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sentinel
The U.S.S. Sentinel is a Federation Light Cruiser, designed by Bill Krause ( check out his amazing work on Instagram). He scratch built the original Sentinel, envisioned as a ship from the period between the end of the original Star Trek series and the first movie, in 1/350th scale. This is a kit, based upon Bill's design, from UGH! Models, who unfortunately received the big fat Cease and Desist from the Star Trek gods a year or so ago. The kit is 1/1000 scale, cast resin, from a 3D printed master.

* Overall Hull Color: Tamiya, 1 part XF-19 Sky Gray to 3 parts XF-2 Flat White
* Saucer Circle: Tamiya, 10cc XF-2 white, 1cc XF-55 Deck Tan, one drop of XF-19 Sky Gray
* Engine caps, fins and recess: Vallejo Light Grey 155
* Bridge Band: Vallejo Blue Gray Pale 156
* Ends of Warp Engines: Vallejo Oily Steel 177
* Behind sensor: Tamiya X-32 Titanium Silver
* Engine blue: Vallejo Intense Blue 052
* Engine Red: Vallejo Model Air Red 71.003
* Dullcoat: 30/20 matt to satin Golden Acrylics Clear Varnish

I picked this kit up from the UGH! table in the vendor room at Wonderfest in 2018. I was really impressed with the fit of the parts right out of the box. There were some issues, mostly with printing artifacts of the 3D master that hadn't been sanded smooth before the resin molds were made, but light surface work with sandpaper resolved most of this. During sanding and handling, a couple of phaser emplacements either broke off or revealed voids beneath, so I drilled out those locations on the upper hull and replaced them with tiny glass beads. The Bussard collectors on the front of the warp engines came as vacuum formed clear plastic over resin forms, which when cut away mated with the engines very nicely.

Paint was straight-forward. I made the custom mixes based upon some descriptions I found online, and tweaked them to my liking. The biggest challenge was the light gray circle that runs around the upper hull, which I cut from masking tape using an odd circle cutter I picked up from Starship Modeler years ago (it's long since out of production).

Final touches were the decals, which I had issues with silvering, no matter how glossy of a surface they were applied to, or how much heat and solvent I applied. In the end they look fine, but there's a bit of silvering here and there that jumps out at me simply because I know where to look. I designed and cut the base from black acrylic. The Sentinel commissioning plaque is a resin casting that came with the kit, which I painted to look like weathered brass.

Overall a fun kit and relatively quick build. I was surprised to win a bronze with this model at Wonderfest 2019.

Completed November 2018.

All in progress photos taken with my Samsung S6 Edge phone, final beauty shots done with my Canon 400D (Rebel Xti) and 18-150mm lens, using external daylight-corrected CFL light sources. Post-processing done in Photoshop using a gray-card reference shot.

 

2018-06-18 20.53.43 2018-06-24 18.47.49 2018-09-02 13.04.43 2018-09-22 17.33.39
2018-09-22 17.51.09 2018-09-23 16.13.06 2018-09-24 18.45.33 IMG_4535
IMG_4537 IMG_6635 IMG_6636 IMG_6637
IMG_6638 IMG_6639 IMG_6640  
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