Sometimes, you want to finish something as quickly as possible. You desperately want to make progress, feel the urge to get back to it continuously and yet you can’t find any time to do just that. You just can’t, and every step takes forever as a result. That pretty much sums up the situation I’m in right now with this project.

Anyhow, as you can see I finally did manage to take the next step by finishing another important part of the tool – the business end! It’s a very detailed piece that consists of four separate parts right now (I’m not sure yet how I’m going to mold it though). And four very tiny parts I might add. The smallest one is only 5 mm in width!

This is by the way the part of the probe that was originally made from a disassembled nose hair trimmer. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts I wasn’t able to identify the exact model or even manufacturer of that trimmer, so I couldn’t use the original and had to scratch-build something instead. It was one hell of a lot of tedious work, but – to be honest – the result is probably nicer and cleaner than any found item, which makes the whole thing worthwhile in my book.

But, judge for yourself. To refresh your memory, here’s the front part of the original prop as well as the schematics I did as preparation for this project:

And here are the pictures of my finished multi-part piece:

So, let’s get down to business. How did I create these parts? Here we go:

It all started with some more or less precisely cut pieces of styrene, my material of choice when it comes to scratch-building stuff.

They would make up the body of the largest piece. Which is round. Which meant that I had to sculpt it somehow since I didn’t have anything that I could’ve used as a base piece.

So I marked an appropriate line for the outer curvature on all pieces and cut them with an X-acto knife.

As you can see, I also cut some material away at the top to make it easier to create a recession there later.

Then I arranged them in a circular way to build a kind of skeleton structure and glued them together using plastic glue.

The next step was to fill the spaces between the “ribs” with putty to “put some meat on the bones” as it were.

Then the sanding began. Oh, boy. The sanding – that’s the kind of work that I’d like to have an assistant do for me or something. On the other hand it gives you great control over the final shape of your piece. The downside is that it takes a long time. A very long time. And especially so if you’re only one bit as anal about a perfect surface as I am…

While sanding the outer surface of this part I also paid some attention to the top side of it where I needed to have a pretty substantial indentation with a thin lip around it. To achieve this I used a mini-dremel with an appropriate attachment to remove material from both the surface inside as well as the “walls”.

Here is an intermediary result. Looks pretty nice already, doesn’t it?

On to the next part, which is essentially the same deal as the first one, except smaller and with a more straight profile. And when I say smaller I mean like 9,5 mm tall! That’s pretty tough to even hold in your hands (depending on what kind of hands you have of course). But holding it while trying to leave some room for sandpaper to work on it? Yep, you guessed it – that’s not easy to say the least. To illustrate: I even had to use tweezers to glue the “styrene skeleton” parts in place, which were only a couple of millimeters in width.

Here’s another preliminary result, this time a bit smoother. As you can see, I used spot putty on the smaller piece to fill in tiny holes and gaps.

And this is where Murphy came into play. It turned out that I had miscalculated something or simply had visually misjudged the proportions of this small piece. Anyway, it was evident that it was too thin and I had to somehow make it thicker – or wider if you look at it from the side.

Sounds easy, but how should I do that? Well, after thinking about it for a bit I decided to simply add material by gluing small strips of styrene to the side of it and fill it with putty as before. Yay, more sanding! Not exactly what I wanted to do but it sure did the trick:

After that small setback, I moved on to the next part, which is a kind of add-on to the first, “big” base piece. I made it basically from four small strips of styrene, which I glued together and sanded in shape.

A little putty to hide the seams:

A little sanding – done.

So, here are all of the three pieces that had been done at that point:

Next, I had to make the small, narrow part fit into the bigger base. So, I cut a piece out of the side of it and added some putty back in to make the new surface nice and smooth. Again, I used my mini-dremel to do that, this time with a small circular saw attached to it. I also used various small files to work on that slot.

While working on any of these pieces, by the way, I sprayed light coats of automotive primer on them all the time to reveal small blemishes, scratches or any kind of unevenness that needed to be fixed.

It wasn’t until I had created this slot that I noticed how deep I had carved the indentation into that big piece from above. Clearly too much! When put together, the final element of the prop would not have looked very good like that. So I had no choice but to improvise again and insert a round piece of styrene to raise the level of that surface a bit. This of course meant that I also had to putty it to blend it to the “walls” inside:

A lot of sanding later – and I mean a LOT of sanding later – the mistake was corrected and the surface both inside and outside was smooth as an androids butt. Also, the small add-on piece fit in its place perfectly.

