I decided to take the plunge and start my first LED project. So without any further ado, let me present to you...
Part I - the Saga of the Italian Raider
A while ago, I was planning on gifting my brother a Raider Corvette. As most of you are probably aware, those are kind of hard to find. I stumbled upon an Italian vendor purportedly selling a Raider Expansion in English. Of course it turned out to really be in Italian and the vendor was not responding to my e-mails. So I was left with an Italian Raider (not to forget the super-valuable "Ammiraglio Ozzel") that I had no immediate use for.
What better ship to potentially ruin by pulling it apart?
I started by taking the wings off. The lower one came out without a hitch. The pegs for the left and right wings broke instead of sliding out, so I'll have to glue them back on at the very end.
Then, I followed @Khyros ' advice and drilled out the engine before opening the model. Drilling into a miniature feels strange and kind of wrong. I took my time with it, using slower settings and regularly checking my progress with a flashlight. I used a 3mm drill, the same size as the LED. This is as far as the drill went in before hitting the support. But the little Raider's misadventures were far from over:
That moment when… you're not sure whether you're about to do something really cool or something really stupid. The knife slid in easily, but pulling the two halves apart was impossible and I ended up just cutting the support.
Once I had the Raider opened up, I decided that the support was in the way of my planned LED placement, so I cut it out and filed down the remains. I also drilled into the hole on the bottom because that's where the wires will come out.
That was it for day one. All in all, opening the model and preparing it for the LED took me about an hour. I didn't break anything important, so I considered it a success so far.