USS Grissom NCC-638 & Klingon Bird of Prey (2018, 1:100)

September 15th, 2024 - Here's the box for this nice little set. As you can see, I'm beginning with the traditional sprue inspection and wash in warm, soapy water. 

September 15th, 2024 - You get 4 bags of parts: 1 for the BoP (2 sprues), 1 for the Grissom (2 sprues), 1 for the clear parts, and 1 for the two mini stands. 

September 15th, 2024 - The upper body half of the BoP had come off the sprue somewhere in transit, but that was the only thing that did. 

September 15th, 2024 - I like the shade of green that they molded it in. Reminds me of Haribo, or gummy bears. 😄 Also, the BoP parts are quite well detailed. 

September 15th, 2024 - I had to take this picture again, because it was a bit blurry. 😄 In comparison, the Grissom parts are not as well detailed, but the decals for this one more than make up for it. 

September 15th, 2024 - The stands. How twee!  

September 15th, 2024 - Yes, so, here is the decal sheet. As you can see, those Grissom decs are pretty well detailed, and quite large too. It will be a case of wallpapering them on really. Plus, you can select from 4 different names and registry numbers:

USS Pegasus, NCC-53847 (Riker's old ship that was used to test a Starfleet cloaking device and got stuck in an asteroid lol - TNG s7 e12)
USS Vico, NCC-18834 (wrecked in TNG s5 e11; should be NAR, or SS, rather than NCC)
USS Cochrane, NCC-58318 (seen 3 times in TNG and DS9, serving as a taxi for characters; also fought in the Dominion War)
USS Oberth, NCC-602 (prototype)
USS Grissom, NCC-638 (gets blown up in Search for Spock)

Note that the "Grissom" name and numbers are integrated into the two circular pinstripe decals, so you would need to cut them up to modify the name and reg. 

September 17th, 2024 - Time to start putting things together! Starting with the lower hull, it was a simple job to clip the parts out - being careful to clip away from the edge of course, so as not to create any small straight edges on these largely curved parts. This is especially important on the saucer, which we'll see in a minute. Anyway, in this picture the yellow lines show where, perhaps inevitably, the fit is a little loose. (I didn't glue the two halves together because they make a nice tight fit anyway).  

September 17th, 2024 - After adding a coupe of clamps fore and aft (the pressure of which was enough to close the gaps by itself), I ran some Tamiya Extra Thin glue over the gaps to bond them together. As you can see, this worked very well, except perhaps for that lower-left quadrant (fore, port), which I've just glued again a tiny bit. I expect that the base coat and paint on top will take care of the rest.  

September 20th, 2024 - Today I glued the saucer to the upper hull. Again, you want to be careful here with the clipping and sanding, to maintain the circular edge. Also, be sure that you fully sand down the nub on the rim of the upper disc part (left part in the photo), because it will stop you from getting a perfect fit to the big lower part (right in the photo). (Yes, it happened to me). 😄 

September 22nd, 2024 - Base coats! Because it's been a few months with my paints just sitting on the shelf, I was a bit nervous about what would come out. So, I did my usual trick that I use for loosening up modelling glue, super glue, tubes of silicone sealant for plumbing work - standing the cans up in a kitchen sink full of hot water for 10 minutes, and then shaking the s*** out of them for two solid minutes. And that worked! The white is my usual Vallejo white primer, and the black is Citadel Chaos Black primer.  

September 23rd, 2024 - I decided to let the black primer on the grilles serve as the black paint too. I will add a black wash to the grilles to give them some gloss or something, but otherwise they look really good as they are. Which you can't see, because here they are taped up in preparation for the white hull paint. This was the only bit of masking I had to do on any of the parts, because everything is white. There are some small details and panels that need other colours, which we'll look at in a moment.  

September 23rd, 2024 - Here's the upper hull with the white primer coat. Since the last kit that I built and posted here, I got a new phone (a Xiaomi Poko C65, for the record). Compared to the camera on my old Huawei, this camera is insanely good. You can tell how good it is because the old phone never would have picked up all the fluff and crap on the hull here. Fortunately, this is all just dust that settled temporarily, like, not that it's stuck in the paint. Phew! That blemish at about 4 o'clock on the saucer is real though. I'll deal with that later. 

September 24th, 2024 - Primed lower hull.  

September 24th, 2024 - One thing I missed earlier, pre-painting, are these mad gaps between the pylons and the lower hull. I have decided to fill them in, so I've ordered a tube of Vallejo acrylic putty, with the needle-nose applicator tip. It should arrive tomorrow or Thursday, so then I will tidy up that lower hull a bit, fill the gaps, and re-paint it. 

September 24th, 2024 - Speaking of paint, today I had a look at the decals and places that need paint detailing. I did that because I was wondering how much of this thing is going to be wallpapered with decals, and the answer is "quite a lot of it, actually." 😄 There a few places that need a shade of ye olde egg-shell blue, and some places that need silver (the bridge dome and the top of the lower hull). I do not really like silver on my Trek kits - the bridge domes of various Starfleet vessels have demanded silver, and I've always gone grey on them, which I will do here too. I also think that I will try to brush paint the blue and grey panels...  

October 2nd, 2024 - So, I've spent the last week slowly puttying and sanding, puttying and sanding. The fabled Vallejo Acrylic Putty with needle-nose applicator arrived, which you can see here next to the paint-bottle like one I (unwittingly) got last time. Seriously, I think that having the applicator attached to the tube is essential. It's just so much easier and less wasteful to pipe it in to small cracks and things. 

October 2nd, 2024 - Anyway, here are the 'armpits', nicely filled in. (Compare to three photos ago!). 

October 2nd, 2024 - As you can see in this strategically placed 'before' photo, the gap on this side was quite severe, and that's mostly down to me being clumsy with the snippers. Which is crazy to me, because I was so careful to snip away from the edge and then file the nub down. But oh well, that's why we have putty. 😄 

October 2nd, 2024 - The end result. I should file the front edge a bit smoother, but I also feel like I'm going to do a 'Classic Me' and end up filing the saucer into a square shape or something stupid. 😄 One thing I keep reminding myself about working at this scale is something that I just heard a few days ago in the AllScaleTrek YouTube review of the 8-piece Adversaries Set, which is that when you go in very close with the camera, you see every tiny spec and imperfection writ large, but when the model is on your shelf and people are just looking at it from a normal distance, the imperfections are much less visible. So, that's quite reassuring.

Okay, everything has been painted white already with the ol' Tamiya TS-27 Matt White, so I suppose the next step will be to paint some details and start decalling.