I was brought up in a wee town in Ayrshire called Maybole, which is the ancient capitol of Carrick. This was the seat of the 4th Earl of Carrick, King Robert the Bruce. The 700th anniversary of The Bruce's most famous victory, the Battle of Bannockburn, has just passed, and in honour of this I'm building a non-canon Federation starship - the USS Bannockburn NCC-1314. I'm using Clever Santoro's Nova design in four layers. I'll also be making a stand with this extract from the Declaration of Arbroath - "For, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom — for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."
Starting with the front of the upper primary hull I cut these parts:-
I joined the various sections and blackened the edges of the layers where appropriate. The 'darts' on the trailing edge were sealed by bringing the adjacent edges together and joining them with paper strips. I then cut the pieces for the rear of the upper hull:-
Again, I coloured edges where needed, joined the layers and strapped the parts onto the main section. Then I cut the parts for the underside of the primary hull:-
I joined all the layers and attached the underside to the upper side. With that done I cut the pieces for the bridge:-
After the bridge was built and connected I moved on to the secondary hull:-
This was when I noticed a mistake on the bridge where the raised ring around the sunken section was missing. I corrected this before attaching the top half of the secondary hull:-
I had problems aligning the bottom half and also working out a way to connect the deflector. Eventually I added an extra strip of grey card to the top of the deflector and curved the internal rim to fit the dish. To align the two halves of the secondary hull I had to apply PVA, put the halves together and then bind them with thread to bring the edges together and hold them while the glue dried. Fitting the decks on top of the secondary hull also proved to be problematic as the square edges didn't join with the round hull. A bit of trial and error trimming solved this. That left the nacelles to be connected, starting with the pylons:-
The pylons were joined to the hull and I cut the parts for the nacelles:-
Starting with the front of the upper primary hull I cut these parts:-