To finish this piece off I had only one thing left to do and that was to create tiny grooves on the outside as a bit of detailing to give it some structure and make it interesting, not to mention match it with the original of course! To do that I cut tiny pieces of tape and put them on where I wanted the grooves to be.

Then I applied several coats of primer to add some material to the outside.

Then I removed the tape and voilà – micro-detailing!

Last but not least I had to tackle the emitter tip, which proved to be extra challenging. What I needed was a very small piece with very specific measurements and three tiny rings around it. At first I had no idea how to achieve this, but then decided to try to sculpt the tip from air curing clay which worked out quite well.

The three rings around the tip gave me a headache though. How the hell should I sculpt those by hand? It seemed impossible. Then I had the idea to wrap a bit of wire around it to at least get an approximation of what I wanted. It would be a short spiral instead of three separate rings, but that was the best I could think of. And it turned out that it worked really well and looks very nice even if it’s not perfect. After all, it’s only a very small part of the final prop…

So, here’s the final result again:

Note that I added a small indentation on top of the middle sized piece as well, similar to the one on the big base piece to create a small lip and a place for the emitter tip to fit in.

Seeing those four parts together now that they’re finished, I’m very satisfied with this part of the probe and I think it goes very well with the main parts I did a while back:

I’m sure it’ll be a great prop when it’s all done. And I sure hope that I’ll be able to make some more progress in the near future, too!

What do you think? The good, the bad and the ugly – I’d love to hear back from you in any case, either via a comment below or via eMail!

Also, if you want to watch my prop-related activities more closely you should follow me on Twitter. Every time I’m in my workshop, you’ll know it instantly and see what I’m doing in real-time before anyone else can read about it here on the blog. Sounds like something you might enjoy? Follow me @trekprops and get the inside scoop!

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Even if I had to deal with a few setbacks, the work went forward quite smoothly and pretty much the way I had imagined it. However, some serious precision work was necessary to make the parts as accurate and clean as they turned out to be, which was no easy task at all! As you can see in the pictures below, I shaped the wooden raw material with knives, saws, files and of course different kinds of sandpaper until I was satisfied with the results, while permanently applying coats of primer in between to reveal rough spots and other blemishes yet to be smoothed out. The most useful tool in this process? My caliper, which I used to continuously measure the thickness of the ribs, the spacing between them, etc. Without it, the parts undoubtedly wouldn’t have turned out this nice.

Of course, the pieces are not 100% symmetrical or exactly like my schematics, but I’m very pleased with the results nonetheless. The three parts I made in this manner are the ribbed middle section as well as the two back pieces. I decided to do the latter ones separately so I could make seamless resin castings of them later by using a one-piece silicone mold for each – in contrast to a two-part mold for a bigger piece, which would have a seam line by default.

So, without further ado, here are the pictures. First, the finished parts:

The original prop and my schematics for comparison:

And here are some progress pictures:

Very useful for making flat surfaces truly flat: a belt sander.

Humble beginnings…

Expanding the grooves.

Cutting deeper to match my schematics.

Some filing action to accurately shape the ribs.

Splash coat applied to reveal all kinds of blemishes.

The final cut to trim the piece from the excess wood.

The next part of the probe I want to tackle is the tip of the tool, which I will have to scratch build since I wasn’t able to identify the nose hair trimmer part that was originally used for this purpose.

Keep watching the blog for more updates. If you want to catch additional info between my blog entries, follow me on Twitter: @trekprops!

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Thirdly, the color of the prop was way too light. Additionally, the backside of it wasn’t painted at all! The naked resin revealed itself which was simply unacceptable for me.

Here are a few pictures:

No doubt about it, I had to do some face-lifting work there.

My first step was to sand down the old paint completely and to remove the circuit graphic. I removed the paint residue from the “ground” of the circuit depression using an appropriate attachment for my dremel. This technique however didn’t work with the four upper small slots.

Next up was the backside. Since there was the raw resin visible – being everything but flat and even, I decided to strengthen it with styrene.

Some putty and sanding work helped here to make it look much better. There were however still imperfections left to eliminate.

After I had repaired all of the blemishes with spot putty, I could then primer and paint the piece. Since the original color – Plasti-kote 7173 – was never available in Germany and the original composition has been changed even in the US, I used a custom mixed equivalent that is indistinguishable from the original color.

Now I had to attend to the four small vents on the top of the prop. They had to be painted black again. Not an easy task to cover all of the insides with paint without messing up the front…

After I had cut the new circuit graphic, adjusted it to fit inside the depression and glued it in, I was satisfied with the result:

Looking back to the beginning I think that reworking this prop was worth the effort. The color is now accurate and the surface looks a lot cleaner and smoother. Only one question remains: How can I activate the darn thing…?

