Resin Kit Review: Resin Modeler 1:1400 Earth Colony Ship (Discovery Class)

NOTE:  You can click on most pictures to get a larger view of them.

Rewrites: July 2020 & May 2016

[Editor's Note (July 2020): This will mark my third update of this article.  Now that I've written a bunch of articles, I feel like I've developed a certain style and flow to them and I wanted to make all of them have that same feel across the series.  Consider this the REFIT version of the original article.]

I'm going to shift gears slightly and go back to a Resin Modeler kit.  This one is his 1:1400 Earth Colony Ship.

Resin Modeller's Recommended Paint Scheme

This ship never appeared on screen but was mentioned in an early episode of Star Trek: Enterprise when they went to investigate an old Earth colony.  The SS Conestoga was the ship that had delivered the colony and was then dismantled for it's materials to make the colony.  

Per Memory Alpha and Beta, "The SS Conestoga was an Earth colony ship that was in service with the Space Agency in the mid-21st century. Launched from Earth in 2069, only six years after Zefram Cochrane's warp flight, the transport's mission was the colonization of Terra Nova, a nearby class M planet. The Conestoga was capable of carrying approximately two-hundred colonists, and was equipped for long-term travel. The Conestoga was commanded by Captain Mitchell."

If you would like to read more official stuff on this type of ship, feel free to check out the following links:

Discovery Class Information: NO Memory Alpha LINK and Memory Beta LINK
SS Conestoga Information: Memory Alpha LINK and Memory Beta LINK

The Colony ship kit comes in 4 pieces and has basic decals for labeling it as the SS Conestoga.  The finished model measures in at around 8 cm.

Somehow, I lost the 4th piece for mine which is the antenna array on the nose of the ship.  I'll talk later on in the article how I rectified this issue.

I interviewed Adam, who owns and operates Resin Modeler about this kit.  When I asked him how long it took him to design it, he said that it had taken him several days to draw it out as he had to design his own schematics for the ship.

Interestingly enough, his design seems to be right on with what the rest of the Star Trek community thinks the ship should be like.  A friend of mine introduced me to this series of books called the Federation Spaceflight Chronology, which had TONS of in depth information about the Star Trek universe up through the TMP and ending around the ST3:TSFS era.

One of the neat things about volume one was that it covered some very old style ships that were never seen on screen.  It had a very nice section on the this ship and the history surrounding it. In that book however, they called it a Pioneer Class.

Unfortunately, you can no longer buy this kit from Resin Moddeler.  Feel free to check out his site at THIS LINK to see what other neat designs he has.

Here are several views of my model as I painted it.

 

 

 

 

DeepSpace Pat's Paint Scheme

This kit was extremely easy to do.  There was a little bit of excess resin to clean up.  Most of it was around the exhaust nozzles on the rear of the ship but was not to hard to deal with, using the point of an exacto knife.  Gluing her together was a breeze.  The angles on the parts are perfect so that you only need to apply the glue, and stick the part on.  It bound together without a lot of need to wait for the glue to set.

I had shared that I had lost my antenna array for the kit.  I easily rectified this problem by taking some gun turrets from my greebles box.  These tiny turrets were part of a Space Battleship Yamato Comet Empire Dreadnought ship.

Painting the ship was extremely easy to accomplish as well.  There really isn't any hard to reach places on the ship and you can pretty much glue her together and just paint it.

Conclusion

I would have to say that this kit was an absolute joy to build.  The level of detail and crisp nature of the kit makes it a very nice ship to put on display in your collection.  Given the ease at which it went together, I would actually recommend this kit to a first time modeler or first time resin kit builder, provided they take some time and read my helpful hints section that I have later on in this article.

  

I hope you found this article as useful and informative as I did while writing it.  Please feel free to leave any comments, questions or suggestions below.

And as always, "Live Long And Prosper!"

Additional Links To Photos Of My Collection:

The Ship     Build Pictures

Helpful Hint Articles

Washing     Warped Parts     Gluing     Filling The Gaps     Making Stands 

NOTE: If you are new to my reviews, then please read on.  This section talks about the garage kit maker that made this kit as well as a little about why I'm writing this review.  If you are one of my regular readers, then feel free to skip the rest of this article as it is a word for word repeat of stuff from previous articles.

Kit Maker Information

Adam who owns and operates Resin Modeller does most of his business through his website.  He will also occasionally sell his kits through eBay, however, it is always recommended to go to his website for orders.  Although he does not maintain a FaceBook page for his business, he does post his work in progress stuff over at the All Scale Trek forums.

R.M.'s Website: CLICK HERE

R.M.'s eBay Seller Profile: CLICK HERE

A majority of all of Adam's kits are produced via 3D design software and then professionally 3D printed.  He then uses these as his masters in the mold making process.  In my opinion, this produces a very crisp model.

In my dealings with Adam, I find him to be a very nice guy to chat with.  He will usually answer inquiries within a day or two of being emailed.  Like most garage kit makers, he has a regular day job, and the kit building business is his way of funding his love of building models.  He has shared that he has found a lack of 1:1400 scale ships and since that is his preferred size to build in, he just makes the ships he wants for his collection.  

DISCLAIMER SECTION

I consider myself an intermediate model maker.  I'm pretty good with assembling kits these days  and OK on the painting side of things.  I ultimately end up with ships that look good enough to me to display in my collection.  I've found that there are all sorts of neat ships out there that no one has made a pre-built or pre-painted model of, so, in an effort to expand my ship collection I've turned to building them myself, either by kitbashing or purchasing ready made resin model kits.

There are several smaller garage kit makers out there that produce some very good kits.  I've actually developed a good relationship with a couple of them and volunteered some of my time to write up reviews about the kits I've purchased from them.  I have already warned them that I intend to be pretty objective, not pull any punches, and these reviews are going to be written from the point of view of an intermediate model builder.  If this means that I warn away a first time builder from a particular kit, then they will need to be OK with that approach.

Lastly, due to the nature of resin casting, not every kit is going to be the same.  Excess resin and air pockets are a part of the game when you get into this sort of model building.  The kit that I got and built may be slightly different than your kit as far as minor quality issues.  I will still point out flaws with my kit as those flaws could lead into a lesson of some sort for either you the reader or the kit maker themselves.