Has anyone made a Millenium Falcon chess table?

blufive

Sr Member
My family recently moved into a new house and I now have my very own office/prop room. I have some unused space in the middle of the room and I was trying to think about what to put there.

Eventually, I came up with a Millenium Falcon chess table. Has anyone made one of these?

I'd love to get some insight on this piece.

:)
 
I have that coming up to the top of my list of projects. It's getting close.

I've done some screen grabs and started drawing stuff.
 
I'm making the Nav Chair. Collecting pieces right now and hope to start building in a few months.

Love to see a nice Chess Table.

BTW - if anyone is interested in an ejection seat that could be used to make the NAV chair...send me a pm.
 
A fan-made one was on display at CE this weekend:

facts2005008kopie7bg.jpg


It looked nice, but it's not very accurate in the details. Personally, I'd love one to sit my Holo monster chess pieces on. :)

I dug this up from an ancient RPF thread ages ago which would prove useful to anyone making one (the figures were all missing though):

Since this is an older display piece, it has been modified from its screen-used condition. Earlier in this thread, JediDave explained that there are some detail pieces missing, and some that were added for the display. The original detail pieces will need to be investigated further.

All measurements that I am providing are approximate, taken using my trusty Mark 1 Eyeball, but they are pretty close. The table was in a large glass case, preventing me from using a ruler.


Overall Table Dimensions:

The table top is circular, 35” in total diameter, including a rounded edge that is 5” in diameter. It sits on a cylindrical pedestal 14” in diameter and 26” high, which, in turn, sits on a circular base that is 23” in diameter and 2” thick. The base has a bevel that starts 1” away from the pedestal and tapers down to 1” thick at the edge of the base, ending in a 1” diameter roundover. (See figure 1)

Figure 1


The Tabletop:

The tabletop has a playing area that is 24” in diameter in its center, with a checkerboard pattern of black and silver on it. The playing area appears to be a sticker or thin sheet of painted aluminum applied to the main body of the tabletop. The tabletop has 2 “player areas” that each occupy a 90-degree arc of the table edge directly across the table from each other. The player areas, for the purpose of this post, are designated as the “red” and “blue” sides. Each player area has a set of 27 “keys” and 13 lights, plus the aforementioned missing detail pieces. On the Red side, the lights are dark red (of course), and the keys each have a sticker on them that has a text character in white on a black background. On the Blue side, the lights are blue and the keys have stickers with black text on a white background. The dimensions and spacing are identical for both sides. (See figure 2)

Figure 2


The Player Areas:

The profile of the player areas is peculiar, with an inset rounded piece that has the keys, lights, and detail pieces attached to it. It is difficult to describe the actual shape of the profile, so I will direct you to the following figure and the photos that I posted on my Photopoint page, the link for which can be found in one of my posts earlier in this thread. The outside corners where the outer diameter of the table meet the inset of the player area are rounded over in a 1" diameter chamfer. (See figure 3)

Figure 3


The Keys:

The keys in the player area are made of wood (several in the display were cracked) and have profile cut in them. They keys appear to have started out as a 1” square piece of stock that had an angle cut in it with a table saw and then had a rounded lip cut on a router table. The angle on the front of the keys appears to be about 30 degrees. The stock was then cut in 3/4" wide sections. The keys are evenly spaced along the lower edge of the inset. The text sticker that is on the top of each key is square with rounded edges and has about 1/16” of space between the edge of the sticker and the edge of the key. (See figure 4)

Figure 4


The Lights:

The lights are approximately 3/8” in diameter and 3/8” high. They have a slight taper from the bottom to the top, and they have a thin metal ring at the bottom the same diameter as the lens. There is also a bezel that is slightly larger than the diameter of the lens that is below the metal ring.


General Construction and Painting:

The tabletop appears to be made of several pieces of vacu-formed plastic that are mounted on a wooden subframe. The subframe is visible on the bottom of the tabletop. The pedestal is of an unknown material. It may be plastic, or even paper Sonotube. The base appears to be made of wood.

The whole unit is painted metallic gray. The paint has a “thick” look to it, like automotive paint or RoboCop armor. Since this is a display piece, it may have been repainted in a non-accurate color, so further investigation is required to nail down the actual color scheme. The playing surface on the top of the table has flat black squares on a brushed aluminum background. The keys appear to be painted a different silver than the rest of the table. It looks like your basic Krylon or Rustoleum silver.
 
Isn't the original still on display in one of the Florida theme parks? Disney MGM Studios I think. It looks pretty rough up close and is very beaten up.

Possibly somebody will chime in with pics.

Chris.
 
Isn't the original still on display in one of the Florida theme parks? Disney MGM Studios I think. It looks pretty rough up close and is very beaten up.

Possibly somebody will chime in with pics.

Chris.
This is/was on display in the Great Movie Ride queue at Disney MGM Studios Florida. I don't remember who originally posted these, so if the owner is out there and wants me to pull them just pm me.

DSCF1870.JPG

DSCF0243.JPG
 
The chess table was no longer on display at Disney last December when I went. I got some shots of it 2 years before and brought along better equipment (tripod/macro lens), so, of course, it wasn't there. And yeah, it looked beat up when I saw it in 2004.
 
Wow! Thanks Xeno!

Very cool! Ive never seen the symbols on the buttons etc. wish they woulda filmed under it and the base as well, but still... AWESOME!

:cool
 
Word of this thread got to me pretty quickly tonight when I posted on Rebelscum and TF.N that I planned to build one of these.

One very important item came from Don Bies, who told me he personally loaded the piece that's now at Disney on a truck 16 years ago at LFL.

The only thing he couldn't remember was if it was from ANH or ESB, though clearly Disney says it's 1977.

I am still working on reference from the movie. We have searched the LFL image archives today, via our photo license at C2 Ventures, and might have a couple pics we haven't seen before.

A friend that works at Disney will be going there tomorrow to see if he can track down the piece, though I did read here it might be gone at the moment. I hope he can find it so we can get more detailed pics, though between the video linked above, the photos and text description of it, that's a lot of reference.

What got me going on this was I had Southreplicas up here visiting last weekend so he could bring his finished 1:1 Grievous sculpt to me. I also got his three chess pieces and having always wanted a table, that pretty much sealed it up for me.
 
One very important item came from Don Bies, who told me he personally loaded the piece that's now at Disney on a truck 16 years ago at LFL.

The only thing he couldn't remember was if it was from ANH or ESB, though clearly Disney says it's 1977.

It's not that I can't remember...I don't know if it was ANH or ESB. Seeing it was simply sitting in the Archives when I started, there's no way of knowing for sure whether it was reused for ESB or remade. I would guess the latter, as very little of ANH props/sets survived.

As to the plaque by Disney...well, all they know is that they had a prop directly from Lucasfilm, so I'm sure they simply assumed it was the original.

--Don Bies
 
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