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Most brands provide decent products. Not only Motip, but also Duplicolor or No-Name-Products can be used. In any case, remember to do a test run! Primer is available in several colors – I prefer gray.

Modulor direct link: Holts primer spray, grey (#188050S)

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Here’s a closer look to the resin parts that come with the kit:

First up: Wash these parts in warm, soapy water to get rid of any mold release agent that might still be sticking to them. You need to get it off completely because it can prevent primer and paint from adhering to the surface properly.

Parts cast in resin are most times rough when they come out of the mold and have to be sanded smooth before processed further. In this case, the pouring of the resin created a ridge in the “walls” of the body shell. This is the area that will later be glued together. Here’s a close-up:

In order to make it possible to glue the parts together, you have to sand those areas smooth. I use a large piece of sandpaper mounted on a board to accomplish this.

The parts that come with the kit have already been pre-sanded, but you’ll still have to do some fine-tuning to fit the parts together perfectly.

Be careful not to sand too much material away – keep in mind that the electronics have to fit inside! Keep measuring the thickness of the two shells aligned to each other with a Caliper to make sure the prop will be equally thick on each corner.

Here’s the result:

Before continuing with the body, let’s pay some attention to the inner workings of the scanner first! Here are the electronics that are included in the kit:

Since the LEDs alone are not wide enough when placed next to each other, use some 1.0 mm styrene to act as spacers between them. This way, the width will be more accurate to the original prop.

This step can be quite tricky! Use some fast setting super glue and rough up the LEDs as well as the styrene with sandpaper or a file. When done, the glue will bond easier to the material.

Update: Since I wrote this tutorial, I’ve improved the set of electronics and am now using a LED bar instead of five seperate LEDs. Thereby the aforementioned (very elaborate) step in construction can be dropped:

Also, I am now using other super-bright red LEDs as the one shown here.

Next you’ll have to cut out all the windows out of the resin parts. Let’s start with the one for the front LEDs. As you can see in Part II, I specifically designed the silicone mold to create a particularly thin layer of resin in this area. That way this step is easily done with a sharp X-Acto knife.

Although the area of thin resin is fairly large, be sure not to create a window that is too big, because you wouldn’t want to have any gaps later. Keep comparing your assembled LED bar with the window to ensure a tight fit. Of course, if you want a bigger window, feel free to do whatever you think looks best. Gaps can be filled with putty later if needed.

Use a small jewelers file to smooth the edges. If necessary, use some spot putty to resculpt any imperfections here. Primer the part to reveal any blemishes and keep working until they are removed. When the electronics are installed, any work on this window will be very difficult, so complete it before the installation!

Next you need to cut out the battery door. The best place for it is in the handle on the backside of the prop. The opening can be conveniently hidden under one of the styrene parts that will be added later.

To determine the dimensions of the opening, simply measure the battery holder which is included with the kit. Then, cut out the matching styrene part using the included templates and place it on the handle.

Hint: Use spray glue to attach the templates to the styrene before cutting. This way the shape will be accurate and the paper can be easily removed in warm water.

Trace the outline of the detail piece and add the measurements of the battery holder like this:

The resin in the handle is approximately 5 mm thick, so you’ll need something more effective than an X-Acto knife this time. You can get good results if you drill four holes in the corners of the layout and then use a fretsaw to cut out the door.

This is the result.

Use a small and flat file to clean the shape of the door.

Now, the openings for both the trigger and the top LED have to be drilled. When doing that, it’s important to align the resin halves perfectly and to be careful not to bring them out of alignment during the drilling process.

For the trigger, simply drill a hole of 4 mm in diameter in the middle of the recessed area on the handle. Test fit the trigger and extend the orifice if necessary before continuing!

To determine the location of the opening for the top LED, use the template of the head piece, which will be added later. You can also use this and other pictures in this tutorial as a reference.

You’ll have to make sure that the electronic components have enough room inside the body to perform their function. To do this, you’ll need to dremel some of the material away.

This is where the battery holder will be put. You’ll have to align it to the door in the other body half, which will be placed on top of this one to enable easy access to the batteries. Again, use the dremel to create some more room if necessary.

This is how the electronics are arranged inside the prop:

To attach all of the components permanently into the resin shell, use a strong putty, for example a 2-component polyester putty which I use in my builds.

