's gaps and nacelle alignment problems. The left and right pylons are not symmetrical in shape, there are locating pin misalignments on the mandibles. Both of these requiring extensive corrective measures in order to bring the engines' centerlines into correct alignment with the main hull and each other. Some have gone so far as to install a welded steel armature to force the model into shape. 

I haven't seen you do any less of an effort in trying to make a silk purse out of this sow's ear of a kit. It can look great when it's done, but it's a LOT of work!

You're doing a great job. Don't worry about making mistakes, just keep at it!


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## StarCruiser (Sep 28, 1999)

Yeah - the NX-01 kit was the first large Trek kit from PL and it shows!

More importantly, did you still have fun? If you did, don't worry about it...


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

Thanks for the encouragement. I really did enjoy it--well, 95% of the time: last week when I couldn't get the top and bottom to stay together and it looked like I'd wasted two months of work wasn't a happy day.

I think I learned a lot about what to do and not do next time. I only bought the kit because it was on sale and figured I'd use it as a warm up for the TOS and Refit, but the NX 01 has grown on me a lot. Much of the time while working, I had Enterprise on Netflix and I've come to appreciate the show as well--like the model, not perfect but some good ideas and at times a great deal of fun.


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## WOI (Jun 28, 2012)

That's got to be the most horribly built version of this ship that I
had ever seen!!


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## barrydancer (Aug 28, 2009)

WOI said:


> That's got to be the most horribly built version of this ship that I
> had ever seen!!


Now, that's not very nice or constructive. Considering this is his first model in a long time and he's building a kit a that's notorious for its issues, I'd say it's a wonderful job.


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## tardis1916 (Mar 24, 2004)

barrydancer said:


> Now, that's not very nice or constructive. Considering this is his first model in a long time and he's building a kit a that's notorious for its issues, I'd say it's a wonderful job.


I agree. This model kit is one of the most problematic kits I have ever dealt with. It took me over a month to get the engine alignment somewhat ok so you shouldn't feel bad about it. Most importantly, it's a learning experience. What you learn on building this model will help you with every model in the future. Keep up the good work and don't be discouraged!

On another note, did they ever correct any of these issues with a re-release?


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

WOI said:


> That's got to be the most horribly built version of this ship that I
> had ever seen!!


Actually, WOI, you're right; it likely is the worst. To be 100% honest, if I'd not started this thread as an attempt to show someone with very little experience trying this ship, I'd likely never let the final pictures see the light of day--at least not on a board about modeling; my non-modeling friends will look at it and think "cool" and go about their day basically no matter how bad it is. This audience is--rightly--more critical.

However, the point wasn't to try to "compete" with Captain Han Solo or Spock's Beard or any of the other truly great (or even some of the other "merely competent") builds I've seen. Instead, the point of this was:

1) I'd not seen an NX 01 on this site, and thought it'd be fun.
2) I figured a few people might follow the whole build and I might be able to pick some brains for info and share what I'd learned trying to build her.
3) a good way to keep myself to the fire--"Hey, I've not posted anything in a week, maybe I should do something..."

It is clear that I was quite naive about what it took to build something like this. The lighting actually generally went well, as did the basic painting (not counting final touch-up). This will sound incredibly stupid to those of you who build a lot, but it never even crossed my mind that the model itself might need a lot of work to go together. I knew that models had inconsistencies--that bulb was the wrong size, the window is in the wrong place, the exhaust grill is too wide, etc--now I know. (I should point out that even had I known, it's unlikely that the final product would have been great; in fact, it might have deterred me from even trying.) I don't yet have the skills to pull this off; but someday, if I keep trying I will.

Obviously, I'd have been thrilled if it had gone together perfectly, or even competently. It didn't. I learned a lot for the next model I build, and in a few years, maybe I'll try the NX 01 again.

[Sorry if this sounds overly defensive. I actually agree that WOI is basically correct as a statement of fact, but wonder if the point of the thread was missed.]

--Lars


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## Fozzie (May 25, 2009)

I enjoyed this thread very much. Thanks for sharing your experience building the NX-01!


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## tardis1916 (Mar 24, 2004)

So some helpful hints for anyone who decides to tackle this monster of a model. 



Patience. Take you time and plan every step very carefully. 
Test fit. Test fit every part more than once to make sure you get a good fit. 
Tools. Make sure you have a good set of exacto knives and files. The files will help with making sure everything fits correctly in step 2. 
Quick Grips. These are the best tool for any star trek model. 
http://www.irwin.com/tools/clamps/one-handed-micro-bar-clamps
http://www.irwin.com/tools/clamps/handi-clamps
These are really helpful for holding large parts of a model together, especially the saucer section. I have a dozen of these that I use to hold the saucer together when I do a trek model. It helps line everything up and keeps it together for a solid attachment of the glue. 
You may have to cut or file parts of the engine pylon attachments on the main hull to get a proper alignment. This took me about a month on mine. 
You may want to consider an armature. I know one member of this board was making one, not sure if they're available yet. http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/showthread.php?t=407210
 Finally, have fun! This model is a learning experience for anyone, including the experienced ones. You got further than I did with mine. I just stopped working on it and moved onto something else, Maybe one day I will finally put the decals on. lol

If anyone else has any helpful hints, please type away!


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

Thanks Fozzie and Tardis. I really wish I'd known that the armature thing existed. And I'll get some of the clamps. 

I know I should have done more fit-testing, but after the nacelle peg snapped off on a dry fit, I panicked and was reluctant to have that happen over and over. I also got a case of "almost finished"-itis. 

THough she didn't turn out like I hoped, she's, I think, good enough as first attempt. I learned a whole lot,had a lot of fun building--and daydreaming about building-- and have something I can display and feel mostly proud of. *And*, it gave me a new respect for a ship design I really never thought much of when Enterprise was on.


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## charonjr (Mar 27, 2000)

I like I learned from your posts. I never would have thought that the pylons were not mirror images of each other or that the nacelle alignment would be so difficult or that some parts just don't fit. Your build is inspirational. I haven't tried a build in 20 years.


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## larskseme (Sep 2, 2014)

Thanks charonjr. I had a really good time building and showing what I learned--often by the mistakes I made.


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