Revell Millennium Falcon (1:241) with Death Star Laser Turret

[Rumblestripe]

Buying something from Amazon I needed something to take me up to the magic twenty squids and free postage, so I had put this little fellow in my "save for later" basket some time ago for just such a day. I usually top up with Vallejo paints but this time I needed a fiver so this little chap for six squids was just the job. Quick little throwaway bit of fun...

 

But when I opened it. Well it isn't a bad little model. So I started thinking about "doing something" with it. Anyhoo, more on the MF model and what I decided to "do" with it later, I decided I wanted something to display it on. Probably my favourite Star Wars moment is when the Millennium Falcon swoops down on Darth Vader closing in on Luke in the trench and takes out his wingman causing DV to abort and Han shouts "Yahoo, you're in the clear kid, let's blow this thing and go home!"

 

So a bit of Death Star scenery is required. A Laser turret.

 

Nothing commercially available that I know of (apart from the Bandai kits and I don't think there is anything suitable?) Anyway I'll just scratchbuild one...

 

First off find some scale plans. The best I could find was Adam Savage's "Tested" website (yes, the "Mythbusters" guy)

Build a Studio Scale Death Star Laser Tower

 

It is more concerned with a CAD/CAM model but the drawing gave me a starting point. So, plasticard and tools to hand off we go...

 

 

So that is where I'm at. You can see I have started on the "Laser Guns" using plastic tubing or different diameters but I need to "greeblie" them up a bit. The thing that looks like the buffer plate from a steam locomotive is to locate the lasers guns behind the curved plate (making them moveable was decreed as a step too far!)

 

What started as a little basket filler has turned into a project. I think the turret is probably too big but the Death Star was a "BIG" thing so who really knows. I was amused to find out that the sets that depict the interior of the Millennium Falcon would not have fitted inside the full 1:1 model that was built at Elstree for filming the scenes in "A New Hope" and that full model was used for the scenes on Tatooine and on the Death Star without being moved, they rebuilt the sets around the model!

 

If anyone is interested in any of the techniques I have used please ask.

 

Peace out.
 

[Hockeyboy76]

Liking this very much. 

[Rumblestripe]

Some more progress on the Laser Tower

 

 

So, I have the bits for the tower base, let's clag 'em together...

 

 

Here is the base assembled (but needing a little tidying) and the turret which I have been "greebly-ing" (is that a verb?)

 

 

Progress, albeit slow. I am also progressing the Falcon build and more on that later.

 

Toodle pip old chums and down with The Empire.

 

[Rumblestripe]

So, let's have a look at my progress on the Falcon. I did something different in that I decided to paint the components on the sprue

 

Warning - lots of pictures!

 

 

I won't know how successful (or otherwise) this has been till I clag everything together!

 

But here I decided to experiment with putting some simple lighting into the model...

 

So spray the insides black and make some holes

 

 

As you can see I'm using those new-fangled Light-Emitting Diode thingies. As a newbie to this technology, I found this website admirably simple to understand

 

https://www.instructables.com/id/LEDs-for-Beginners/

 

So this is how I managed to get it inside the body:

 

 

You can probably see without me telling you but the LEDs are wired in "parallel" with individual resistors. Apparently this is much better than wiring in series.

 

The kit comes with a pieces of clear plastic to for the engine bit. I was aware that a simple array of four LEDs will not create the same effect as the engines we see in the film to I tried to increase the light scatter by sanding the plastic with 600 grit wet and dry used wet to give a misted effect.

 

 

I then masked the plastic to make it look more like the grid effect at the back of the Falcon and sprayed it black, removing the masking gave me...

 

 

I also stuck some aluminium foil behind the clear fitting and then applied some power to the LEDs. Ta-da!

 

 

Quite pleased with that.

 

Toodle pip old chums and down with The Empire.

 

[Mindmax]

Very nice; can‘t wait to see the final diorama!👍