Satyr's DeAgostini Millenium Falcon Build

Wow fantastic,....the random way looks more natural,.....I'll have a look for a UK supplier

J
 
Yeah... these self flashing LEDs are the way to go for this kit. I should have used them for the R2 build I did awhile back, would have saved me a ton of time and interior space over doing the circuit board I spent way too long making and designing around the 4050 chips. I think what I like about these LEDs is the fact you can run almost 50 of them off one 9 volt battery. I'd contact Evan Designs and see if they will ship to the UK my friend. Let us know what you discover.
 
I just got Issues 21-24 yesterday and put more of the bottom hull together. It's interesting that the corridor cover is all one piece instead of two like what came in the first package. The nice thing though is that the bottom edge of the hull plating on it has the notched (unlike the first corridor pieces). In this package also came another part to the jig that is suppose to support the bottom hull during assembly to keep the shape of it from warping while working on the upper levels. Looks like about half of the bottom hull is now done. One nice thing is that this shipment also includes one of the bottom hull panels that has visible damage. It's a long streak of damage however it looks more like someone scribbled with a magic marker and then sunk in the details. Will have to fix that before painting the hull at a later stage.



Now something I highly recommend is getting yourself a small container for your screws and what-not. I found this nice little 6 compartment plastic box for beading at Wal-mart in the craft department. Its perfect for holding all the screws... here's what mine looks like:



Once I got the everything together that I could up to this issue, I noticed the weight of the whole thing. So I decided to see just how heavy just the lower hull has gotten so far. Was amazed to see that this thing is already almost 2 lbs so far (1.80 lbs)... this is without the recess, just the framing and the hull panels on the bottom so far. So the way I figure it, if this is about halfway thru the bottom half, without the center turret section, then when the whole bottom is together, I figure it'll weigh about 5 lbs (give or take a few ounces when it's all together).



Now I realize I have missed a few postings lately but don't worry. I've gotcha covered... I've watched other build logs and keep hearing people complain about the rings with the pads and how tired they were of putting them together... sure there are a lot of them. 9 total... each with 18 pads, making 182 pads total. That's a lot of pads, but here's what I did and did them all in about an hour. First I waited until I had all of them... makes it a lot easier when you have all of them together at once rather then doing them one at a time as they come in. First thing, I worked on each ring one at a time... removed all the pads from the sprue and didn't worry about sanding the sprue nubs yet.



I glued each pad on the ring...



and when dry, I sanded the nubs off to give the rings a more even look. Then I sanded the hard edges down to round them off a bit to give that look of a rounded pad.



In the end they came out looking pretty good, and couldn't help but take a few pics of them in place in the corridors to see how they look. (The last ring on the first pic I didn't sand so you can see the difference between just putting them on without sanding them down and what they look like if you do!)





I haven't put the wall cushions on yet... am working on something special to create a couple of ripped up ones to see if I can make them look good. That's it for now. More to come later!
 
NecronautDrummer said:
Looking good! I'm still in cockpit mode, and am waiting for more cargo hold stuff to come in.

Thanks bro... there's still so much I wanna do with this baby that I just haven't been able to find the time, but I will get it done... oh yes! Don't worry... I find by not thinking about the next shipment coming, it shows up when you least expect it! :)
 
Well I've been working on new stickers for this kit... so far I've come up with some new ones that will be much more accurate to the original cockpit set (as well as a few more). When I'm done with them I'll post them for everyone to enjoy and use. Here's what I've come up with so far:

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Whatcha all think? If you want to try them for yourself, here's the link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/es5y0pghayiyz3z/DeAgo%20New%20Stickers.pdf?dl=0
 
I haven't updated this much at all lately... but I have been busy working on the interior details. Unfortunately I haven't had the funds to purchase the 3D printed detail parts that I really want... however, even some of them aren't perfect. So, I got out my epoxy putty and started making greeblies... not just any greeblies... bunches of small itsy bitsy greeblies... why? Well in between shipments of this baby I pulled out one of my other kits and there's alot of putty work on it. But something I find is that no matter how hard you try you always end up having a little extra to play with. You have one of 2 options with this extra putty before it hardens. 1) You can make yourself another dice cube and let it harden and throw it away... 2) Try to find another use for it. I opted for plan 2!

So, I started making little itsy bitsy greeblies to use for my modeling. Nothing specific, just interesting shapes and various objects that I could throw into a model at some point to make it look more interesting and build up my greeblie collection. It also gives me practice for making specific details later on. Here's my collection so far.

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Like I said, nothing specific, just interesting shapes that when placed on a model will give it extra detail that would make it look cool. So now I have a use for all the extra putty that I end up with and it never goes to waste any more!

Now... I've also been building a map of the corridor walls. This map includes the torn/damaged cushions and the location of all the lights. Here's what I've come up with so far (NOTE: the completed interior pic is not mine, it's a friends used with permission).

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As you can see, in my map, the hallway to the cockpit has been moved about 3-5 feet down the corridor. This in turn makes the cushions that are leading to it from the cargo lounge look stretched out and out of sync with the actual set design. There's not much that can be done about that (personally I think they just used the wrong floor design for the interior). But in order to compensate for the design flaw, if you wish to simulate the damaged cushions, the lower cushion (indicated with a * in the map and should be the LOWER cushion not the MIDDLE cushion) will have to be cut in half (still debating on whether I should make a new cushion ring or not, haven't decided yet). But you can see the delema and compromise that I came up with in this map.

