YT-1300 Engine Assembly

A couple of weeks ago I had some down time and snapped a few pics of more progress on my Special Edition YT-1300 mod. The goals for this session were to seal up the openings and attach the finished main engine module.

 Since the cockpit tube had been attached to the fuselage it was time to start chopping out some detailing. This handy gizmo is The Chopper II from North West Shore Line , aptly named to make precise and quick cuts in styrene.

 I then notched the paneling with a square hole punch I acquired at the arts & crafts store from the scrapbooking supply section. They have some other handy shapes I will also need at some point.

This plating was formed and glued around the perimeter of the cockpit tubing.

The area left open by removing the cockpit and corridor from the original position was filled with a piece of sheet styrene and then detailed with assorted bits.

To make greeblies for the engine section I selected a few round and square shaped styrene strips of assorted sizes.

Again, I put these through the Chopper and cut random lengths from all the strips.

After a bout 20 minutes I had a fantastic pile of assorted shapes to use in detailing out the various sections.

Since it will likely be a while before moving on to the detail. I stored all the greeblies in a handy container to keep them organized.

I then attached a strip of styrene across the opening where the original drive housing was located and then glued the upgraded engine module to the back of the hull.

Were I more industrious I would have probably planned ahead more and installed super awesome LED lighting in the engine nacelles. Since I used some of the clear plastic domes that finally arrived from China to fill in the afterburners there would have been plenty of room to install all the stuff. Maybe on the next one.

Up next I will be sorting out all of the greeblies to super-detail out the engine components. The green bits shown here are some wheels off of a Tamiya tank kit. I will make a little press-mold to transfer the detail from the original Falcon model where the engine vent grating is modeled.

Stay tuned!

X-wing Conversions

As if I have so much free time on my hands, I figured I would dip a little into this community of X-Wing mods. There seems to be a relatively large portion of hobbyists who enjoy converting and/or repainting some of the models from Fantasy Flight's X-Wing Miniatures Game.

The first time I ever saw this image was around 1977 when Topps released the 5th series of Star Wars trading cards with the orange border. Even at that time I wanted a collection of models painted like the original studio set. I got about as far as 3 of them with the original issued MPC 1:48 scale model kits.

It is no secret that the reason I am working as s professional sculptor in the miniatures industry is directly related to seeing Star Wars for the first time when I was 10 years old. Now, 37 years later, I just may be able to complete my project - but in 1:270th scale!

I have started by attempting to strip some of the plastic models of their horrendous factory pre-paint. After tooling around the interwebs and heeding some well intended suggestions, it seems like 93% Isopropyl Alcohol is the clear winner, thanks to Mr. Justin of Secret Weapon Miniatures.

Although the alcohol hasn't removed ALL of the paint, it has stripped it enough that a fresh coat of primer and color will not obscure the fine details.

In a related project I nabbed an extra YT-1300 just to make some "special modifications myself". Never fear, I still have two more in pristine Falcon condition.

This is the large pile of plastic bits I started with to kit-out the modified engine module. Most of it is leftover tank parts from Tamiya and GW kits.  The white cylinders are plastic tubing from Evergreen and Plastruct domes.

Here is the module all blocked out. The next step will be to detail it out with some micro parts using styrene strips and clippings. I still need to make some sort of afterburner insert which may have been easier to do before I assembled all of this.

Now that the modified engine module is assembled I dry-fitted it to make sure the silhouette was what I wanted for the ship. The front fork is filled with another length of plastic tubing where I will later attach the original cockpit.

Next, detailing out the engine module.