trekprops.de

One of the most important elements for the final appearance of a prop is the paint in the correct color. Usually automotive lacquers are used because they are relatively cheap and easy to get. That’s why they were also used to create most of the original props. However some people prefer to use an airbrush system. Remember: A surface painted with an automotive lacquer can of course be further treated with other automotive products such as car polish and wax. [More…]

Very useful when making a mold: Vaseline. It is used as a release agent for silicone mold halves and helps to avoid enclosing the master model in a silicone block. Vaseline is applied with a brush – don’t use it sparingly! There are more specialized release agents for silicone molds, but Vaseline works just fine for me. [More…]

For masking tasks on plain surfaces I use a special painters tape. It produces a very clean paint line when applied correctly and avoids ridges on the edges of painted areas. [More…]

Special kinds of spray paints are used to achieve certain effects on a surface. This chrome silver spray contains a high level of real metal particles thus creating a nearly mirror like finish. It’s however important to have a very smooth surface to make this happen. So, a lot of sanding is necessary for this. [More…]

Welcome to the online assembly instructions for my ODN scanner hero kit. In this tutorial, you’ll see how to prepare the electronics for installation and how to insert them into the body. You’ll also learn how to prepare and assemble the hollow resin shells to build up a fully functional hero ODN scanner. First, here’s a pic of the entire kit: 2 resin body parts, electronics, acrylic rod, display graphics, styrene (1.0 mm and 1.5 mm), 2 screws, templates for the styrene details. That’s all you need, so let’s begin! [More…]

In this second installment of my ODN Scanner progress report I will describe how the finished master model (see Part I) is used to fabricate a silicone rubber mold which then can be used to cast resin kit parts.

Because the finished prop was supposed to contain an electric circuit with a super bright red LED and five green sequencing lights, the mold had to be done in a way so that the [More…]

Welcome to the first part of my progress report covering the creation of my ODN Scanner! In this part I will show you how I scratchbuilt the prototype (the so-called master model) of this prop that I will later cast in resin. Part II and the Tutorial will then cover how I did the silicone rubber mold and how to build up one of the resulting kits. [More…]

Chief engineers using their wonderful high tech instruments to diagnose, calibrate and repair circuits and talking “technobabble” – that’s what I love about Star Trek! Geordi LaForge, Miles O’Brien and B’Elanna Torres are some of my favourite characters because they know every system and every technical detail on their ship inside and out – from waste disposal to the warp core. [More…]

How do you build a PADD? Well, it’s easy, if you have the right kit. In this tutorial I want to show you how to build up one of Matt Munson’s small Voyager PADD kits. Although he claims to build these is under an hour, I would recommend to take a little more time… [More…]

PADDs (Personal Access and Display Device) can be seen everywhere in “Star Trek”. They are used to transfer and read reports, write letters, view pictures from the computers database etc. A real multi usage device!

What you see here is a PADD from “Star Trek: Voyager”. To be precise, it’s the smaller one of the two common types from the show – the one that was carried around in nearly [More…]