"1/2400th scale Gorn Ships?" Topic

Just curious if anyone has seen, made, or considered making some 1/2400th Gorn vessels to go with the Johnny Lightning range of Star Trek ships?

Looking for ideas for the nicely beveled, saucer sections.

Overall ship length should be about 3" – 4.5", or so, based upon the design, and size.

Given some scale comparison shots of a Fed CA to the Lt. CA and DD of the Gorn, I think the above measurements work.

That means the saucer sections should be about 1.5" – 1.75" in diameter, with 1.6" being just about ideal, at least for some models.

The saucer width to thickness ratio seems to be about 5:1, but I can live with it being a little thicker, if need be.

So, any ideas for nicely beveled, flat, circular shapes in those size ranges, that would be useful for scratch-building?

I think plastic, of something similar would be ideal. That way, I can easily scribe, or add on any details desired, and the models will be pretty lightweight.

I'm thinking perhaps those nice little, furniture moving coasters, for a start, like are sold at various home repair shops, but will need to check their sizes.

I suspect I can use styrene plastic to make the other pieces needed.

Of course, I'd love to see pics, if anyone has some completed models to share.

Thoughts?

Had a buddy years ago who did exactly this. There were so few ships available at the time, he scratchbuilt his whole fleet.

His secret ingredient was buttons. He raided his wife's sewing kit and found tons of other plastic buttons in bins at the fabric stores. They're styrene for the most part and can be cut and glued like model parts. Just find the right size/shape, glue two together and cover the holes with putty and scraps of plastic to simulate bridges, weapons, etc. For engines he used plastic pegs from a cheap cribbage board.

Another source of dome shapes were those 'googlie' eyes for children's stuffed dolls. They're dirt cheap and come in a lot of sizes. If the rattling sound bothers you drill a hole in the bottom and crazy glue the rattler.

Don't have any pictures, but I hope this helps.

Thanks for the tips Willy.

Hadn't thought of buttons, but that does sound like a decent idea, especially since some of the Gorn vessels are a little smaller than I thought.

Using the Johnny Lightning Fed CA as a baseline, and a side shot of it compared with a Gorn Lt. CA and DD, the overall lengths respectively, are approximately 4.2", 2.9", and 2.6".

From an above shot of a Gorn Battle DD, and assuming it is about the same length as the Lt. CA, that makes the circular sections about 1.16" in diameter, which I can obviously round up, or down a little depending upon the availability of parts.

Thicknesses of the new saucers appear to be about 20% of the width, and the older ships seem to be about a 25% thickness to hull width ratio.

I was actually thinking of the same thing – Gorns, having just finished a Romulan TOS fleet. The JL ships are 1/2500th rather than 1/2400th, yes? They are exactly the same size as the 1/2500th scale AMT Cadet series. There are quite a few garage kit companies out there that do 1/2500 kits of all Trek eras. 8-9 years ago there was a fellow that did 3 or 4 Gorn ships in Resin, but they have not been available for a number of years.

I do all my Trek gaming in 1/2500. Sooooo much room for conversions and scratchbuilding.

What did the Gorn ships look like?

Dan

What did the Gorn ships look like?

Ooo, those look cool!

Thanks,

Dan

Mako11,

Would some of the larger Lego dishes work for you?

auction

More:

auction

Dan
PS. I think that 4x4 means a 32mm diameter. A 5x5 dish is 40mm in diameter. A 6x6 dish means a 48mm diameter.

I'm not sure on the JL scale.

I saw someone had mentioned 1/2400th on-line, so assumed that's what they were.

Great pics of some superb looking, scratch-built models!

Thanks for sharing them.

I imagine I won't be able to make anything near that nice, especially with all that fine, hull detailing.

Not sure on the Lego dishes, though they do look intriguing, Dan.

Do you know what 2 x 2, 4 x 4, 3 x 3 means?

Is that the diameter in nubs?

I assume not inches, knowing how small the parts usually are.

Ah, I see you just posted an update, so thanks for the additional size info.

Looks like 30mm is about the right diameter for the hull disks, so 32mm is close enough for government work. May have to buy a few samples to test them out.

The shallow dish shapes certainly look to be very useful.

Mako11,

Believe it or not I'm new to Legos. But here it goes …

The way I understand it those number stand for how many studs it is in width, length or height. And the distance between studs is about 8mm:

link

So, if something is 2x2, then it covers an area of 4 studs, meaning a 16mm by 16mm square.

Dan
PS. Don't buy anything just yet. Let me limp over to the closet in the tv room and find out if I have any to send you. Give me a few minutes though.

Alas.

I couldn't find any 4x4 dishes in the bins. I did find 10 smaller ones (2x2s, they are 16mm in diameter) that you can have gratis, if you think you could use them for smaller craft.

Just let me know before Wednesday. That's when I'm scheduled to go under the knife.

Thanks,

Dan

Rob,

Have you considered mini yo-yos? Walmart usually has bag of 8 for under $2. USD

They measure 34-35mm.

Other possibilities:

Large wiggly eyes.
Plastic buttons for clothing.
Clear 2-part pin back mini buttons
Aluminum button covers
Furniture sliders

Dan

Thanks for the thoughts and efforts Dan, I really appreciate them.

I suspect I may also be able to use some thin buttons, or those furniture sliders.

Older Gorn designs seem to have about a 2:1 ratio of width to thickness for the circular hull parts, with newer one coming in at about 5:1, so anything close to those, or in between should work reasonably well for some Gorn vessel eras.

The larger of the ships that ADB makes the Starline 2500 is 1/3125 if I remember correctly. They are going to be small when next to a JL.