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  [21-Mar-09] The making of the 'Defiant'
The making of the Defiant lasted many weeks and most of the delay was induced by the pace set by my son's interest. I wanted him to witness the making of Defiant all the way. I would call this endeavor a tiny effort from my side to show my 6 year old, the joys of creation and building things by his own hands. It also turned out to be a good exercise for building the spirit of team work between me and my son. The images below, depict in slow progression how we built the "Defiant" from sheets of Styrofoam.

<p>To build a realistic model, it was essential to determine the scaling factor and the absolute measurements in 3-dimensions of our scaled down model. This was probably one of the most difficult parts, since we had to work our way through blueprints of Defiant available on the Internet and scale them down in all three dimensions. We then glued enough styrofoam sheets together to obtain the desired height. At this point, Defiant was nothing more than a block of rectangular styrofoam with the outlies of the top-view profile marked out. The small wing like projections that you see in the image are intended to provide support to the wings when we fit them in later. <p>We have cut out the profile as seen from the top view. The height has not been touched and remains the same. <p>This image shows the first attempt at carving in the third dimension. Notice the front part (left in image). A smooth curvature has been arrived at by cutting and sanding away styrofoam. Arriving at the optimal grain size of the sand paper was critical since a coarser grain or a very fine grain will peel away balls of styrofoam making the surface extremely uneven. <p>Now we have created the encompassing cuboid to house the warp nacelles. Notice how the layers have been glued around the wing supports that we had left on the main body. This provides support to the bulky warp nacelles that we will carve out later. <p>This image shows how we have carved out the warp nascle surface. The surface looks difficult, but is much easier than carving out the front curved portion. The curvature of the warp nacelle is mostly an extension of the nacelle front profile. The only important thing we had to had to be careful about was to ensure that both the nacelles are similar in curvature and dimension, since it is these nacelles that provide the maximum feeling of symetry in the Defiant. <p>At this stage, we have carved out the underbelly and have fixed the crew quarters which cant be seen from this angle. Also fixed are the top slices where you can see the circular engraving (where USS Defiant will be embossed later). <p>At this phase, we have carved out the posterior implulse booster and have fitted the warhead at the front. Structurally, the Defiant is almost finished. Just have to ensure that we smoothen out the surface before adding the surface features. <p>We chose a 1:1 mixture of wall putty and fevicol (synthetic glue) to smoothen the surface of the Defiant. This was a styrofoam friendly material. Stryrofoam is very sensitive to organic liquids and easily corrordes, so we had to choose some structural paste which was water based. Very thin coates of the putty-glue mixture was applied and allowed to dry. Thin coates ensure that cracks do not develop and even if they do, they are taken care of in the next coat. The glue ensure that the dried putty sticks to the surface and does not peel off easily. Once we have a smooth coat, we need to sand polish it to get a smooth surface. To bring sheen to the surface, we have put the base coat (white acrylic color). You can see the shine on the surface in the image to the left. <p>We have started paining the surface with acrylic colors. This was a phase where we let our imagination choose the color and move the brush. You will notice that the color combination is radically different from what the real Defiants colors were. Using the acrylic base paint and colors ensure that the Defiant is waterproof. <p>Defiant is now complete!! The images below show the completed Defiant from multiple perspectives. After being towed around the entire house (with full sound effects), my son has finally grown out of it. It now hangs proudly in our bedroom - reminding us of the good time we had building it.<p> A larger picture can be found <a href="/art/defiant/index.shtml"> here</a>. <p>Completed Defiant - side profile <p>Completed Defiant - front profile

 

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