5 replies to this topic

[Alex]

Well, I took a good look at my old Playmates 1701-D, and after 17 years, I think she's due for a major refit. Although I still have a second Playmates 1701-D, that ship was only opened to remove the batteries (I didn't want them to leak and damage the ship,) and I intend to leave my second 1701-D MIB.

First off, I obviously need to figure out how much this refit/upgrade is going to cost me before I can begin working on it; any help coming up with a price would be appreciated. Having said that, let's go down the list of problems that need to be addressed with said refit.

1. Sun damage: The top of the ship has become yellowed/greened due to exposure to sunlight over the years. I've been trying to keep it covered as best as possible, but the damage has already been done.
2. Missing decals: Most of the decals (including all hull markings) wore off of this ship sometime prior to 2001, and the few remaining decals are beginning to peel up. Needless to say, the decals have left a disgusting "goo" on the ship, and there's also some permanent ink on said ship from when I was a child that's going to take a good deal of work to remove.
3. Paint damage: I got this ship in second grade, and needless to say it's been smacked around a bit, taken a few "torpedoes" from a Klingon BoP, and generally gotten a little banged up; the buzzard collectors on the warp engines are scratched as further evidence to this. Likewise, the paint around many of the phaser strips--especially on the bottom of the hull--has worn off over the years, in part because I have no stand to put this ship on.
4. Stains: Let's just say there are some stains on the plastic from a sick kid whose Enterprise-D has been wiped off more than once. By the time I was an adult, getting the stains out of the ship became ridiculously difficult.

Here's what I want to do to address these problems:
1. Clean and restore and/or repaint the hull back to its original color.
2. Find someone capable of creating "dry transfer" (A.K.A. "rub-on") decals that are identical to the original Playmates ones, or at the very least, the repro labels ones. "Dry transfer" decals work by "rubbing" the decal onto the item that they're to be transferred onto, which in turn means that there's no sticky surface to peel up, and unlike waterslide decals, dry transfers don't turn silver or peel up either. The decal is literally "stamped" onto the item being decaled, in this case, the Enterprise-E.
3. The solution to this is two-fold. First the ship will likely need to be repainted, I might need to hire a professional for this, if nothing else to ensure that the paint job is "accurate." Ideally, eco-friendly paints would be preferred if possible. Second, if someone has a spare stand from the "Generations" 1701-D, it'd effectively eliminate the problem of this ship never coming with a stand.
4. I've heard of using everything from denture cleaner to a warm soapy tooth brush to remove stains from plastic, any ideas and before/after pictures are more than welcome in regards to this issue.

Further enhancements:
The Playmates Enterprise-D was an excellent toy back in 1992, and while I intend to Pre-Order the AA/DST 1701-D, (I might have even done so already,) this was my first Star Trek toy ever, and I have some ideas to make it even better.

1. Replace light-bulbs in engines with LEDs. This is a no-brainer; LEDs are superior in every way to traditional light-bulbs and will enhance the life of the toy.
2. Repair buzzard collectors if at all possible: if there's a way to repair my buzzard collectors, I'm more than open to ideas.
3. Improved sound board: If someone knows how to "duplicate" the sound board from the gold 1701-D and is willing to sell me said soundboard for a reasonable price, it'd be much appreciated. The original 1701-D has "crackly" sound--some FX such as the impulse engines are barely audible as anything more than static. Again, if doable, this upgrade seems like a no-brainer to me.
4. Using brand-name "Krazy Glue" to permanently attach the engines to the ship. Again, this is a no-brainer, part of the damage to the ship's current engines is because they constantly fell off and sometimes fell onto a hard floor--if I was really unlucky, the engines would "fly" down a flight of stairs and make me pray that they still worked afterwards.

What this project is: My goal is to restore my original 1701-D to the way it looked when I first opened it as a second grader in 1992. Having said that, I believe there are minor upgrades/enhancements that would make this ship even better, and that Playmates might have used if they had the technology available to them to do so back in 1992. For example, LED lighting, the improved sound board (found in the gold 1701-D,) and permanently attaching the warp nacelles the way they were attached to the gold 1701-D are all minor enhancements. Likewise "dry transfers" rather than "sticker" decals are more like what AA/DST does on an industrial scale and are something that Playmates likely didn't think of or have the ability to do en masse back in 1992. My goal is to create a "Playmates-accurate" Enterprise-D. You could call potentially call this a Playmates 1701-D Remastered for lack of a better term.

