Metal Earth Star Trek Klingon Bird of Prey 3D Metal Model Kit Fascinations

The media could not be loaded. SO COOL!!! I enjoy putting these together and have done about twenty of them, I am far from an expert and my first three ended up a wad of twisted metal, rage and profanity with a one star rating. There is a special way to assemble because these are not typical models.TIPS AND TRICKS:Don’t waste your time with the special tool sets or needle nose pliers (they didn’t work for me). I recommend getting tweezers with different tips. There are many times where you will be holding a piece with one set of tweezers and twisting/bending/inserting tabs with another and many times you have to reach tabs inside a small piece you have already made. Attempting to assemble this all by hand became impossible for me. Tweezer were needed.Buy some really small, fine point wire cutters. The package says just pop out the pieces for assembly but when they are very small they do not “pop out”. They bend and just make a mess, so snip the points where they are connected and now they will easily pop out.Get yourself some nails of various sizes to help transform flat metal pieces into cylinder shapes. I use different sized nails, cables, pens and markers of all different sizes to round some parts of these models. Whatever you use just make sure you can slide the model part off one end. Trying to round using tweezers is possible but doesn’t look as professional.Don’t get mad if you break some pieces, just keep a small bottle of quick drying, clear super glue. I’ve broken many tabs and pieces. It just happens sometimes, if you fold pieces to many times it will break, read the instructions wrong and have to undo folding and bending they can break. Use small amounts of super glue and apply with a needle and you can hardly notice you used it once it has dried.Some of the instructions are a bit unclear so look at the pictures closely and even the pictures of the next few steps. The directions are not very specific and won’t tell you exactly which way a part is meant to be bent, or engraved side in or out. Putting together a 3D model from 2D parts and directions can be confusing. Green triangle means twist tab and blue circle means to bend tab down.If you get lost using their included flow chart, just know that the parts go on in numerical order.You can see from my video that these are far from perfect but being able to complete them is a satisfying feeling. The rotating display is by Facinations and is solar powered. It works well indoors and works fine with just the lights in the room but do not work well in shady areas but it does take a battery if you want. Take your time, take breaks, have fun!

Just on the edge of doable for a senior citizen. The parts, tabs and slots are so small, they're had to see without good light and layered lenses.I found that keeping a drill index in my work area to be very helpful. I could pull out the size drill I needed to wrap parts around to get just the right curve for tubes. For the other curved surfaces, I found that pressing them into my hand or finger with a pencil eraser got the shape going in the right direction. Then when the part is installed, further touch-ups can be made. I messed up on the first wing I installed, getting off by one slot in the triple rows of slots separated by about 1mm. I had to get another kit to finish it properly. I'd recommend starting with the Millenium Falcon, which is much easier.

I have done a couple of these kits at this point. This one was one of the better ones, I think. I consider myself very good at assembling things, and these kits sometimes have tabbies that the directions say to do something with that turns out to actually be nigh impossible. The only wrinkle with this particular kit is the guns ... it probably would have been better to not have tabs on them for the tubular part, and a toothpick is absolutely essential to making those super-tiny cylinders. As with other similar kits, having needle nose tweezers helps a lot (yes, tweezers ... normal hardware store needle nose pliers are WAY too big).

Parts wouldn't line up for me. Ended up with a few I could bend to sort've look right, but decided to toss it after I came across the fifth group that wouldn't line up.It's a shame because I really wanted this little thing on my desk at work.

This was smaller than I expected it to be, but not in a bad way. It's not so small that it's hard to see or anything, or too small to work on, but it's not terribly large, either.There's a lot of fantastic detail in this, my advice is to take it slow, be attentive, and double check each step. On the upside, if you do something out of order (as I did) it's not generally a problem to take something apart to fix a mistake. I don't think it would be smart to do it over and over, but it can be done once or twice without a problem.I'll definitely be getting more of these.

Do other models first... Some parts easy to break if reverse bend along overly perforated lines.Small roll parts...

Took 3 and 1/2 hours to build. Difficult due to lots of curved pieces. Had trouble getting the fins on the wings to stay upright, as you can see in the pictures (I'll probably glue them in place). Despite what a previous reviewer said, I could only get this in attack mode (wings tilted down). For the barrels of the guns, I ended up cutting the side tabs off and rolling it around a toothpick (not the tabs that connect it to the wing, you'll see which tabs when you get to that part). Despite the wobbly find, I'm pleased with the model.

My 11 year old tackled this. It came out really nice. He was worried he was too young because of the age bracket on it. I sat with him for a minute until he realized he was fine. Came out awesome!