1966 AMT Enterprise Nacelle Dilemma

[TD1701]

Hi Everyone,

I know this may be a futile question but, I am going to ask it anyway. A friend was cleaning out his Mother's house, and he found an original 1966 version of the AMT Enterprise with the lights. I am debating whether it would be possible for me to be able to do a restoration on it. The first big problem that I came across is a broken tab on the port nacelle strut. Anyone that is familiar with this kit knows that there is a hole at the bottom of the strut that a tab locks into inside the secondary hull. These pieces were notorious for breaking easily or at least causing sagging with the nacelles. I have a link to a picture of my dilemma and would like to know if anyone has a solution for this or if I should throw in the towel? I tried a couple of different epoxies but when I tried to install the piece snapped right off. Also, what would be a good way if possible of trying to get intercoolers, Bussard dome, and control reactor loop off to try and clean it up some? Ideally, if someone out there had these versions of nacelles to sell that would be great but, I think that would be pretty difficult to do. If anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear them.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/om1wrwuh8ltcv8i/20180328_175210.jpg?dl=0

Thanks,

Tom

[MSgtUSAFRet]

Tom,

 

I have done a restoration of a 1974 AMT 1/650 Enterprise and I can tell you about my solution; if you don't mind.

 

I went to a beauty supply store and picked-up some fake finger-nail polymer (powder) and nail liquid (monomer). I had some plaster of paris I

could use and most of the other items I used I had on hand.

 

1. This is the plan. I would use the spare Round2 pylon to make an impression of the male tab portion. I used a carpenter nail bulk packages, actually 2 of them, to hold the plaster while I made the impression. Cardboard would absorb the water from the plaster too quickly and make the stone set too quickly. That's  the reason for the plastic packaging.




 2. I filled the packaging with a bulk of stone and then, after painted stone onto the pylon itself to capture the detail, I gently laid the painted pylon into the wet stone supporting it with the storage lids. Here I also had to make sure there were no undercuts in the stone or in the pylon so the second stone half would separate from the first.




3. I applied liberal amounts of separator, Vaseline, to the first half so the second half wouldn't bond with the first. I also used Vaseline to fill any holes in the first half as well as blockout some minor undercuts I had. I took the second bulk nail packaging and cut the bottom out to allow me access to pour the second half. I made another mix of stone and, after painting the exposed pylon with wet stone, taped the second package to the first and quickly filled the second half with the stone.



While the stone was setting, I prepped the restroation pylon to allow for a finish line and to allow more surface for the fingernail acrylic to grab.


4.  Then, I separated the two halves and took out the spare Round2 pylon. This left me to halves of the impression. I applied liberal amounts of Vaseline to the second half and blocked out undercuts.




The second pylon needed some additional reinforcement as it didn't have enough surface area for the new acrylic to grab on to. I had some old dremel burs I had broken the head off during use, and superglued them to the inside of the restoration pylon.




I mixed up an approximate 2:1 polymer to monomer acrylic until I got the consistency of warm butter. Working quickly, as the acrylic set time was around 5 minutes, I painted the restoration pylon with wet acrylic and then set it in the first half. Placing the remaining wet acrylic, which was now like play-do consistency, I carefully placed the second half over the first and gently closed the two together. I placed a 4" C-clamp around the mold to help combat expansion. (Didn't know if there would be any, but didn't want to take a chance.)




 5. After about 35 minutes and constantly checking a small sample of the same batch of acrylic for hardness, I opened the mold and, after cleaning off the gross flash, here is the restored pylon support tab.



 

6. Once I had glued the second pylon back together, I used the same process to create the support tab on the second pylon. Here are the two pylons together. I still needed to do some finishing and sanding before they are ready to assemble, but at least I have something to work with now.






For the secondary hull, I had to break it apart as well. I couldn't think of a way to salvage the original nacelle supports, so I ground them away with a Dremel bur.

I scratch-built some recepticals for the tabs and surrounded them with Millput to make sure they wouldn't break again.







 

Then I built the pylons per my usual tactics. It is a lot of work but as you can see in the gallery link it looks pretty good.

 

Apologies for the long post, but I thought you might be interested in the  process I used to make the tabs.

 

Hope you enjoyed reading!

 

Let me know if you have any questions.

 

Steve

[ImWolf]

I'm assuming this is the 1st issue Aurora/AMT kit with just the saucer domes being lighted, in which case any other kit up until the R2 release would have replacement parts you could use if you want to spend a few bucks on eBay.

Since the nacelles did not need to accommodate any wiring on this kit, you could instead try splitting the struts apart enough to glue a new scratch built piece in between them. You could make the part as long as the strut with plenty of glue surface and carefully fabricate the tab/hole at the end.