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Because the lower cushion is "stretched" to compensate for the moving of the cockpit corridor, it will have to be halved on the front wall. The middle and lower cuson on the opposite wall will have to be cut out of both the upper and lower halves of the corridor tube. More to come...
 
Well I wanted to see just how good my putty practice had paid off so I started detailing out the little panels on the side of the forward cockpit. Here's my results. Didn't come out too bad... whatcha think?

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OK... I wanted to detail out the walls on the interior... not an easy job. But I think I came up with a pretty good solution... here's a screencap I was going with.

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First thing I noticed was that the rings themselves had to be fixed. The pattern is _ _ ___ _ _ ___ _ _ so I also noticed that there were little ribs between each of the openings in the rings and wires inside those openings the circumference of the ring itself. So I pull out my dremal and cut a channel along the entire outside edge of the ring itself. I cut out the long holes and then using putty I put little ribs between the holes. Here's how it looks now:

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I knew I had to cut a couple of holes in the wall itself. One thing I noticed is that the main corridor round hole is actually closer to the end of the wall then in the movie, so that means I have to compromise. First I cut out my holes and sanded them so they were nice and neat. Then I cut out some framing for the holes with styrene.

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Problem is they just didn't look right... too thick. So I scrapped that idea and pulled out my putty.

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Ahhhhhhhhh... much better. Now I had to make a support pit for all the greeblie goodness inside those holes. So I cut out a nice little piece of styrene, and framed it. Then using my putty I attempted to recreate all those details inside to the best of my abilities.

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So far... it didn't come out looking too bad. What do you all think?
 
Seeing the flood of interest I press onward... I decided to focus on the wall behind the nav computer. This isn't easy because it was a bit angled and there's not much detail to make out of the screencaps... here's the cap I was working with.


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Now at first I thought about cutting some strips from my sheet of styrene but I could never get them straight or even enough with a razorblade... so I pulled out my putty and tryed using that instead.


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Not too bad... just a bit of sanding to keep them nice and straight, however upon closer inspection after letting it dry all night I realized it should have had 2 ribs coming down off the right cutout... joy of joys. So I reworked it and added some greeblies


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And once painted... it doesn't look too bad at all


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Now I decided to focus on the upper bunk area. I have been thinking about it for awhile now and think I came up with a pretty good solution. First I cut out a piece of sheet styrene and traced the open area onto the sheet then offset the "oval" and cut it out. I can glue that sheet onto the opening over the front and it should look pretty good. Next I took my putty and created the cushions manually. I made sure to stick to the confines of the inserts so that I'll be able to run fiber optics into it later.


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Next I wanted to focus on the side of the bunk. So far every build I've seen of this area (as well as the 3D printed parts) just don't cut it for me. So using this screencap,


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I proceeded to use my putty to try and replicate the area as close and I possibly could.


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Needless to say it came out alot better then I was expecting. I'm pretty happy with the results.. What do you all think?
 
Hey all... latest updates. I think I got the nav wall and the side bunk wall finished. I dry fit everything together for a quick looky see and it's coming along nicely.


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After taking these pics I decided to tackle the nav computer. Now this isn't really very detailed but everything on it is in the right place, it's just lacking alot of details. Namely, buttons... buttons are missing all over the place. So getting out my trusty putty, I started making buttons and things to detail it out as close to the movie accurate as I possibly could.


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Now mind you all of this detail I've done is with the naked eye and I truly believe I may need to get glasses before too long because I take a pic and notice all kinds of little problems that look fine with my naked eye. However, one of the biggest struggles I was trying to figure out was how to do the cans. In the ANH prop, they used square bottom solo cups (I think the pun was intended). In ESB they were round bottom... in any event, trying to figure out how to simulate those cans at this scale was next to impossible until I stumbled across a couple of bamboo skewers I had in my toolbox. The sharp pointy ends I took some putty to and allowed it to harden. I made about 10 of them and picked out the 2 best of the 10.

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When they were hard, I took them off, trimmed them up and glued them to the console. I think they came out looking pretty good if I do say so myself. What do you all think?

Before Painting...
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After Painting...


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Well I finally found my magnifying goggles! That's one of the things I hate about moving... trying to find tools you need for doing stuff. All the details up to this point have been done using normal eyesight but in my old age, I think they may be going bad on me. Matter of fact, I used to be able to write bible verses on a grain of rice when I was a kid, I actually turned in a 20 page report on post-it notes in grade school. But now it's difficult to see... thankfully I was able to find my goggles and I did some touch up work on my console.


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Now that I got my goggles I decided to tackle a few little things to see if my chops were still up to task... here we have a new nav screen cover, a button panel and a bunch of little toggle switches... and yes, that's a penny.


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Lemme know what you think that is of course if anyone is still watching this thread!
 
Diving into the details here. Quite the talent with your putty. Pretty good approximations to the set props.
 
Thanks... I rather enjoy making tiny bits and pieces from time to time. Really makes things challenging!
 
Latest progress build... I finally finished the nav console and got all the fibers run. Just got to separate out the whites and blues and reds but took a test photo and it looks better then I thought it would... What do you all think?

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