FM 1/72 Millennium Falcon Mandible Surgery

Jaitea · Apr 30, 2016

OK, I thought this would be a better place to discuss the hull curvature & all thats wrong with the FineMolds (now Revell Master Series) 1/72 Falcon

This conversation started on the Bandai release thread.....but it has started to take up too much space,...& is unfair to all those who are keen to keep up to date with the Bandai kits.....

....really what I was trying to put across was that the FM kit is too shallow......its side walls are a shade too high,...thus effecting the hull curvature;

Heres a snippet of the conversation:

Jaitea said:
....from it we can see that the FM kit;s thickness is 5mm flatter than the scaled 32" plans

The sidewalls are also 1mm thicker.....This has a knock on effect,......knocking off the angle of the cockpit walkway:

J

Jaitea said:
Joining the dots, between the overall height at the centre of the ship, to the height of the sidewalls = hull curvature

Jaitea said:
If the overall height is too low, & the height of the sidewall is too high,....you get a reduced angle to make a curve.......if on the other hand the measurements were correct......you'd have the angle and enough distance from centre to hull edge to make the correct curve

It really is that simple

Getting the fundamental dimensions wrong, knocks everything else out......FM has moved or fudged the rest of the ship about to make areas fit, all because of the height of the ship

J

Dedalus5550 said:
Um, wow. No, curvature is not the difference between two points. Try that again. The distance between those two points can be perfectly straight, and there would be no curvature at all. The turrets could be an inch too tall, with the sidewalls being half as thick, but if the distance between them is absolutely a straight line, there would be NO CURVATURE at all. You seem to be describing SLOPE. The curvature is affected to some degree by the difference in height, but the difference in height is not a measure of curvature. If the curvature starts out by the turret as "flat" or parallel to the ground, say, then it would different from starting out as more angled toward the sidewalls (a "head start", say). I wish I could draw a picture if it would help, but I just don't know how to do that and post it. I guess I could draw it on paper and take a picture but even then I've had issues recently with posting pics.

Dedalus5550 said:
My point is that, to me, the the FM is more of a straight line than the DeAgo kit. (And I'm not saying it's an exact straight line, nor have I analyzed the DeAgo kit to see if it's accurate to the curvature of the real 32-inch model.)

Now I don't disagree with what Dedalus is saying,....yes theres less of a curvature on the FM......but what I'm saying its because the model is too thin,....thats what makes the curvature less:

This is Maruska's drawing of the 32" which I have scaled to the FM size:

This is the same drawing with the overall thickness reduced down to the FM's thickness,......then free transforming the wall thickness inside that thinner body to make the walls slightly taller,....you can see that the curvature softens because of the lower body & taller walls:

Thanks for looking

J

Maruskas drawing adapted to FM shape.jpg

Dedalus5550 · Apr 30, 2016

BTW, J, in general we seem to be on the same side of the fence with the overall shape of the FM kit. And this is a better place for this.

Jaitea · Apr 30, 2016

Cool Dedalus......as I've said before,...it's a real shame that FM made these errors.....BUT,....it's still a brilliant kit.....& theres some cracker builds & paint jobs

....it's good enough for ILM to use for pre vis concepts

.....heres where I am with my build.....I bought some clear nozzles from a member of Starship Modeller years ago.....so I glued them together & masked the nozzle openings & gave it a blast of black primer...then the top coat

Thanks for looking
John

Constantine · May 3, 2016

Very nice work, what an improvement to the grill, looks sharp!

GMan68 · Dec 14, 2016

Hey team! I have a FM 1/72 that I got last year when they were re-released, from HLJ. I have been inspired by all the threads here listing the mods done etc. Some are crazy accurate and I'm not sure I will go quite as far, but certainly the mandibles and jaws alterations kinda feel like they need to be addressed. I have found all kinds of reference material, but as yet I haven't been able to find accurate measurements of how much to adjust the angles of the mandibles etc. Would it be fair to say that Maruska's drawings are the definitive guide for working out how much adjustment to make? i.e. print them out to 1/72 and go from there?
Thanks for any advice. I have a billion links saved for all of the threads and posts, just trying to collate them is a bit of a mare!

GMan68 · Dec 14, 2016

Would be great to have the photos back that are missing on these first few pages Jaitea!