Although this kit might have some nostalgic value, it's really not a very accurate representation of the Enterprise....  Myself, I wouldn't spend too much time or trouble on it....   :b

Wolf

[MSgtUSAFRet]

Yeah, Wolf, it's not accurate and it would have to be a nostalgic build; but it would be fun nonetheless!

I built mine here (thanks to photobucket scandal most of the latter links are broken; working to fix that...) as a restoration effort of the AMT model; not as a screen accurate build.

Before I learned of the aftermarket parts, uhm...market, I tried to make a new model (1984) as accurate as I could with on-hand, OOB parts.

Still, it could be built as a representation of the AMT model as would have been built in the late 60's and turn out beautiful.

Tom, should you be interested, David Shaw did some tracings of the of the windows for the model and made a clean sheet available for use. I used  them on mine as shown in the gallery link above. I have the link for them in by build thread should you want them.

http://www.shawcomputing.net/racerx/trek_stuff/models/AMT_1966_project/1966_decal_sheet.jpg

Have fun and good luck!

Steve

[ImWolf]

Wow Steve..... I missed your restoration on that Connie....   that was some great effort and payoff!!!

[MSgtUSAFRet]

Wow Steve..... I missed your restoration on that Connie....   that was some great effort and payoff!!!

Thanks, Wolf! I am very happy with how it turned out!

I just hope Tom will be able to do a restore on his find and show us his success!

Steve

[TD1701]

Hi Steve and Wolf. Sorry, I posted this a couple of weeks ago and almost forgot about it. I've been down sick for the last week with a nasty cold and haven't been checking the boards that much. Wow Steve! I always enjoy following your builds, and seeing your solution here is pretty cool. I would love to see your Enterprise once she is finished. BTW sorry to hear about your Romulan BOP, from  what I saw it was heartbreaking. I hope that you are going to be able to repair it. What I wound up doing before I got sick was finding a couple of more recent Round 2 nacelles that I had in a parts box and recreating the square slot in the solid tab. I traced the square from the original nacelle the scribed and filed the slot into the new nacelle. This actually worked out better than I had hoped, and the tab actually locked the nacelle in place.

The new nacelle is on the left, the old one on the right.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2pioinbo7zy2h08/20180331_143418.jpg?dl=0

Attached to the secondary hull With the tabs in place.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/99so2ubdddmrz4w/20180331_171726.jpg?dl=0

A view from the top with both nacelles attached.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/224ydgzyfifmmx6/20180331_164531.jpg?dl=0

I would have liked to share pictures instead of links but, I don't know how to do that, sorry. A full restoration with all original parts was what I was hoping for but, I don't think that's realistic. After freezing off the interccoolers, control reactors, and the domes, it would require a lot of work to restore the nacelles. Apparently my friend liked glue back in the day because he used a lot of it on this kit. If I can get my hands on a pair of AMT/Round 2 TOS nacelles that would be great because the two I have I sanded off all of the detail and cut them down for JT graphics parts years ago. I contacted Round 2 a week ago but, they said they had no parts for that kit. Anyway, everything right now is in a box waiting to see where I go from here while I work on other projects.

Tom

[TD1701]

It's been a while since I've been online and I have made a little bit of progress. I've decided to scrap the idea of using the current version of the nacelles because I have not been able to find some that anyone was unwilling or unable to part with. So, going back to the chalkboard I went back over all of your great suggestions and this was I went with. I bought some brass tubing from my local LHS. I bent it into a U shape, drilled 2 holes in the bottom of the pylon and with a toothpick put in some slow curing epoxy for both metal and plastic. I matched the opening as close as I could to the starboard nacelle.




I glued it a little too narrow which actually worked to my advantage. I filed the inside of the bottom of the loop flat then inserted the tab. Wow! I could not have hoped for a better result. It snapped right into place as if the original nacelle opening were there.



The nacelles with a little tweaking line up very nicely and could possibly be nice and straight.



I'm pretty excited about the results, and hopefully, I will be able to restore it after all.

Tom

[TD1701]

In my last reply, I forgot to say thanks to everyone who responded and gave all of your awesome suggestions! If it wasn't for your help I wouldn't have gotten this far.

Tom

[starsiegeplayer]

Nice looking repair job!

[MSgtUSAFRet]

Yep, NICE repair, Tom!

Hope we provided some brain fluids (thoughts and ideas) to you! And you came up with a brilliant solutions all your own!

Steve

[TD1701]

Nice looking repair job!

Thank you Starsiegeplayer I really appreciate it!!!

Yep, NICE repair, Tom!

Hope we provided some brain fluids (thoughts and ideas) to you! And you came up with a brilliant solutions all your own!

Absolutely Steve! Your ideas inspired me to eventually come up with this idea. It took me a while because I had to concentrate on some personal things and my priority right now is getting the Eagle done. I will try and get that done over the next couple of weeks or so then turn my attention back to this.