As you can see, all of the LED components are placed very near to each another. In case of the green running lights, this is on purpose and not a problem. But as far as the super-bright red LED is concerned, there is a problem with the close proximity to the green LEDs: Light bleeding. To make sure that the red LED doesn’t light up the green ones next to it when activated, you’ll have to putty up the entire area around the green LEDs and use black masking tape around the red LED.

When inserting the LEDs into the window, be sure not to make them flush with the front of the resin body. There needs to be some space for a piece of the included translucent plastic to go in there later.

When the electronics have been successfully installed and tested, the resin body can be permanently sealed. First, use 5 minute epoxy glue to attach the resin body halves to each other. Then, putty up the seam lines and sand them smooth when the putty has dried.

This is the most elaborate part of the buildup. Use primer to reveal any blemishes in the finish and remove them with spot putty and sandpaper until they’re all gone. Be sure to mask all LEDs and the trigger to protect them from sanding, puttying and priming!

Next, the head piece needs to be attached. Before you do that, sand a good portion of the top array off so that it will have the original thickness afterwards when the styrene is in place. Use the templates to cut out the shape and then use 5-minute epoxy to glue it on.

Again, putty the edges and use sandpaper to round them. Try to make it look as if the part was integrated into the overall shape of the prop from the beginning. As before, repeat the puttying, sanding and priming until the result is acceptable.

When everything is done, it’s time to paint!

You don’t want to glue the greeblies onto the paint later, so mask off all areas which will be enhanced with details. Then, paint the entire body with PK 7173 or a matching equivalent.

Don’t forget to drill the holes for the battery door screws!

When the paint has fully dried, mask off everything but the handle and the top scanner array and paint them with PK 7179 or a matching equivalent.

After this is done, remove the masking tape and continue with the last step.

Here all of the detail parts at a glance. For the emitter, shorten the acrylic rod to a length of approximately 12 mm and cut it in half. Sand the flat side of it to achieve a frosted look and a light diffusion effect.

Here are the color codes for the greeblies: Handle details, front ribbed piece and one of the small top details: copper metallic. The other small top detail: red. Rim strips and pointed front detail: PK 7179 or matching equivalent. Square additional detail on pointed front piece: beige. If you want, you can also paint the screws in the same color as the handle details to blend them in.

Again, use 5-minute epoxy or CA glue to attach the greeblies.

Screw the battery door in place after inserting two AAA batteries.

Fit the translucent plastic into the front LED window and insert it.

Cut out the display graphics that you wish to use and test fit them. When your display graphic fits the recess perfectly, use some thin double-sided adhesive tape to glue it inside. You can also use spray glue for this.

That’s it, your ODN Scanner is finished!

Now, go ahead and scan away!

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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 later resin casting is hollow. This could only be achieved by doing two resin halves which were then put together. This circumstance didn’t make the task of molding the prototype any easier…

Here’s again the finished master model just like it was about to be duplicated. To reveal small imperfections, I already applied some coats of primer and then repaired whatever didn’t seem right.

Since both halves of the cast resin parts should be as symmetrical as possible, I marked the middle of the body using a pencil. This helped me to accurately shape the clay bed later.

Next I had to make sure the work surface was leveled. This is checked best using a spirit level. If the work surface is not leveled now, the seam line of the two resin halves will not be straight later and they won’t fit together.

The next step is the most difficult and time consuming part of making a two part mold: The master model has to be half embedded in clay to create the first half of the mold. The above mentioned marking on the body of the prototype now helped me.

Be sure not to use just some material for this but non-reactive clay to avoid inhibiting the chemical reaction of the two silicone rubber components. To ensure that, I use a clay that doesn’t contain any sulfates and is oil-based. It works very well together with the additive cross-linked precision casting silicone I use.

The master model has be mounted evenly on the work surface. I achieved that by sticking chunks of clay under it to stabilize it:

Next up is the task of shaping the clay bed. I started by putting material close around the prototype body and then worked my way away from it.

Now the mold box had to be created. It determines the final size of the mold. Most people use styrene or wood to construct this box and seal the corners with clay but I found that LEGO bricks work very well because they can be re-used every time to create boxes of different sizes and the buildup of the box is fast and easy..

Now comes the tricky part: The important thing is that exactly half of the model has to be embedded in the clay. This just alleviates the buildup of the kit later. Also very important is the fact that the clay needs to be aligned exactly to the body. There mustn’t appear any gaps between the model and the clay. This could be repaired later, but it’s easier to do it right here. So, precise modeling work is in order here!

