by JOHN BOSWELL

This is the mini Millenium Falcon from AMT/ERTL's old Rebel Base diorama kit.

SIDE WALLS

I used a sanding drum in my Dremel to remove the thick side wall on each half of the falcon, filing out the more hard-to-reach areas. I then thinned out the plastic all the way round, being careful not to melt the plastic as I went along. I cut some long strips of plastic-card approx 3mm wide to make the new side walls. Once in place the Falcon looked so much better, much more like the studio model. The Falcon has 4 recessed holes above and below each of the two loading mandibles at the front. Mine disappeared while I was sanding so I had to scratchbuild them. I used 7mm diameter plastic tubing, cut into 4 rings same height as the side walls. A thin circle of plastic card was glued half way inside each ring, then I greeblie -etailed each side.

The side wall detailing is just mainly greeblie bits of plastic strip, cut into various sizes just to vary it a bit. I did try to follow the studio models detail along the loading mandibles, the trick here is to resemble it, don't worry if it's not spot on. I used stretched sprue to replace and add to some of the pipework on the mandibles.

The new escape capsules are made from 1/48 Revell F-18 engine nozzles, with about 3mm cut off to fit. I detailed the inside using thin sheet styrene and stretched sprue.

ENGINE

COCKPIT

The cockpit doesn't have the side-frames or any detail at the front. I added thin Evergreen strips at the side and then carefully filed them down to blend them in. For the front I drilled a hole to take a 3mm diameter styrene tube, it protrudes by about a millimeter so the front frames can taper up. The bottom half is Milliput shaped to match the taper of the frames.

RADAR DISH

I added a small spike to the centre of the radar dish and filed all the detail off the back. Looking at the back the centre disc is from the spares box, and the 8 ridges are Evergreen strip. The framework is mainly sheet styrene with a thin tube to connect it all together.

I only noticed after I finished the kit that the dish is WAY too big. It needs about 3.5mm taking off the outside edge. Ah well, maybe Lando replaced it with a bigger one after ROTJ, hoping Han wouldn't spot it.

QUAD LASERS

The only way to get these was to scratch them. I made mine from a Tamiya 1/35th scale German Infantry accessory kit. I used the handles from 8 grenades to form the barrels, the rest is all sheet styrene. The bottom guns are detachable so I can display the Falcon.

TOP TURRET

Somehow ERTL managed to mold this bit on backwards, but if you carefully cut round the turret you can remove it with minimal clean-up. Once glued in the correct position I filled any gaps that where left.

EXTRA LANDING GEAR BAYS

I noticed something while doing my research, if I used the existing recessed detail panels as a reference and sized my bays to fit to them, they'd be too narrow. I cut 2 paper templates in the shape of my bays and positioned them until they looked right. From there I could draw the outline of the new detail panels. These were cut open and detailed. The gear bay templates were stuck to sheet styrene and, using Milliput to get the right position, attached to the Falcon.

PAINTING

The fun bit ! The base coat was Halfords plastic car primer (white) then I painted all the coloured panels (grey, red, darker grey, odd bit of yellow) using my reference to get it as accurate as possible. Onto the weathering, this was just washes of thinned Tamiya black of various strengths until I thought it looked just right. I guess the trick is to stop yourself just before your happy with it, because undoing overdone weathering is a lot of hard work.

And there you go, one mini - Falcon, a really fun build !

Image: Underneath

Image: Head on

Image: Port side

Image: Starboard