ALT 1977 1/400 [18]: Enterprise, part 1

Time for the Enterprise to come into existence.
I have started over three times on this little shuttle. First, due to some stupid printer error (I guess I mean myself) the frame was 3mm too large for the skin to wrap around. so, I started over and saw those rectangular shapes on the nose that had a much too prominent presence, in my eyes.
So, back to the drawing board and a reprint for the 3rd time. And this one is what you see here.

The rest of the pictures is below, after the jump.

 

Left to right: Too big,  not good enough, third try.

Edge glued nose section to the belly

With the old version on the left, I tried to scrape the rectangles off of the nose but it left the surface too scratched and a dab of clear gloss paint didn't do the trick. So I had to start over. 

As usual, here the roughness of the glued edge is much more apparent than in real life. This is more than three times its original size and you see all blemishes even better in macro.

 
I made some small adjustments, for example, I first glued the belly part to the box frame and after I glued the payload bay section, I left it unglued in the box, so I could align it later with the top of the cockpit.
I also cut off the black parts of the nose section that fold around the fuselage and instead chose an edge glue approach, which made the front end a lot smoother in appearance.
After I glued the cockpit on to the nose, I glued the payload bay.
the wings were slightly curved using a knitting needle to get a nice round leading edge. Here's where I am now.
Thanks for watching!
--PK