The next thing I need to do is to build the Cargo Bay. I had an extra set after trading my pre-production version with a friend who had no use for it. So, for the rest of the afternoon/evening, I was drilling and cutting out holes on the cargo bay walls. This was not as easy as I expected. Then again, this is the punishment for over-thinking too much and being lazy.
THE REAR WALLS
There are 9 holes I need to make, with four in the port side and five on the starboard. My theory of using the 1.0mm chisel to scrap the plastic out did not really work as well as I (over)thought. The idea was to make a sharp edge at both ends of the rough rectangle and then using the same chisel, scrape off the excess middle plastic until it was thin enough to be cut with a knife.
Let me tell you this that this is a very bad idea. Although the plastic felt soft, the moment I used the chisel to push through, there were cracks.
This is the port side wall (left) with the LEDs in position. The holes will be light-blocked first and then covered with very thin white styrene strips. I was thinking of using sanded down clear plastic but I do not have any. Also, they might show the hot-spots more than the styrene strips. As for the insides of the rectangle holes, I will give it a spray of white instead of silver (since the silver particles might create a short with the LEDs).
The next method is to use the micro polishing pen which I bought 2 years ago and completely forgotten about it. I modified it into a low powered drill with a mini chuck. Its not exactly accurate but as least it works. It thinned the windows (by removing the three square details) in minutes.
Next would be to drill out two 0.7mm holes at each end of the rectangles from behind. I can then either use the scriber to scrape the plastic off or, the pen knife to score away the plastic. Either way, with the excess plastics gone, I used the 1000 grit file to get nice rectangle and the Tamiya thin cement to remove any lingering plastic floss.
The front end of the walls are not that great. It’s like drilling out the windows of the AMT/ERTL Enterprise-D all over again. You can see that this is all going downhill. I might want to look for my ‘lost’ Tamiya drill…
The different between using minimal steps and brute force (top, port side) compared to well, more steps and tools (bottom, starboard side). So, yeah, I need to putty the missing cracks before I can continue.
