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SCI-FI MODELS
Starfury
Venator Star destroyer
Klingon cruiser
Modded "Maquis" fighter

Building a "Venator" class Star destroyer

There are not many parts to this kit, but the work is all in the preparation & painting to make it into a great model.  I know there are a lot of pages from other model makers to make a very accurate version & I will try to do one in the future, but for now I will show what I had to do for a stock version, but look at the painting side to improve things in my limited view.

Section 1  :- Building the control tower

Only 9 parts make up the tower, but a fair bit of filling etc is required to remove the join lines.  I started by gluing the inner parts 8 & 6  to the main tower sections 5 & 7.  When dried there were large gaps so out comes the filler & after two phases of filling & sanding the area looked right & smooth.  

I then glued the rest of the bottom tower parts together & found they only needed a small amount of filling at the top joins. 

It was now time just to finish the dual control tower parts.  After gluing I could not miss the very poor moulding that gave a deep gap all around the edge, now I know this will on the underside when finished, but it still needs work.

It took three passes of filling & sanding working down to a very fine grade to remove the gaps & give a smooth feel.  As these will only be held on by a couple of pins I decided to leave them off till the start of the painting stage.   

SECTION 2  :- Hanger bay & lower detail trim

Very simple stage & it is just a case of gluing the hanger bay & lower trim in place

SECTION 3  :- Side details of Star Destroyer

It is best to do some test fitting of the parts before you glue them in. I found that when looking at the joins there were very large gaps that would have shown up so I had to fit strips of thin plastic card on the edge & if needed a light and to get the correct thickness..

Now all the side frames had had card & sanding where needed all the side pieces were now glued in.

SECTION 4 :- Engine sub assembly 

While the side details were drying I started on the sub assembly of the Venator engines (stages 7,9,10 & 11).  The main thrusters come in 2 sizes but the actual build is the same.  The main part consists of 2 halves of the engine & then a nozzle section.  As the 2 halves come together there either was some cleaver design or just luck in that the seam line disappears so there is no area to fill & sand.

There are also 4 sets of smaller thrusters (stages 14 to 17) which just consist of 2 sections, so I did these parts as well & allowed to dry. These did need some filling & sanding to sort out some joint issues.  

Part 2 will be building the engines up & more work on the actual main body. Now Online