Mission
Get to Know Modelwerks
Premium starship files, printed kits, and display builds for serious scale model builders.
Ad Astra per Aspera... Through hardship to the stars.
Company origin file
I got my start in 1987, when I was seven years old and my mom sat me down to watch the premiere of The Next Generation. She was an old-school fan from the '60s, and she passed the bug along immediately and permanently.
When a die-cast Enterprise D showed up at KB Toys, I had to have it. But something was off — the seam lines, the proportions, details that didn't match the schematics. For most kids, not an issue. For me, it was the beginning of a lifelong, entirely unresolvable problem. (This particular flavor of obsessive noticing would eventually get a name. At the time, it just meant strong opinions about toy accuracy at age seven.)
The fix was to build my own. That same year, the first Enterprise D kit appeared on the shelf at the local hobby store. I stared at it, asked my mom how to build it, and walked out with the kit, some Testors glue, a basic enamel set, and a pair of brushes that were, frankly, god-awful. I was also issued an X-Acto knife on the condition I not cut myself — which seems funnier now, given the scars. The first build was objectively terrible. I was completely hooked.
The years that followed were a slow, obsessive education: magazine subscriptions, failed builds, wrecked builds, rebuilt builds. Learning to light models with grain-of-wheat bulbs, burning them out, switching to LEDs. Scratch-building original designs, casting resin parts, eventually teaching myself 3D design. When I got my first 3D printer, the obsession found its final form. A decade of iteration later, Modelwerks exists.
What We're Actually Building Here
Modelwerks is a portal to the ships that never got their due — the freighter that appeared once and vanished, the alien vessel in a background shot, the design that only ever lived in a technical manual or a tie-in comic. Everything I always wanted to build as a kid, with no kit available and no one filling the gap.
Every release starts the same way: deep research, then planning how parts fit together and where wiring channels run, then testing, refining, and building something I'm genuinely proud of. Each vessel is its own puzzle, its own piece of nostalgia, its own problem and then its own solution.
I started Modelwerks to make the best 3D-printable sci-fi model kits in the garage kit market. But it's more than that — it's a lifelong special interest and a genuine obsession, and one I love sharing with everyone who feels the same way about building miniature spaceships.
When a die-cast Enterprise D showed up at KB Toys, I had to have it. But something was off — the seam lines, the proportions, details that didn't match the schematics. For most kids, not an issue. For me, it was the beginning of a lifelong, entirely unresolvable problem. (This particular flavor of obsessive noticing would eventually get a name. At the time, it just meant strong opinions about toy accuracy at age seven.)
The fix was to build my own. That same year, the first Enterprise D kit appeared on the shelf at the local hobby store. I stared at it, asked my mom how to build it, and walked out with the kit, some Testors glue, a basic enamel set, and a pair of brushes that were, frankly, god-awful. I was also issued an X-Acto knife on the condition I not cut myself — which seems funnier now, given the scars. The first build was objectively terrible. I was completely hooked.
The years that followed were a slow, obsessive education: magazine subscriptions, failed builds, wrecked builds, rebuilt builds. Learning to light models with grain-of-wheat bulbs, burning them out, switching to LEDs. Scratch-building original designs, casting resin parts, eventually teaching myself 3D design. When I got my first 3D printer, the obsession found its final form. A decade of iteration later, Modelwerks exists.
What We're Actually Building Here
Modelwerks is a portal to the ships that never got their due — the freighter that appeared once and vanished, the alien vessel in a background shot, the design that only ever lived in a technical manual or a tie-in comic. Everything I always wanted to build as a kid, with no kit available and no one filling the gap.
Every release starts the same way: deep research, then planning how parts fit together and where wiring channels run, then testing, refining, and building something I'm genuinely proud of. Each vessel is its own puzzle, its own piece of nostalgia, its own problem and then its own solution.
I started Modelwerks to make the best 3D-printable sci-fi model kits in the garage kit market. But it's more than that — it's a lifelong special interest and a genuine obsession, and one I love sharing with everyone who feels the same way about building miniature spaceships.