Miniature model making: USS 1701-B (Excelsior)

This was one of my most challenging builds for several reasons. Previous builds were pre-painted, but this time I had to paint the miniature model myself, which required learning new techniques and delicate decals. Being a miniature, I had to carefully design the space and determine the number of fibers to insert. Meticulously planning the order of tasks was crucial, as I had to drill, sand, insert fibers, paint, varnish, apply decals, and add more varnish without the ability to fix mistakes from prior stages. Below, you'll see the original model unpainted, which was part of a set of three ships at a 1/2500 scale:

Nacelles

As seen above, the original model had opaque nacelles. I cut them, with the hope of finding semi-transparent plastic I could apply later, and began adding blue LEDs. I also had to design how to wire very thin cables in a tidy way, without disrupting the future application of the decals. The working space was very narrow:

Fibers

The next step was fiber insertion in the dish and main body:

Result

Here's the final result (sorry for the poor pictures, not using a pro camera)