ISD Chimaera

I'm cleaning up my old blog and moving several old posts from there to here. Here is the consolidated postings about my Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera, total build time just over three months:

For my build I am planning on creating my own Star Destroyer. While I will be using reference pictures of the studio models, I am not trying to recreate one or the other. I am staring with the AMT Star Destroyer model as a base. This is not a good kit by any measure. I have acquired multiple upgrade kits to use. So far I have:

Arvey Model Products resin trench set

AMP Bridge and Spine resin set

Several 1/700 scale battleship kits, out of which I will be replacing the turbolasers

Odyssey Slipways engine bell resin set

Two Odyssey Slipways dorsal photo etch detail sets

A decal set by Nicholas Sagan to use as a scribing template for the panel lines as well as sheet of vinyl for detailing

Evergreen sheet styrene and rod.

The kit has raised panel lines. Don't know why, but they are awful. Step one, sand them all off. This took me several days.

Here is the bottom hull smooth, with the holes for the kit stand filled in.

The next step from here, will be to cut and add the decals for the panel lines. I will do them one at a time, and using the backside of an old exacto scribe the lines from the decal into the hull. I have to do this slowly but the end result will be way worth the effort.

After sanding all of the raised panel lines off of this kit, I am now adding the scribing template decals. I started off applying them as they were printed on the sheet.

Big, BIG mistake. When I started scribing over the decal, huge sections tore up, and as a result this whole side ended up being free handed. Not at all the look I wanted. But, it did teach me a new better way to work this whole mess. I started cutting the decals smaller and used a setting solution for decals. This helped me to not rub off huge sections of decal.

Thankfully, Nick sent me a huge sheet of vinyl with the decals. This stuff is great. It is very thin, flexible and self adhesive. As you can see in the previous photo, I'm using it to add raised surface detail and conveniently cover any bad scribe lines. The last step in the process is to add the photo etch upgrade set. This adds missing detail and also helps to cover and blend a lot of my scribing errors.

Just a few photos showing some more scribing. I am about halfway done with the ventral hull, so hopefully I will be done with the slow and tedious soon!

Distance shot of the Ventral Hull. Since I sanded everything smooth for the scribing, all the raised chips had to be added back. I also added some panels and all the piping is thin brass rod.

A shot of the base. The Imperial Crest is a window decal, and since I'm modeling the ISD Chimaera I added Grand Admiral Thrawn in there as well. Thrawn is figure from the Star Wars miniatures game:

I finished placing the resin trench upgrades in, and joined the two hulls. The first pic shows the kit part vs the AMP resin part. You can see the difference in height and detail.

Finally done adding all the details to this thing and am now ready to primer and paint. I have added a ton of scratch built parts and even more photo etch and spare plastic parts, here they are:

I built the shield domes completely from scratch. They are glass beads on a styrene rod. I then cut the tips off of some 1/700 scale battleship guns for the top antenna, and then used longer barrels from the same kit with a bit of brass rod for the bottom.

For the main guns I used turrets from the 1/700 scale battleships, but instead of using the solid plastic barrels I replaced them with metal tubes. In the lab we use a tool called a Diff-safe for making blood smears on slides. It's just a hollow metal tube with a plastic adapter on the end. You put the metal part through the rubber stopper on the sample tube, press and make a slide. Since I really wanted detail on the Star Destroyer, I cut the metal tube off and used them for the barrels.

And here they are, not bad for guns with a diameter of less than 1mm:

The Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera is done! Whoo, that was a long one. Just for fun, I thought I would include comparison pics of the last Star Destroyer I built about 3 years ago:

The Bridge from the old:

And the new:

Super Structure Detail:

Bridge Spine and Reactor plate:

Side Trenches:

Overall:

A few detail shots of the Chimaera:

Last, a group shot of my Star Destroyer Fleet. They are all 1/4222 scale, so each one is to scale with the others.