Jaitea · Dec 14, 2016

GMan68 said:
Hey team! I have a FM 1/72 that I got last year when they were re-released, from HLJ. I have been inspired by all the threads here listing the mods done etc. Some are crazy accurate and I'm not sure I will go quite as far, but certainly the mandibles and jaws alterations kinda feel like they need to be addressed. I have found all kinds of reference material, but as yet I haven't been able to find accurate measurements of how much to adjust the angles of the mandibles etc. Would it be fair to say that Maruska's drawings are the definitive guide for working out how much adjustment to make? i.e. print them out to 1/72 and go from there?
Thanks for any advice. I have a billion links saved for all of the threads and posts, just trying to collate them is a bit of a mare!

Yep,.....I think Joshua Maruska's stuff is like the Falcon Bible,.....I have printed & scaled his drawings for my big Hasbro & my FM 1/72 V2 (more based on the 5 footer)

GMan68 said:
Would be great to have the photos back that are missing on these first few pages Jaitea!

I'll have a search for those images & upload them to photobucket,....my old imageshack links have disappeared

Thanks GMan

John

GMan68 · Dec 15, 2016

Cheers John. Very much appreciated!

Glenn

akumazeto · Jan 5, 2017

What did you use for the base? I love the warm touch

Jaitea · Apr 16, 2017

akumazeto said:
What did you use for the base? I love the warm touch

Thanks akumazeto,.....(sorry for the late reply).....I used Vallejo white & deck tan 50/50

OK.......the model fell off the table

I know,....I'm thick

I had boxes of parts,...tools, paints etc & I set the Falcon on top of a surface that was "Not entirely stable"

The noise of the crash when it hit the wooden floor made the dog jump out of it's sleep

That was about 3 weeks ago & I couldn't rest until I put her back together,.....a good bit of new filling was needed, especially around the jaw,....there were parts completely broken that I had to replace from my second FM kit (I'm building that one differently anyway)......so this is her at the minute,....repaired & weathered further

more pics to come

Thanks for looking

John

senormodeler · Apr 16, 2017

So beautiful dude.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Jaitea · Apr 16, 2017

Thanks senormodeler

Some more pics

Thanks for looking

John

blakeh1 · Apr 17, 2017

Excellent job with the colors and weathering

Is it all airbrush, or did you use pastels and oils or enamel washes as well?

Jaitea · Apr 18, 2017

blakeh1 said:
Excellent job with the colors and weathering

Is it all airbrush, or did you use pastels and oils or enamel washes as well?

Thanks Blake

The model was airbrushed with the different colours, then weathered with oils,.....then backed off a bit with a dusting of the base colour with airbrush......this helped me to blend & age the weathering a bit.....then a bit of darker airbrushing

More weathering on the underside to do

John

blakeh1 · Apr 18, 2017

Maybe too much to ask, but it would be great to see some step by step type photos or a video

Jaitea · Apr 18, 2017

blakeh1 said:
Maybe too much to ask, but it would be great to see some step by step type photos or a video

Yes,...that sound good,....for the underside

J

Conranc · Apr 18, 2017

Wow, that look simply incredible

GMan68 · Sep 22, 2017

Hi Jaitea. I am finally getting around to (maybe) making a tentative start on my FMMF. The excitement of the new Bandai release (and the cost!) has me enthused to try and fix the most glaring errors on the FM kit. Unfortunately, due to Photobucket's stupidity, a LOT of images are now broken here on The RPF. A real shame. Is there any chance, however slim, that you might have the images of your mods still? For someone like me, who is terrified of munting a kit worth a few hundred bucks that my wife got me as a gift I might add, it would be invaluable to see how you went about it so I don't completely screw it up! Thanks in advance!

Jaitea · Sep 23, 2017

GMan68 said:
Hi Jaitea. I am finally getting around to (maybe) making a tentative start on my FMMF. The excitement of the new Bandai release (and the cost!) has me enthused to try and fix the most glaring errors on the FM kit. Unfortunately, due to Photobucket's stupidity, a LOT of images are now broken here on The RPF. A real shame. Is there any chance, however slim, that you might have the images of your mods still? For someone like me, who is terrified of munting a kit worth a few hundred bucks that my wife got me as a gift I might add, it would be invaluable to see how you went about it so I don't completely screw it up! Thanks in advance!

Good luck on your Falcon GMan......any help you need give me a shout

I managed to pull this thread back together......apart from the Imageshack images on the first page.....I think I have those images saved somewhere,......but thats the Photobucket bit fixed

Thanks for re-looking

John

Jaitea · Apr 29, 2021

I may be finishing this model,,....after all these years

John

FM 1/72 Millennium Falcon Mandible Surgery

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