Of course, the entire inside of the mold box has to be filled with clay. As you can see here, I first did this only roughly and then did the fine tuning later to get the surface smooth and to close all the gaps between prototype and clay.

Still quite some work to do here!

The next picture shows a pretty good progress on the clay bed. To do the shaping I use a putty knife which makes it easy to reach tricky areas, for example corners.

Remeber to wear gloves! Otherwise the clay will get stuck under your fingernails which is quite uncomfortable. Furthermore, the clay will get dirty rather quickly if it is exposed directly to your fingers even if you washed your hands before!

Here’s the result after a lot of work: The surface is now very smooth and there are no more gaps anywhere.

Next I used a pen shaped tool to create several small indentations in the clay around the model. They will later become pins as the silicone flows into them and cures. The other mold half will then again show these troughs and both halves will be perfectly aligned to each other.

This is important for creating solid castings by pouring the resin into the mold while both halves are closed. Even though this was not the type of casting I wanted to do, I nevertheless chose to implement this step because it’s not possible to add it later.

After I had enlarged the mold box up to the desired height, I was ready to pour the mixed silicone rubber into it:

The deepest areas have to be filled with rubber first to avoid air bubbles. For the same reason you should pour a thin stream so that bubbles cannot occur in the first place and those created by the mixing of the silicone components can break.

When the prototype is completely covered with silicone, you need to add at least one more centimeter in height to make sure the “base” of the mold is thick enough.

After the silicone has cured, the entire mold can be turned around, …

… the LEGO bricks can be dismantled and the clay can be removed. Be careful not to move the master model in any way. Note the above mentioned pins in the silicone.

Remaining clay residue has to be removed.

Most silicones are self-seperating, which means that the master model won’t get stuck to the rubber so it can easily be demolded. This however isn’t the case when silicone is poured onto silicone. In this case, the two rubber parts would bond together and become one piece.

So, to avoid enclosing the prototype into a solid block of rubber, I had to apply a release agent to the first mold half. I used vaseline for this, which I brushed on carefully. Don’t be stingy with the release agent! The more you apply, the easier the demolding process will be. Remember to mask the master model off to avoid blemishing it with brush marks which would be transferred to the new mold half.

After I had removed the masking tape, I repeated the above pictured step of pouring the silicone into the mold, waited until it had cured, demolded the prototype and disassembled the LEGO frame. Here’s the result:

The silicone mold is now finished and ready to be used for resin casting. However, if I had used this mold as it is to cast parts, they would have been solid just like the master model. This however, wasn’t my goal. I wanted to create two resin shells in which I could install electronics. So, I had to do a little more work on this mold to make that happen.

In order to get hollow resin shells I had to find a way to displace the resin that I would pour into the mold halves. The first step to achieve this was to use clay again to shape “walls” which had exactly the thickness that I wanted for the resin pieces later. Everything that I made out of clay here, would become resin later.

Note the recess for the LEDs!

Next, I placed wooden slats with screws in them over the mold. The screw heads had the purpose to attach themselves to the silicone rubber I was about to pour into the clay lined mold. This way I would have a comfortable handle to place the inner silicone displacement piece inside the mold later.

Here’s the result of this rather complex mold making process: two two-part mold halves (front side and back side, only one half is pictured) which produce two resin shells that fit exactly together (well, more or less since there’s always some excess resin that needs to be sanded off).

The development of the two most important parts for the ODN Scanner kit is thus complete and the buildup of the hero prop can now begin!

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Matt’s PADD kits contain three black acrylic plates which have been precision cut with a laser using the accurate shapes traced from an original prop. The thickness of the plates is also correct (3 mm).

Along with these plates I got a set of graphics for the display and the control buttons. I also got another display graphic so I could choose my favorite one. Furthermore, there’s a sticker of brushed aluminum vinyl included for the big button in the right control window. Looks sweet!

Here are all of the kit pieces at a glance:

There is a protective paper backing on the acrylic plates. This is a necessary part of the laser cutting process.

This paper has to be removed first, but only on the “inner” sides of the front and back plate:

These are the two plates without the paper. Note that the right (front) plate is lying on the table reversed showing it’s “inner” side.

Next these plates are carefully glued together so that they are perfectly aligned to each other and the edges are flush. This is just a temporary fixation and will be unfixed later. So I didn’t use a non-removable glue, but double sided adhesive tape instead.

I left the paper attached to the front and back side to protect them during the next step.

The corners and edges of the PADD need to be rounded. Since acrylic is a pretty hard material, you won’t have much success using sandpaper. For this you need either a dremel with an appropriate attachment, a router or a big file. I decided to use the latter to keep a higher degree of manual control.

