Millennium Falcon- Part Deux

Back with an update to the construction of the 32 inch Millennium Falcon model.
Many parts have been made since the first posting. Lots of flat surfaces and some detail chunks have been constructed.

 Here is the Rear Landing Gear Housings. This is a huge surface area on the underside of The Falcon. Some kit substitutions have been made, and I will probably replace the very center piece with a corresponding kit part from an M-60A3 Tank. But for right now I am thrilled to have such a large piece of the ship constructed. All landing gear doors are simply taped in place in order to facilitate their removal later on. Once the ships build is complete I will likely construct landing gear that can be slipped into the housings.

 Seen here are the forward tips of the mandibles. These were created totally from scratch to get the louvred openings on the front. I am leaving open the possibility of putting headlights within them, that will be tackled once construction is complete and I am looking at a more fleshed out scheme for lighting the ship.

 The large dish antenna stumped me at first but a quick visit to pearl art supply revealed Plastruct acrylic caps in the perfect 3 inch diameter for the build. N scale handrails and a cone from a 1/200th Saturn V provided the bulk of the detailing for the front of the dish. The rear was further detailed using PVC tubing, styrene strip and Kits parts from Tamiya's 1/35th Matilda tank. The front and back still have a good bit of detailing before they are called finished. 

 The bits seen above fit within two of the hull cutout openings on either side of the engine deck. These were two of the more fun pieces to scratch since they also used plenty of kit parts. However the rightmost one will actually wind up being used within the mandibles and a more accurate piece will take its place after discovering the bulk of the parts that make up its detailing were actually available in a correctly scaled kit.

Many More bits have been constructed and shot, and even more have been built including one of the quad laser cannons, the ingress/egress ramp, the mandible upper and lower surfaces and more. Updates to come very soon! 

Millennium Falcon - Week 1

Presented here is the beginning of my scratchbuild of a 32 inch Millennium Falcon, thats pretty much studio scale to the Empire Strikes Back filming miniature. I've started and will continue to build it in components. Naturally the cockpit came first as kind of a proof of concept build. It went together fantastically.

Included in the build is a non accurate to the filming miniature console and anteroom to the cockpit. These are to the best of my abilities beng made accurate to the full size set, using blueprints from the widely available star wars blueprints packet.

Also in the first round of components are the docking ports from either side of the ship. They still need kit details and I am working on a list of 1/72nd scale tanks, trucks and planes to buy in order to fully flesh out the ship.

What will set this build apart is proportionally, I am basing it on the 5 foot filming miniature from the first film, that one being much more pleasing to me aesthetically. In the end there will be some compromise and hybridization among the two, but the broad strokes will will likely favor the five footer.

There will certainly be more to come! Even the pieces shown still require more panelling work, detailing and kitbashing eventually. You can also expect this blog to host my build of the new Polar Lights 1/350th scale Classic Enterprise model to be released soon!