hoosleberg

Jr Member
For the past 3 months I've been slowly chipping away at a studio scale T-65. I have been able to source about 10 of the less rare kits on ebay. For the hard to find kits I plan to scratch or 3d print the pieces. Full size drawings posted on the forums, the ILM Red 3 pics and Bandai's 1/72 kit have been my main references. Many of the builds posted on the rpf have provided inspiration and guidance.

I started with the wings because they were the simplest form to wrap my head around
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All the references I checked seemed to have different measurements so I had trouble figuring out placement of the panel lines and openings. It took 3 versions til I was happy, but I'm sure they're still not perfect!
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Plastruct HO brick was used. Not holgates and reynold but looks good enough for me.
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Since building the first 2 wings I've acquired the Fujimi Elephant kit. Once I mold and cast the piece in it I'll replace the greebs I scratched. Or leave them and make them the bottom wings, out of view?
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Starting on the fuselage, back to front
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If I could go back in time I would add more bulkheads from the cockpit to nosecone. I had to do a lot of annoying surgery to reinforce this area after I noticed some sagging and flexing.
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The canopy lines seem to defining part of the ship once you start staring at the references long enougho_O so getting everything to line up and look correct has been a chore.
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The forward section of the fuselage needed lots of filling and shaping once the styrene had been beefed up.
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Using bondo to bulk and Tamiya grey to smooth

Making the 'skeleton' of the nose
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then add bondo
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transition to fuse
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refining the curves. Took many many many fillings and shapings to get the nose to my liking.
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the last nose thing for now was to make the opening a little skinnier
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and first draft of the canopy.
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It was kind of small
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testing fit of the second version
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assembled and gussied up. I'm still working on the fitment of canopy to the cockpit perimeter.
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bottom cargo door
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side door
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marking out the torpedo tubes. I probably should have done the tubes during the initial construction of the fuselage.

That's all for now. Thanks for looking
 

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Great work and great pictures!
Love to see the progress of a build in such detail.

BTW, I have all the necessary kits that donate to this model's fuselage and wings (except for the Hummel).
I'd be happy to send you some resin castings, if you're interested.

Keep up the awesome work!
 
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Great work and great pictures!
Love to see the progress of a build in such detail.

BTW, I have all the necessary kits that donate to this model's fuselage and wings (except for the Hummel).
I'd be happy to send you some resin castings, if you're interested.

Keep up the awesome work!
Definitely interested, I'll be in touch. I have to figure out exactly which pieces I don't have. Thanks!


I got the torpedo tubes roughed in this morning.
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They'll need some cleaning up.

I want to get the nose all buttoned up but I'm debating whether or not to add the swept back bottom part that is on all the other x-wings.
 
I've been able to get some work done on the back plate.
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Saturn pieces attached and the six lower holes marked out.
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Spacers/bracing in the fuse to get the correct depth
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I scratched the 1/15 Hummel parts.
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Dry fit of everything so far. Monogram axle piece trimmed too.
Vertically its a tight squeeze!
 
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This is BEAUTIFUL -- I'm always super inspired (and impressed) by anyone with the fortitude to do a true scratchbuild, and the 3 steps forward, 2 steps back reverse-engineering is nothing less than amazing to see. Wonderful stuff, and thanks for showing your work -- very beautifully done.
 
A few small updates...

The Bandai Shiden/Hummel pieces were made. Hard to find a premade source for these.
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Mitered some tube then rounded the corner and filled/shaped
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The 'pac-man' pieces were made by layering half circle of styrene
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Add some basic rectangular pieces for the blocky details
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I made a new version of the canopy with slightly altered angles (fits much better) and new side panels with a taper
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A little more filling to do on the fuselage then i can start on panel lines
 
Yeah, hoo-boy, nothing to add here, but that is a gorgeous scratch-build. If you post which original pieces you're missing, I can probably find them for you, or castings in a pinch. I've got a Garage-Kit X-Wing that I'd love to build, but the nose/fuselage section is warped and off-kilter. So if you're up for a barter, PM me and I'd love to trade original greeblies for your nose/fuselage and wing templates, because yours looks spot-on, and the wings look amazing. Would love to build my X-Wing "mostly" from scratch, if it were possible. Right off the top of my head, I know I've got original Shiden bent-pipe greeblies that I could throw your way, for the back-deck, as well as Hummel plate castings that are flawless.
 

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