This is a rather tricky process. The curvature should be clearly visible, but it shouldn’t be too round. It wasn’t easy to remove an equal amount of material all around and on each side to make it look symmetrical.

The file work is of course only a means to add the bevel to the plates. You won’t be able to get the surface smooth that way. To achieve that, I used sandpaper going from lower to higher grit numbers. This works best using wet sandpaper under running water!

During sanding I then disassembled the two plates to also sand the “inner” edges slightly – not to round them, but to remove flashes left over from the laser cutting process.

Finally, I also removed the paper backing to check the curvature of the two plates and used sandpaper to do corrections.

Here’s the result of my work with file and sandpaper:

Next up is priming the PADD.

Since the plates are later glued together, the areas where the glue will be applied need to be masked. This is done because glue attaches itself more easily to “naked” acrylic than to primer or paint. This way you won’t have to use sandpaper later to rough up the surface.

To prime the pieces, I placed them on paper without suspending them in any way! This way I didn’t have to worry about overspray getting on the other side of the plates and making them look ugly. I didn’t prime the edges in this step because they could get stuck to the paper.

When the primer was dry, I turned the plates over and then did suspend them on small blocks of wood. I primered the pieces again and also applied some to the edges. Because the plates are suspended, they can’t get stuck to the paper and I don’t have to worry about overspray because most parts of the inner side will not be visible.

I repeated this step with my Plasti-kote 7173 equivalent spray paint,  suspending the pieces when doing the outsides and laying them flat when doing the inner sides.

Next up are the graphics. They have to be cut precisely to fit inside the windows of the front plate. This requires some patience.

Also the brushed aluminum vinyl sticker has to be applied to the gray area on the bigger control graphics using a pair of tweezers. The sticker has the exact same size as the rectangle and is not removable, so I had to be very precise!

Once the paint has dried, …

… I removed the tape from the inner side of the plates.

Now all the parts have to be assembled. I used 5-minute epoxy glue to join the acrylic plates together permanently. Be careful with this stuff and always wear gloves to avoid glueing your fingers together!

First, I removed the paper from the middle plate. No additional work is necessary on this one. Then, I glued it onto the back plate like so:

I had to be careful to align the smaller plate correctly (the shape is not symmetrical) and to place is exactly in the middle of the back plate. I used the working time of the 5-minute epoxy glue to correct any errors.

Next up is the front plate which is glued onto the middle plate. Again, careful aligning of the edges is in order.

The last step is to apply the graphics. They are self-adhesive so you merely have to peel them off and place them where they belong:

That’s it, the PADD is finished!

Bottom line: A very inexpensive prop that is quickly and easily built and looks just plain cool lying on a desk!

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As a special feature, this kit allowed you to take a look inside the phaser. To implement this into the finished replica, the builder is supposed to cut a piece of styrene to fit as a thumbpad which then could be slid out to reveal the “circuits”.

Note the two struts at the rear end of the body. They are caused by the resin being poured into the mold and also getting into the air vents that probably had been created to allow the air to escape as the resin was poured. They of course need to be sanded off.

Another thing you can see in this picture very well is that the sides of the casting were pretty raw. This was probably caused by the seam line running here, which is inevitable with all two part silicone molds.

This is after the first filling work was done. I filled the defects on the sides using polyester putty and sanded it down. Also the first splash-coat is already applied here. It revealed where I had to do more repair work.

As you can see, the muzzle of the phaser was originally solid and supposed to be implemented using paint only. However, I had other plans for it. More on that later though…

I then filled small holes and imperfections using spot putty. Don’t apply too much of it unless you want to make the sanding process any more difficult than it has to be.

The phaser during priming. Several thin coats are in order to prevent paint running down the body.

Here you can see the controls. They are nothing more than styrene cut and sanded to shape to fit into the respective recesses on the body.

Fits like a glove!

Next up was the cover for the “inner workings” of the phaser. After I had cut a piece of styrene to fit the designated area, I realized that it didn’t fill all the gaps present. Also, there was no way to make it fit in perfectly and keep the functionality of sliding it out.

Because of this, and because there was never seen a open “cricket” phaser in TNG or elsewhere, I decided to seal the thumb pad using putty and to make a solid prop out of it:

Sanding all of these edges and corners smooth was a challenge, especially because the corners were supposed to keep their curvatures.

Here’s the result of several puttying and sanding passes. The remodeling of this area was extremely elaborate and required a lot of patience.

