STAR TREK
THOLIAN WEB SPINNER

The Tholians, a highly aggressive and territorial race, would protect their claims at all cost. The prime example of this effort is the Web Spinner. The Spinner has a wedge shaped hull with three triangular wings and possesses conventional phaser weapons capable of disabling much larger vessels. The key to its success however is its ability to generate an energy beam that when working in tandem with a second Spinner could quickly trap and encase a ship in this tractor field. The field would then constrict until the trapped vessel was crushed. Starfleet found out just how effective this Tholian weapon can be in 2268 when the USS Enterprise NCC 1701 became trapped in the web.

This build is made of .040 sheet styrene and scales out to about 1:96th. Below are some images and a schematic I had in my reference library of the Spinner and at the end of this article are some great links with images of the studio model as will as schematics.

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The first part of this project was to create scale drawings of the Spinner from the sides, front and back. The drawings were then used to make templates for the wings and pentagon shaped hull in order to keep all of the angles true. The templates were tested and mounted to a piece of plywood to make a jig for the three matching wings. Below are the wings and the templates for the jig.

I decided the best approach for this build is to make this wing the master for a matching set of three wings. With a mold for all the parts leaves me the option for future builds and hopefully the nacelle equipped Aurora. The wings will be hallow cast in clear resin to accommodate lighting. In these photos you can see the over all shape of the wing and the perforated panels.
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