Mediocre Modeler

Next on the bench is the USS Titan. This ship was mentioned in the motion picture Star Trek Nemesis and will be captained by William T. Riker. At the time there was no design for the luna class starship. A contest was held, and the winning design was created by Sean Tourangeau. This resin kit by Starcraft is in 1:1400 scale. Which is an odd scale. I only have one other kit, the USS Voyager, in this scale. Thusly, they will be displayed in an inflight diorama.

First Prep.

I already glued the hull and saucer section together in the picture to the side. There was a pretty good sized gap between the two pieces. So I ended up using a general purpose adhesive to bind the two together. Next the struts were attached to the nacelles. One of the nice things about resin kits. There are usually only a handful for parts to deal with. No small parts to cut off trees. Which, for me, make most resin kits a quicky build. You get to complete a model quickly and proudly add another ship to the display case.

Normally the process goes sand, prime, sand, paint. This time I tried priming first. Which in the initial phase seems to be working out well. It’s much easier to see where i need to sand. The resin took the primer well and the casting is really good. One detail that really stands out are the escape pods. Most plastic kits just give you a decal and a smooth spot to place it. They took the time to sculpt the escape pods onto the model. Giving you the option of just foregoing the provided decal and paint the pods in place. This is the first time I’ve seen this on a kit. But most of the other resin kits are all in 1:2500 scale. Maybe the 1:1400 scale allows them the room to do this. Although it means more work for the builder. In the end, the model will display much better by taking the extra effort.

 Base Coat

   For whatever reason the painting gods are not with me on this one. To get the Federation blue\gray. most kits tell you to mix aggressor gray and blue or some even white. Honestly, I hate mixing paint. Mix too much and you have to story it. Mix to little and you hate to remix and that may not match. After a trip to the hobby shop, and bringing two new potential colors, tamiya Royal Gray XF-80 and Ocean Gray XF-82. Both are interesting colors, but neither were quite right. I settled on Model Master Flint Gray. The same color that was used to paint the Argo Shuttle.  This will most likely be my official Starfleet color. Since I had the paint and was going to display the Voyager with the Titan, it got painted as well. The nacelles for the Voyager aren’t painted yet. But the paint laid down well on everything else and the color is spot on for me. Next I’ll assembly the two ships and retouch the base coat. Hopefully then we will be ready for detail painting and decals.

Paint and Decal

     It took paint real well. Due to the fact that I didn’t have a small enough brush the windows didn’t get painted. But it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Surprisingly, the decals were easy to remove from the backing and didn’t dissolve. Once everything dried. The ship was assembled for a final clear coat.

Showtime

The Voyager was built along side the Titan using the same paints. I had the usual trouble with the decals and ended up using Federation decals from other models. Pictured together they look really good. Both kits were a basic resin build. Aside from the cost of resin making the kits a bit pricey. I’m still glad they are in the collection. This may be the only way we get a USS Titan. For that reason alone it was worth the purchase.