After I had applied a coat of primer here , I realized that the area of the thumb pad was too small and also that the recess of the cover was too deep. So, I repeated the last step and cut another piece of styrene to fit. Then I once again had to use putty to seal all the gaps.

Here’s the final result after the last coat of primer:

The rear end required some effort, too. I had to join the pieces of styrene with the resin body to make it look smooth and “natural”.

Now back to the muzzle: As I said, I had a special plan for that. Instead of simply painting it red, I wanted to insert a seperate piece as an emitter. I thought that would look more authentic and I also used this picture from “Star Trek: The Next Generation – Technical Manual” as a reference:

So, I took a small round file and removed some material from the front of the phaser until I thought it looked right:

Next I shaped the muzzle insert from a spare piece of resin. It nicely re-completed the forward shape of the phaser and fitted inside the opening very well. Since we’re talking about very small sizes here, the task of modeling the muzzle was not an easy one. My own fingers often were in the way holding the piece of resin.

It would have been nice to do the muzzle piece from a translucent red material, but I decided not to pursue this because the muzzle should have the same appearance as the particle vents on the pre-fire chamber. Since there was no way to do them transparent on this build, I chose to do the muzzle piece opaque as well.

Here’s the emitter being test fitted into the phaser body:

Now all of the seperate pieces were finished and I could move along to painting them!

First I painted the phaser body using the standard color for Starfleet equipment: Plasti-kote 7173. This paint is of course not available in its original form in Germany and that’s why I went to a spray paint specialist and got me the accurate color custom mixed using a color sample of the original paint.

All of the areas that are not supposed to come in contact with the paint have to be masked off before spraying. In this case I masked the recesses of the controls so that the coats of paint won’t make them smaller to make sure my buttons would still fit in there later.

Just with the primer it’s extremely important to spray several thin coats instead of one thick layer of paint. It’s alright if the primer is still visible after the first coat! With the subsequent coats the paint then becomes more and more dominant until the surface is perfectly covered. Between coats you should wait 5 to 10 minutes to let them dry.

Try this trick to avoid ugly paint blobs: Place the can into warm water for a few minutes to heaten up the paint. It then disperses a lot finer.

Here’s the result:

The second color was next: Bronze. Again, I masked all the areas except the thumb pad. To help attach the masking tape I sometimes use toothpicks in tricky situations. It’s important to stick the tape very tight onto the surface to prevent paint from getting under it which would make the paint line look messy.

Everything but the thumb pad had been masked off:

The power bar was also ready to be painted now. This piece of styrene is merely 25 millimetres long and the strips of masking tape were 1 millimetre thick. Masking this tiny thing required some patience.

If I were to do this today, I’d probably use a printed graphic instead of painting styrene…

This is the phaser after the second color had been applied and the tape had been removed:

Very nice!

These are all the finished greeblies: Muzzle emitter, power bar, control buttons and the trigger. I glued golden paper onto the styrene control buttons to make them neither too glossy nor too dull. Then I used a black marker to paint the sides. The trigger is also styrene painted silver.

Several masking and painting passes later the forward part and the muzzle of the phaser were finished. It still looked quite unfinished though.

Next the greeblies had to be attached. The emitter had to be inserted into the muzzle, the power bar and the control buttons had to be glued into the appropriate indentations and the trigger had to be attached to the thumb pad. To provide the glue with a better grip to bite on, I carefully roughened up the respective surfaces using sandpaper.

Now only one other thing was missing: The particle vents on the prefire chamber. A lot of replicas show them to be angular. However, the originals always had straight vents. To make my phaser as accurate as possible, I of course decided to make them straight as well. On the top and bottom side, there are one large and four small vents each. On each side there are three of them. Originally I wanted to put them on using red paint. It then however became clear that red vinyl tape was the better solution for this. It is less error-prone and also looked better.

And here is the finished phaser:

Although there are some things that I could have done better in this build, I’m still very satisfied with it.

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The kit consists of the resin cast body and some tape which is added in the end. And that’s all there is to it, really.

Here are some detail shots of the casting:

And here is a picture of the original for comparison:

When I first tried to cast this prop up, I had a lot of trouble with air bubbles in my castings. Then I learned how to improve my technique of mixing the two resin components by adding them together and then pouring them from one cup to another several times instead of stirring them. So, very few air bubbles were left to be filled.

To fill the bigger holes I used a two-component polyester putty which is normally used in the automotive sector. It cures very quickly (within 30 minutes) and can be sanded very easily.

