 |
The Warp Engine Grills
06 July 2006
The warp engines of the Refit Enterprise are unique in Trekdom. They are the only Federation warp engine nacelles I know of that do not have glowing red ends (which are called Bussard collectors, you know). Additionally, they only glow blue on the inboard side of the grill. Finally, the whole grill does not glow; instead, there are several parallel glowing lines. It is this last feature that I am talking about this time. The job has been made a little easier by the fact that the grills of the model are molded in clear plastic with raised rib detail. The catch is that the recesses between the ribs are the parts that glow.
So, I had to light block the raised areas while leaving the grooves clear. Just like I did with the deflector dish, I considered several different methods of painting the grills, including liquid mask, black tape to block the light instead of paint, and even (ugh) painting them by hand. I ultimately decided to go with using tape to mask the grooves and painting the rest of the grill black. The grooves are sufficiently small that I was unable to locate commercial tape that was small enough to fit down in them. So, I had to make my own using 3/4" Scotch blue painter's tape, a ruler, and an X-acto knife. Before I started masking the grooves, I frosted the inside of the grills using the same Rustoleum Frosted Glass spray that I used on the deflector. I was well pleased with the way this product helped to distribute light on the dish, so I hoped that it would do the same for the grills.
Left: Cutting
strips of tape.
Center: Here the grooves have been masked on the forsted grill.
Right: A comparison between the masked and unmasked grill.
I didn't actually measure each strip of tape. Rather, I experimented with a couple of widths, and just eyeballed each strip. Getting them into the grills took a little bit of work, as the tape would tend to get caught on the raised areas an not smooth down in a straight line. It took a bit of finagling and a few toothpicks, but I finally managed to get the tape where I wanted it! I did the grills one at a time, as I was a little unsure how the effect would turn out and I didn't want to mess up both grills at once! Once the outside of the grills were masked, I masked the entire inside to avoid overspray (this task was easy considering the grills are about the exact width of the 3/4" tape!) and painted the entire outside with flat black spray paint.
Above: The painted grill test-fitted to the nacelle.
Once the black paint had dried, I nervously unmasked the grill only to discover that my attempt had succeeded brilliantly! The grill lines came out reasonably straight and crisp. They aren't perfect, but the imperfections are small enough for my tastes, and my bet is that they will be less noticeable on the final model. I couldn't resist the temptation to see it lit blue, so I rigged up a couple of test LED's to see how it looked.
Left: The
final glow will be a bit more even and brighter.
Right: This shot gives a good look at the painted raised areas.
Overall, this particular step of the ship's construction proved to be a fairly easy one, and came out almost exactly as I hoped it would. Cutting the tape and masking the grill was a bit tedious, but in the end the effect was worth the effort.
Andy Rucker