MPC Millennium Falcon Conversion

Thanks John!

Looks sweet under primer

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Front panel opening kinda done

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Today's work! I'm calling it a day, I've done a lot though

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Built the underside of the jawbox

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I also glued in a sheet of paper card to the space where the old jawbox was

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I then glued styrene on top of it, and puttied the edges. Need to see how this goes...I'm unsure how I'll fix it all

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Oh and also you can see the angle a bit better from the back

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Sorry about the photo quality, I've been using my phone because the camera packed in
 
effin beautiful. why can't i have a neighborhood model store with old, damaged, returned, and incomplete kits. sigh....
 
Strode said:
effin beautiful. why can't i have a neighborhood model store with old, damaged, returned, and incomplete kits. sigh....
Click to expand...

Hahaha thanks Strode, I can't deny I'm pretty dang lucky to have such a great store within walking distance. People come for miles to get to it, their stock is great! The owner and his wife are real friendly too, everyone who goes there knows me as "the sci-fi guy"
 
You've done a beautiful job scratching that jawbox and those open panels. Why not take a set of 32" falcon plans and scratch the rest of the ship in the MPC scale? That way you're not wasting time sanding/cutting details off the MPC kit and rebuilding it. Also by scratching the hulls you can get the curves of the hulls right without trying to bend it in the right shape (MPC's profile is too flat). You could still use the MPC kit as a loose reference.

That's what I've been thinking of doing. Forget the MPC model and just scratch a falcon in the MPC scale (so I could take the odd detail from the kit).
 
Weezer said:
You've done a beautiful job scratching that jawbox and those open panels. Why not take a set of 32" falcon plans and scratch the rest of the ship in the MPC scale? That way you're not wasting time sanding/cutting details off the MPC kit and rebuilding it. Also by scratching the hulls you can get the curves of the hulls right without trying to bend it in the right shape (MPC's profile is too flat). You could still use the MPC kit as a loose reference.

That's what I've been thinking of doing. Forget the MPC model and just scratch a falcon in the MPC scale (so I could take the odd detail from the kit).
Click to expand...

Hmmm I dunno, it's one thing scratching a jawbox and another to scratch a full Falcon. I'm not sure I've got the skills to do the full ship...but now that you've mentioned it I do like the idea of building one
 
Man my room is way too dark for any photography I swear. Anyway Jaitea sent me a mold, which arrived today. Pulled some casts from it, fiddled around with the engine deck. Not much to show really

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It's all looking nice though, very very satisfying
 
It's a bit premature, but I got some colour swatches. I'm feeling that BB700L is the sort of colour to go for (second sheet from the right, second row down)
I know that it's a point of some debate so I thought I'd get you guys' opinions

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I corrected the colours on-screen as closely as I could to real life
 
I took down most of the pipework on the hull, replacing it with soldering wire and 0.5mm copper wire

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Trying to figure the scale out here. Now some say that the MPC is pretty much 1:72, other say 1:66 and still more say 1:58. I have no idea what scale this hunk of junk is, but I gotta say I'd like it to be 1:72.
Here you can see one of the LOTR models from Games Workshop, now they're in 25mm scale which is essentially 1:73 from what I've gathered. If someone could shed some light on the scales issue, that'd be much appreciated.

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Again, some level of rough assembly

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(I switched cameras at this point)

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Jaitea sent me some of those chunky wankel-but-not-wankel parts so I caved in and broke off my piece

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Looks better I think. The jawbox looks quite menacing from this angle!!

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I also started detailing the underside hull. The detail hasn't shown up very well really....anyway those big pipes are actually sprues that have been cut and sanded. Pretty nifty I'd say, I'll have to use it again.

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And finally; just to prove that I don't actually work in total darkness!!

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That said, it is pretty dark in my room compared to what I'd like
 
It should range from about 1:55ish if you compare it to the fullscale falcon-set from the movies
to 1:75ish if compared to the Robert Brown and nowadays FullScaleFalcon-estimate of 114 feet.
 
Kyuzo said:
It should range from about 1:55ish if you compare it to the fullscale falcon-set from the movies
to 1:75ish if compared to the Robert Brown and nowadays FullScaleFalcon-estimate of 114 feet.
Click to expand...

Hmm righto...well I'd like it to be in that 1:70-something range... it's weird because trying to gauge the height of the landing gear etc is dependant on the studio set and all.
 
Also just read this here:
STAR WARS: The Millennium Falcon

"Mr Bob Long of Calgary, Canada has scanned a copy of the blueprints for the full sized cockpit set. From this he has calculated (using a plan view of the plastic model kit as a reference for spatial relations) a length for the Millennium Falcon of 110' (33m). This is in very close accord with my own estimates and the small variation may be accountable purely on the slight errors in SHAPE in the ERTL model kit. Bob calculated a size for the kit of almost exactly 1:72, but as we know from the replacement parts, the cockpit of the model is slightly stunted. "
 
Kyuzo said:
Also just read this here:
STAR WARS: The Millennium Falcon

"Mr Bob Long of Calgary, Canada has scanned a copy of the blueprints for the full sized cockpit set. From this he has calculated (using a plan view of the plastic model kit as a reference for spatial relations) a length for the Millennium Falcon of 110' (33m). This is in very close accord with my own estimates and the small variation may be accountable purely on the slight errors in SHAPE in the ERTL model kit. Bob calculated a size for the kit of almost exactly 1:72, but as we know from the replacement parts, the cockpit of the model is slightly stunted. "
Click to expand...

Well there ya go eh? Cheers for that Kyuzo, set my mind at rest. Means I know what scale figures to buy/make/modify now!
 
Haystack Hair said:
Hmm righto...well I'd like it to be in that 1:70-something range... it's weird because trying to gauge the height of the landing gear etc is dependant on the studio set and all.
Click to expand...

Yeah well having Boromir servicing your Falcon is gonna look a bit out of place anyways .... :p
 
Out comes another mold. This one is a mixed bag...the rubber worked great around plastic parts but caught a lot of air on my resin casts. I'll need to make some casts before I make a judgment though

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I also spot welded a metal frame, as the hulls were a bit flimsy by themselves and I had no other way to securely attach the mandibles

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I made a little jig to make sure that the bars were at the correct angle (I measured it at about 94 degrees? Not sure if that's strictly correct but it looks dead on to me)

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The frame actually has more on it than that, each mandible has 2 bars to keep them aligned. They just slide onto the bars, it's all very clean and tidy!

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Money shot :cool

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I went to my friend's house today to drop off a model; I had sold him my Revell Falcon some time last year. When I did that kit about 2 years ago I did it with no reference (yikess!!) so I offered to repaint it and spruce it up a little for him so that a) he'd have a better model and b) I could get some painting practice in

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I'm glad I went with the MPC, although the details out of the box are poor they're not as blocky and bold as the Revell. The MPC is a far better canvas in my opinion
 
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