What this project is not: This is not "Pimp My Starship!"[/i] My goal is not to create a "Screen accurate" Enterprise-D, nor is it to create a ridiculously souped up ship. This is about restoring the toy, not altering it to be something different. To quote Dave Rossi's interview on redesigning the Enterprise for TOS-R "We're not going to give it fins, we're not going to make the ship do barrel rolls, we're just going to give the Enterprise the tender love and care that she deserves." That pretty much sums up my feeling about restoring the Playmates Enterprise-D. I'm not trying to make my Playmates ship a model kit, I'm just trying to have her cleaned up and restored to the condition she was in originally, while making minor alterations that Playmates might have made themselves. For example, using LEDs in the warp engines is something I consider analogous to adding a few more shots of the original Enterprise to TOS-R.

Having said that, if anyone can offer advice, pictures of what they've done to their Playmates Enterprise-D, instructions, or even reasonably priced services and/or parts to complete this project, I'm definitely willing to listen. Who knows, if he's up for it, I may enlist the services of Thomas E. Johnson again once I see what he's done to my souped up AA/DST Enterprise-E (now that was "Pimp My Starship!") provided that I can afford to have him restore my ship, but for now, any and all help is appreciated in getting this project off the ground. Thank you all in advance for your time.

[New Frontier]

I would use white spirit to clean off the entire ship, then using a fine grade of sand paper just sand it right down without loosing any of the detail to really get it back to it's basics, taking it apart, cleaning the interior and replacing the lights etc... - white spirit will however remove all the paint applications used by Playmates so you will have to restore the paint using an Air-brush, a steady hand and masking tape to get that clean smooth finish - i have no idea if the bleaching by the sun can ever be removed but if it is possible the sanding it down using fine sand paper should get rid of the bleaching.

You'll have to be careful about doing this though if you want to keep as much originality to it.

You might have to resort to model kit decals unless you have access to new Playmates decals to replace the existing or non existent ones.

Using LED's should be fine and perhaps trying to make the deflector and impulse engines light up would be pretty cool since i've always thought that Playmates should or could have done this if cost wasn't an issue.

Good luck though because restoring something that sounds pretty battered and in a good decent used condition at the moment sounds pretty impossible without getting a MINT Playmates D to replace parts or getting someone or yourself to completely re-paint and restore it to looking not like the toy but more like the real thing.

if you couldn't do it maybe leaving it battered or leaving it with the missing bits as missing from it when cleaned up would be a testament to how these ships were designed for a lengthy life being played with as toys should always be used for.

[TheHSBR]

I would personally find a color close to the original and just repaint it all (spaypaint or airbrush is the best), masking off any of the claer plastic parts. I think that is the only way to restore sun damage. It might be easier to buy a new gold enterprise and repaint it grey and apply those stickers to the ship. That solves the sound board, engines and sticker issue. Some ships just need to be scrapped

[Commodore Kor'Tar]

I know this ship is speacial to you as you had it for so long and played with it for such a long time . But, you'd wind up spending so much cash restoring and cleaning up this old ship , it might just be cheaper to find another Playmates Enterprise D , If you go with the Spacetalk model the engines don't light up but it comes with a stand that'll makes it easy to display and keep the hull off the shelf/floor , on ebay . I'd keep the one you played with as a nice relic of your childhood , but I agree with The HSBR , you might just need a new one .

[knightone]

If you are going to pay for someone to restore the ship, it would be better just to buy a new one. If you were going to do all the work yourself as a project, it might be worth doing. Otherwise, the cost would be too high for it to be justifiable when a new Playmates E-D can be had for rock bottom prices on Ebay.

[Alex]

First, let me thank everyone who replied to my previous post; I appreciate all of you're input, and thought a little bit more about whether or not I wanted to go through with this. After a few days though, I pretty much decided that I do want to go through with the restoration, if only to do something in the spirit of Star Trek itself: exploration and the "quest for knowledge." Considering that this is the first time I'm trying to restore a toy to look like it did originally (rather than restoring a toy to "enhance" it beyond what a toy company could do within budget,) I intend to learn quite a few things from my upcoming restoration project.

I would use white spirit to clean off the entire ship, then using a fine grade of sand paper just sand it right down without loosing any of the detail to really get it back to it's basics, taking it apart, cleaning the interior and replacing the lights etc...

After reading your message New Frontier, I did some research into White Spirit. However, pretty much everything I read about the stuff was negative and described the product as extremely eco-unfriendly and a "turpentine alternative" to which turpentine is superior. However, I will continue to take the use of White Spirit under consideration, and I do want to thank you for bringing the existence of said product to my attention.

You might have to resort to model kit decals unless you have access to new Playmates decals to replace the existing or non existent ones.

