One of the most fun projects on DS9 was making the kitbash ships for “A Time To Stand”. The script called for a “rag-tag fleet” of damaged ships coming back from the war. We needed a lot of ships in a hurry, and did not have the budget for professional models. Gary Hutzel and members of the Art Department and Merchandising collected a good number of model kits, and I purchased more off the shelf. We invited the members of the VFX Departments of DS9 and Voyager to “make a ship and we’ll put your name on it”. Many people were happy to join us. Some members of the Art Department also came over on their own time and joined us. I mixed up some paints using Gesso as the base, because it sticks to the plastic models, washes up with water and gives the nice matte finish needed for photographing. The decals stick to it as well. The Federation colors are mixed from varying amounts of Ultramarine Blue and Yellow Ochre. The lovely Oyster Gray is just a tiny amount of those colors in white. Space dirt is added with a light wash of raw umber. I gathered all the glues, brushes, etc. and set up a work space at the facility where we shot our motion control. All the materials were arranged so people could come in their spare time and work on the ships. We all had busy jobs and very little spare time. This was a fun, creative project that brought the DS9 and Voyager teams together. I got to know my co-workers from the other show, and we all had a great time making these ships. These were intended to be small background ships – indistinct shapes to fill out the frame, so there was no pressure to make them perfect. We intentionally mixed up the parts from different ships so they would not look like ships that already existed. Gary Hutzel was very fast and made several ships, including The Raging Queen, named as a joke after the SNL episode. I made a little tug out of plastic robot parts and called it The Ertl after the kit maker. It actually had no Ertl parts. The Yeager came about because we could use the stick-on letters from The Voyager. Later the Art Department made actual transfer material names and gave the ships numbers. We were all having a great time working together on this. The Art Department was always so supportive of the VFX Department, and we always enjoyed working with Doug Drexler, the Okudas, Jim Vanover, Anthony Frederickson and everyone else. The Frederickson was named for Anthony Frederickson of the Art Department and I believe he made the ship. The Nash is named for Erik Nash, one of our motion control camera operators – one of the best in the business, who brought so much to our VFX. Some of the ships actually had neon tubes inside for lighting. Gary Hutzel did the electric wiring. Some had UV paint on the engine pods, which were shot as separate elements, comped in and colorized in post. The use of digital compositing and animation allowed us to get beautiful results from very humble paint jobs! People have asked why I used jet engine parts on my ship. It is very simple – I used parts that were available, left over from the other kits. I needed something to fill in the bottom, to fit the space under the hull, and those jet engines fit. This was a throw-away background ship, meant to be about 10 pixels high in the frame, just an indistinct Federation shape. I did not have a lot of time, and needed to finish so I could get back to the other 99 things I had to do. Unfortunately, it was never used in the show because the producer felt that the audience would think it was the Voyager. The kitbashing project was one of my favorite memories on DS9 because it was a group project and one of the few times all the teams were able to laugh and work together. We had such a wonderful crew of talented people, and it was a joy to work with all of them. It makes me so happy to know that fans are still enjoying the work we did so long ago!
I also thought he built the Raging Queen because those designs were very similar, but in fact Gary Hutzel built the model. 
