Sovereign Replicas USS Enterprise NCC 1701-E
1/650th Scale



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Another update and this time, it's one of a twofer...

Thinkin' About Making A Stand Right Here...

Yep, we be back and it's time to give a little thought on how to
hold the whole deal up in the air.

Now by design, the ship that is, this gal is front heavy by no small amount so
something was needed to cope with that.
On top of which, it may be a necessary thing to have it so she can be removed from the
stand in a manner of speaking for transport and so on.

Well in the words of the Lost In Space announcer "Last time as you recall..."

We had got as far as gluing the nacelle and pylon assemblies on to the secondary hull halves, like so...




Sorted as far as that's concerned.

Now to the stand pole thingy.

Only concerns were that it would be wide enough to take all the wiring running down it,
4 pairs to be precise and also not be so thin to fold up under the weight.

So...

Two 305mm lengths of brass tube, one 9mm diameter and one 10mm diameter.

One 305mm long brass strip, 13mm width and 2mm thick.

Assorted filing and cutting tools.

Some solder.

Some flux.

A blowtorch.

A large cup of coffee.

My usual nicotine supply.

And some vanilla fudge...

It may not seem that important to you but it certainly
is from my model making perspective...
So there!

After much slicing, filing, a few clouds of acrid smoke and much faffin' about, Ladies and Gentlemen, I present...

The Bracket !




Now in order to make it fit, a little bit of grinding and gouging had
to take place in both halves of the secondary hull as follows:




And that's the top end of the whole thing to take the bracket,
which fits into the grand scheme of things like so...








And now for the middle pole.
Simply put, 9mm tube center with 10mm outer sleeve soldered together at each end and at three points
down the length by way of shallow cuts in the outer sleeve.


The inner tube had deep slots cut in each end to lock into the bar at the top of the
bracket and the bar in the bottom socket which will be buried into the stand base once i've built it,
said socket which looks like this.


The three parts look like this...


And the assembled item looks something like this...


A swift test fit and you may just get the overall idea.




Ok then, so far so good and now to fix the bracket into one side of the secondary hull.
This is to be done with a fair dab of epoxy glue and some M2.5 nuts and bolts.

First things first, bracket put in, pilot holes drilled, bracket removed,
pilot holes widened to accept the bolts in the fiberglass and through the brass
on the bracket and foil removed from the interior where the glue was to be used.


The only thing to be paid attention to was where the bolts would go in the bottom
and thankfully the fiberglass casting was more than thick enough to drill the holes and
countersink them deep enough to bury the bolt heads, like so.


So a mixing of some epoxy steel, liberally laid on, bracket positioned and everything,
including the builder,
was duly tightened up.


Well I think we can safely say that bugger is going nowhere, which is how it should be.

And that's it for this page and update,
the next one is right on the next page all ready and waiting.

Thought i'd split this into two pages rather than one because i'm odd like that ya know.

More to come so take good care of yaselves and go easy!



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