$12.00 dollars over at reprolabels will cover the purchase and shipping of sticker-style decals which are identical (or as close to identical as one can get) to the original Playmates ones. So far I've only heard good things about the aforementioned website, and a friend of mine recently restored a Power Morpher from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers which he procured off of eBay using labels from the same company. Just as an FYI, the Power Morpher is about as old as the Enterprise-D, and if one had the Japanese Zyuranger counterpart, the toy would be the same age as the Enterprise-D. (The "Dino Buckler/Japanese Power Morpher" and Enterprise-D were both released in 1992, while the Power Morpher was released in 1993.) More on the reprolabels stuff in a bit though.

Using LED's should be fine and perhaps trying to make the deflector and impulse engines light up would be pretty cool since i've always thought that Playmates should or could have done this if cost wasn't an issue.

The LEDs are part of what I consider "preservation" more than "alteration." If the new Playmates 1701 from the upcoming movie lacked LED lighting I'd be shocked as more and more toy companies have adopted LEDs in recent years.

Admittedly, the biggest issue I'm going to run into is getting the engines apart and finding LEDs that are suitable replacements for the "lightbulbs" that Playmates used originally. One reason I want to refit the ship with LEDs is because I know that traditional lightbulbs can sometimes damage a toy over time via heat whereas LEDs won't cause the aforementioned damage. Lighting the impulse engines isn't something I'm ready to tackle just yet, although I have considered lighting the deflector in the past. I'll likely pass on lighting the deflector for now though, because it means that I'd have to paint the inside of the ship black to prevent light bleed, which is admittedly confined to the nacelles right now. As a result, all I have to do is paint the inside of the nacelles black when they're open rather than the whole ship. This saves both time and money on additional paint, although who knows, maybe I'll go nuts and wind up lighting the deflector anyway; it's not like this hasn't been on the back of my mind before.

Good luck though because restoring something that sounds pretty battered and in a good decent used condition at the moment sounds pretty impossible without getting a MINT Playmates D to replace parts or getting someone or yourself to completely re-paint and restore it to looking not like the toy but more like the real thing.

Thank you; I'm going to need that luck...and maybe a bit of "fate" as well; after all, according to Riker, fate saves fools, children, and ships named Enterprise. In this case, I'll settle for fate saving "ships named Enterprise."

In truth, I'm probably going to repaint the whole toy, but rather than paint it to be "screen accurate," I'm going to paint it to be "toy accurate." I realize that I could buy a new ship for virtually nothing, but this isn't really about just "having a mint condition Enterprise-D;" I already have one that's MIB (box was opened solely to remove batteries,) and could easily obtain another one for far less than I paid for the aforementioned MIB Enterprise-D. What's more, I could also just order additional AA/DST Enterprise-Ds if I just wanted mint ships (I'll have two of them on order shortly--maybe a case of four if I decide to do some custom Galaxy-class starships,) but in truth, what I want to do is restore the first ship I ever owned. This is more about making the my first Trek ship ever look good again than it is about simply having a mint condition ship. This particular project has more sentimental than economical value to it, and I fully realize that.

I would personally find a color close to the original and just repaint it all (spaypaint or airbrush is the best), masking off any of the claer plastic parts. I think that is the only way to restore sun damage. It might be easier to buy a new gold enterprise and repaint it grey and apply those stickers to the ship. That solves the sound board, engines and sticker issue. Some ships just need to be scrapped

HSBR, as usual your message is quite insightful. I admittedly thought about "just painting a Gold 1701-D," but I'm still kicking myself for opening a ship with the collector's number being 364 out of 50,000, and I'm admittedly trying to find a sealed Gold 1701-D with a number below 364 to make up for my previous bout of stupidity. Considering that I just received an airbrush in September for my birthday and have several model kits I intend to use it on shortly, this is likely what I'll wind up doing. I'll probably take the ship down to my local hobby shop and have the owner help me color-match it as best as possible unless someone here has paint recommendations that they can provide me with.

I'd normally mask off the clear parts of the ship, but considering that I need to get at the inside of the warp engines, it'd probably be easier to just remove the clear parts for painting and swapping the "lightbulbs" for LEDs. Of course, because I can't find my soldering iron, I might actually have to borrow my "girlfriend's" (long story) soldering iron, which I'm sure will give her a much-needed laugh. As far as the sticker issue goes, see previous comment about reprolabels. The Gold 1701-D is definitely easier for the stand/sound board issue, but the engines will still need to be disassembled in order to have LEDs installed and getting them off of that ship would be a pain. If someone had a "dead" ship (Gold 1701-D, Generations 1701-D, Space Talk, etc. that are non-functional) and was willing to part with the stand, I'd be willing to take it off of their hands. I did consider just getting another ship, but what I'm really looking for is a restoration project, not just a new ship. That said, I do appreciate your input, and I'm glad to hear yet another recommendation for the use of an airbrush.

