Starship Mels

I haven't done as much work on Mels this summer as I'd originally planned. The weather has improved since I started, and I've been spending as much time as possible outside and away from the basement. But, I've squeezed a little model building activity in here and there.

The roof for the dining room is simply a disc with a chunk removed to fit into the rectangular building - it's the disc on the right in the above picture. I had an idea to enhance things a little by adding a 'hat' - part of the saucer section from the starship Enterprise. I used the lower part of the saucer as is shown on the left.

The donor kit was the old Polar Lights U.S.S Enterprise kit. 

Positioning the hat on the main roof in preparation for cutting was done by eye, and a lot of trial-and-error fitting before any cuts were made. Notice that the centre of the dining room roof is not on the corner of the rectangular cut out, but it offset a little.

Once the placement looked right, I taped down the hat and marked the other side with guidelines for cutting.

Cutting started by using a pair of old sprue cutters to nibble out most of wedge.

After the bulk of the wedge material had been removed, various files and sanding boards were used to open up the wedge to the green line. Again there was lots of trial-and-error to get things smoothed and the fit to work. The fit isn't quite perfect yet and I'll need to do some more fitting and trimming prior to installation.

There's lots of open areas inside for wiring. The hat has little plastic stubs for attaching it to its mate on the Enterprise, in this application they will cause it to stand-off from the main roof a little and hopefully I can get some light to shine through that gap to light up the upper roof surface