Aviel Tochterman’s Defiant

I’d almost finished the Defiant according to the enclosed instructions, when realizing I want to add something to personalize it, so I decided to add the main shuttle bay. To do that, after the model was already assembled I had to find a way to crack it open. I cut along a high ridge revolving the flat section of the belly of the ship. Then I cut out the circle of the opening (alas, it is exactly where the base should be connected, but since my addition is on the bottom, I decided it’s irrelevant, for I’ll hang her from the ceiling). The shuttle bay itself is a camera film case and various other plastic sheets. The interior includes the blue pilasters and ceiling beams, duck blue personnel doors, wall mounted Okudagrams, the gray main shuttle door, beige gallery and its red hand rail – all according to the Deep space 9 Technical manual.

Of course I’ve modeled the small type 10 shuttle (1.5 cm) from Das synthetic clay. After it was done, I noticed it shrunk during carving it, which made it too small, so I carved a new one, and turned the older one to the Defiant’s shuttlepod (with luck, found that Micromachine’s runabout is in scale to the Defiant, so it, and my two shuttles were mounted together on a flight display with the Defiant).

I glued the shuttle bay to the Defiant using a hot glue gun (it turned out that the film casing is un-glueable with any type of glue, except for the mass of the hot glue…), and closed back the Defiant.

Basic paint-job — I used a lot of reference pics of the studio model, since the enclosed instructions are not very accurate. Then I marked the raised panels’ lines with medium grey using a 000 brush & a lot of patience.

I hate big decals! They are really hard to handle… Especially rounded ones, like the main name stripe that surrounds the bridge. And to make things worse, the decal sheet had a mustardly residue due to age, which was really hard to get rid of… Besides, with them, she looks like a bloody toy!…

To reduce the toy-ish look, quite a lot of dry bushing was needed, using flat black paint. I drilled the guns’ holes, and dry-brushed the soot caused by all the shootin’, smearing backwards. Generic dust was brushed from the front backwards, and around raised parts. When brushing was done, it was time for liquid smears from the panels’ joints. It was done by tipping the tip of a flat brush in color (black & dark peach), touching it lightly in the edges, and smearing it backwards using the index finger.

Usually it hangs from my ceiling, but for a models show, I’ve assembled a stand for it, posing the ship in mid-flight, my 2 shuttles & runabout in flight, too, all on a round bath-room mirror to reflect the ships bottom side & shuttlebay.

A remark to think about: Comparing the model to the schematics in the DS9 technical manual reveals that the model has a rather squared end, while the schematics show it has a more funnel shape… Which should we trust?!

Aviel Tochterman