If you are going to pay for someone to restore the ship, it would be better just to buy a new one. If you were going to do all the work yourself as a project, it might be worth doing. Otherwise, the cost would be too high for it to be justifiable when a new Playmates E-D can be had for rock bottom prices on Ebay.

knightone, I wish the Playmates E-D was going for the same price it's going for now a few years ago when nobody would sell them sealed for fewer than $150 on eBay, which is admittedly when I got my MIB Enterprise-D. In fact, had I known that the price was going to plummet, I'd have waited a few years, but then if I had that kind of ability to predict the future, I'd probably be in Las Vegas right now.

I'm going to do as much of the work as I can myself; I'm less concerned with cost than I am with the enjoyment of restoring this ship. That said, I'm not completely unconcerned about cost--I do have limits--but I'm willing to pay a bit more to restore my original ship then to just buy a new one. I don't know if this makes sense, or if my reasoning makes sense, but this restoration project is something I want to do.

Having said that, here's where this project stands:

Total spent so far: $15.00

1. I purchased another used Playmates 1701-D for $15.00 after shipping on eBay. The caveat with this ship is that it's missing warp nacelles, so if anybody has spares that they're willing to part with, (if they're from the Generation's ship, that's fine--I'm just going to repaint them anyway,) please feel free to PM me. Now why did I purchase another banged up Enterprise-D? Basically, I purchased said ship to use as a "reference point" during the restoration of my ship. Once my entire ship is painted a solid color, (as close to "Playmates Grey" as I can get,) I'll need something to refer back to while I repaint phaser strips, the rear torpedo bay, etc.,etc. Now I realize it'd probably be easier just to take a photo and have it printed, but it's easier for me to work with the actual ship in front of me, and if I accidentally do wind up botching part of my original ship, I can "cannibalize" this one for parts. If I don't botch anything (I don't plan to anyway,) then I'll restore this second ship after I restore mine. Now I just need to get some warp nacelles for it...

2. If anyone has advice at getting inside of the warp nacelles, it'd be appreciated; if you have pictures that can be used as a guide; that's even better. What's more, if you can recommend suitable LEDs for the ship, I'm all ears, and again, any "how-to" photographs are more than welcome.

3. I've been looking into buying a set of sticker-style decals from Reprolabels and having someone copy them onto dry transfer paper. If FedEx Kinkos/Office can do this, that'd be a major plus. If they can't, then I basically need someone with a laser printer and something like what you see in the URLS below:
http://www.pulsarprofx.com/
http://www.rubondeca...ubon-paper.html

Although the second site says that their system works with inkjet printers, I'd feel better about using a laser printer, and the first site also claims that their decals can take to surfaces which may not be entirely flat (e.g. wood,) which is another plus for them. Unfortunately, I don't have a laser printer, and purchasing one along with a new inkjet printer (I'll be buying a new all-in-one unit in the next few months,) isn't something I want to do right now. Throw in the two extra tools needed to create the transfers and you can see where I run into issues. Basically if someone could copy the reprolabels onto dry transfer/rub-on decal paper, that'd be perfect for me.

Why dry transfers? Simple, dry transfers are similar to paint in the way they're applied and unlike sticker and waterslide decals, they don't peel up or turn silver over time. Again, if FedEx Kinkos can do this, it makes my life easy, if not, I might need to enlist someone's help for this portion of the restoration.

4. I'm going to clean the ship and then repaint it using an airbrush. This seems like the most simple way to get the ship looking like it used to. After the ship is repainted, I'm going to mask off everything but certain areas (e.g. Phaser strips) that are all the same color and then use my airbrush to repaint those areas. Another mask will be created for areas such as escape pods and this process will be repeated as necessary. After that's done, the dry transfers will be applied to the newly repainted hull. Eventually, the ship will be held together (albeit not with screws--most likely C-clamps,) and hit with a coat of finish while the electronics are removed. The updated and enhanced ship will then have its updated electronics installed and be sealed back up for display.

5. Finally, I thought about the display stand a bit more. If I can't find a spare somewhere from someone, I might just go with a generic model display stand that the ship will fit on--my now-defunct local Suncoast used to have this ship on display using a clear (plexiglass?) stand, which of course wasn't an item they sold. (Granted, they did sell the ship though.) I also realized that I have a spare stand from a Voyager toy that was damaged beyond repair, and if I could get the battery cover for the Enterprise-D that connects to the stand by itself, I could solve my stand problem in about five seconds. Again, if anybody has said battery cover and is looking to part with it, please PM me.

I'll keep you guys posted (no pun intended) on this project as it progresses.