Issue 6

Reety-all-righty. Time for Issue 6 and getting very near the end of the cockpit saga...for now.

First up, a bag of greeblies, the little fiddly bits there to make it look cool. We'll be saving these until later, when the body is closer together.

Now, a table that will have seating in front of it where the holo game goes. Way too clean for my tastes.

And the nose cone. Now there is some controversy about this cone concerning the windows. If you want to bask in the drama, go here. In short, the window panes are too thick and the bottom windows on the front don't go down past the middle like they ought. How you feel about this is basically down to how movie-accurate you want to get. Since I'm going for a custom build, I could care less. Still, a replacement will be coming around about issue 40 or so, so don't get crazy with the glue. I'll just use this one for now, and when I get the enw one see which I like best.

Anyway. Comes with a ring that helps assembly.

I got out my oldest, nastiest sanding block and scuffed the daylights out of this sucker, then went and painted the control panel in the back of it, there. Also a little dry-brushing to "ding" the paint off the corners. I want to also pick up a straw or something and put "cup rings" where people haven't been using their coasters ;) (picture taken before doing the control panel):

Here's how the nose cone goes together:

And here's a shot from the inside so you can see where all the notches and things line up with the ring:

And here it is together.

But before we do that, let's add one last chunk of walls. You get these three pieces. Lay them out as shown with the line 1/3 of the way up with all 3 bits:

Now, get your stickers out. This is how they'll go across the walls.

Application is very simple: you just take one sticker, start in the middle of the main arch, and work it down to the bottom, then use it to stick on the bottom part. Repeat with the other one. When you're done, it should slide into the cockpit like so:

Note that it won't "click" in or anything; it just gets held in once you put everything into the shell.

And one more little pic:I got some more paint today, and did some work on the turret guns. You can begin to see what I have in mind for my custom build:

One last thing. We've got to add the levers to the control panel. They come on a tiny little tree, so:

I found it best to cut off the main parts of the tree and then ease off the actual levers, so:

Even so, I did have one casualty.

In any case, I still had 3 levers which I pasted into position, and got them looking nice. They really do add something to the cockpit.

I also wound up gluing the seats down in the cockpit, since they were too loose and I'm done with 'em anyway. I'm leaving the control panels and things loose for now, as I may come back with fiber optics later. So that's that for the cockpit (for now) and also Issue 6. Onward, to the next adventure!

Issue 5 & Painting

OK, Issue 5 is here, and that means we're almost done with the cockpit. Note they've switched from the cardboard backed board to a plastic baggie. Works for me.

Now, before I go nuts with Issue 5, I wanted to stop and take a paint break, as this will be pretty much finishing off the cockpit and we'll be enclosing it soon. So I went ahead & pulled the two pieces from Issue 5, and set about them with a dry brush:

As you can see, I'm using silver (Testor's) and rust (Sargent) to give the pieces a well-worn feel. Dry brushing, if you don't know, is a simple technique that really makes details pop. Basically, you dip your brush in a tiny amount of your paint, dab it on newspaper or whatever until the paint is nearly gone, then lightly brush over the surface of your model piece, especially hitting raised areas and edges. This and color washing (which I'll describe later) are, in my opinion, the two main tools in the painter's utility belt.

Here, I've taken the floor, worked over the control panel a bit, and dabbed silver all over the floor to give it the scuffed & worn look.

Now, a little grunge on the padding going around the door (black Testor's at work here):

Back seats:

Front seats (not entirely happy with them, but I let some paint drizzle into the cracks to "stain" them):

The piece from yesterday as well.

Also, I did just a light bit of brushing on the back sticker, because otherwise it looks too "clean". Don't go nuts with this, just use a light touch.

The finished result:

(Yes, I went ahead & installed the side controls).

OK, on with the show. Next up is the LED panel for the back wall lights. Dig this:

Basically, you want to line it up behind the cockpit (it attaches to the "door") so the 3 holes line up as shown:

It's not the snuggest fit in the world, but it's adequate. A screw goes into the middle hole.

BTW, if you haven't found a place to store your spare screws already, I suggest you do so. I'm just using a ziplock baggie myself.

Now let's do a test fit of the cockpit in the "elbow bend that holds it:

Pretty nice, eh? Don't glue it yet, though. We're going to be doing more work, not the least of which is repainting the body parts. Why? Well, have a look here:

Notice how the weathering stops abruptly at the border between the top & bottom halves? Yeah. Doesn't exactly scream verisimilitude. So I picked up some Tamiya Insignia White (AS-20) as per the painter guy's web videos, and will be giving all my parts a nice coat or two thereof. I'm going to save the weathering until the shell is assembled though, I think.

Also, I've decided not to do a strict Millennium Falcon. Part of the fun is customizing, so I'm going to do a rather special paint job. More on that later.

In the meantime, I just got an excellent set of reference pics from, of all people, these folks:

Yes, that Haynes. They've branched out into fictional vehicles. They also have one for the Enterprise. Yeah, got that too. Didn't see a TARDIS one--bummer. Anyway, tons of great reference shots, and helpful diagrams. Check out the cockpit controls:

This is gonna be a fun one just to leaf through, I can tell.

Anyway, that's Issue 5 done & dusted. Or dusty. But on purpose. So it's good.

Issue 4

Welcome to issue 4. Bit of a quick one, this. FIrst, there's another piece for the cockpit:

...shown here upside-down. *ahem* Sorry. Let's put it in place:

Next up are a couple of pieces for the frame.

For this, we'll need the skeleton we've been working on so far:

Taking out what we have so far, we grab part 5 (the one with the letter "A" lookin' bit) and attach it as shown:

Next comes the other bit, right next to it.

The nice thing is that we can now take this bit, which was just snapped on before, and fix it on more permanently (although I wouldn't: we're going to be doing some painting first).

The screws included let you secure it to the frame. Very nice.

Here's what the assembly looks like together:

And here's what happens when you add the new body part:

That'll do for Issue 4. Next up: I'm gonna break out the paints :)

Issue 3

OK, so I'm changing things around a little bit. Still doing one section a night, but now i'm not going to post on here until I have an entire issue done. Think it will help the pace a little bit.

So here's Issue 3: pretty much dealing with the cockpit some more, adding additional details. Lots of cool inside info in the magazine this time around, too.

First, let's unload the bits and pieces:

Oops, nearly forgot these little guys:

OK, first we pop off the back wall if it's on, and add the seats (trivia: the rear seats are ejector seats from fighter aircraft, and the front seats are from an old Porsche. Also, they had to lower Chewbacca's seat to make up for the height difference).

 Now it's best to pop off the console so we can add the yokes and levers, which could stand to go in a little more securely. I may go back and glue those down, once I've gone back and repainted.

Now the back and console go back into place, and we're almost done with the cockpit. Neat.

The only part left of this issue is another piece of the body, which I believe will be tackled in Issue 4. So we'll see how that fits into the big picture then.