Here are two of the biggest bubbles already filled:

Next is sanding. This is the most elaborate step in any prop building project. You will spend a lot of time grinding and sanding. So, sandpaper is essential here.

Remember to “go through the grits”. This means that you should start with a higher grit sandpaper to roughly shape the object and then move to lower grit numbers to make the surface smooth. Be careful not to remove too much material in the beginning, because it’s much easier to remove a little more instead of adding something.

In the next picture you can see that I used a high-grit sandpaper to process the larger air bubbles first. The hole is still visible. Also, there is still putty which doesn’t belong there.

The tip of the instrument is next: Here I also filled a smaller air bubble and sanded it smooth going from high to low grit numbers.

I decided to drill a hole into the tip, because that’s how it is on my original aluminum prop. Also, it adds a lot of authenticity.

Sandpaper is not only used to sand down any left over putty, it is also necessary to remove other flaws that resin castings might have, for example the seam line. It occurs along the body where the two mold halves meet and is inevitable. Certain professional casting techniques however can reduce the seam line to an extent where it’s almost not visible anymore.

Reality is, that you should inspect every square centimetre or even millimetre of your prop and process it with sandpaper or putty. Sometimes however, sandpaper is not the first choice, for example when it comes to fine details or structures. In this case you should have several different small files handy to handle that.

For bigger kits or larger areas you can also use power tools like a belt sander. But be careful: These tools don’t allow the same control over your work as a manual job does. Before you know it, your project could be ruined because you removed too much material or you slipped and damaged something. Also, the risk of injuring yourself is a lot higher, so take the appropriate steps to protect yourself!

Now, if you think that the prop surface is smooth and you repaired all of the defects, apply the splash-coat (a coat of primer) to reveal any previously invisible imperfections: scratches, blemishes, pinholes.

Allright, there’s still a lot to do here!

To remove such small defects, I use a spot putty. It’s not necessary to mix it from two components which makes it very easy to use right out of the tube. I chose to use a red spot putty because it’s easily visible during the application as well as during sanding. Since it will be painted over later anyway, it won’t affect the final finish.

Here you can see the areas covered with spot putty:

After I had applied spot putty to every visible scratch, pinhole etc., I then again used sandpaper to once more remove any excess putty by “going through the grits” until the beige color of the resin becomes barely visible again. However, don’t take off too much – you don’t want to change the overall shape of the prop.

This is how the result looked like:

Now, another coat of primer was in order. After it had dried, I again took a hard look at every part of the prop. Normally there are still pinholes etc. left after this “second splash-coat”.

This is repeated until the prop body is absolutely perfect. Of course, the term “perfect” depends on what the person who is building the prop is regarding acceptable. Me, I’m a perfectionist and I probably do this way too often. Remember: The final coat of paint doesn’t hide any defects, but makes them even more visible!

A very important aspect here is patience. It can be quite unnerving to apply another coat of primer only to discover that there are still scratches or pinholes left. However, once they are all repaired, you can tap yourself on the shoulder knowing that you did everything possible to make the prop perfect.

Now that the surface was completely flawless, I could apply the final coat of primer. One last checking look: Is there still a… No, thank god it’s just a shadow!

After the primer had completely dried, I moved on to the paint. I used a chrome paint containing real aluminum particles to create a highly realistic approximation. Silver spray paint is also suitable for this. A little trick helps to prevent ugly paint blobs: Place the can in warm water for ten minutes. The heated paint will then be dispersed a lot finer.

One precept of painting is to apply several thin coats and let them dry before applying the next instead of spraying one thick coat. It’s alright if the primer is still visible after the first coat! Be patient, even if you want to finish the prop soon. You don’t want to ruin it during the last step by causing “paint noses” occurring due to too much paint, do you?

Once the painting process was finished and the paint was dry (again, you should rather wait a little long than ruining the prop), I could add the greeblies which was the last step in this buildup.

In this case, the greeblies are nothing more than differently colored grip tape cut to shape and attached at the correct areas (see illustration).

The last step is to paint the tip golden. Of course, I had to mask off the rest of the prop to protect it. I used crepe tape for this because it can be removed easily. Anyway, to avoid any risk of damaging the base paint, I only masked a small area at the tip and wrapped a paper napkin around the rest of the prop.

The prop is finally finished! Here’s how the result looks like:

Here are some comparison shots I did with the original aluminum version which served as a master model here:

There’s almost no difference visible on the pictures. The chrome paint is not quite as shiny as the real aluminum, but that was to be expected. Unfortunately it also tends to get even duller when handled.

Anyway, I think the result is very good and satisfying.

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