Hello! I was following this thread as a lurker but thought I'd be a bit more active! It seems this is proving to be a really popular kit and it's great to see so many awesome builds. This arrived in my house on Christmas Eve. 30 years ago, the only thing I wanted from Santa was a Millennium Falcon. Well, it took 30 years but at last I have one!
I was really pleased to see how many parts this had - really impressive detail. Even though some of the detailing is inaccurate, it's such a nice kit you forgive it.
My Bandai 1/12 R2 helping me test fit the sub assemblies. This kit is ridiculously clean and comes of the sprues super nicely. Two of the barrels had snapped off one of the guns before it reached me, but it was the part that fitted on the inside of the assembly so it was easy to glue them back on invisibly.
So, of course, on to damaging the thing
On this scale, a soldering iron seemed too big. Instead, I used a screw awl, like the type you use to pilot drill holes by hand. I't was easy to screw in to make the blaster holes behind the radar dish. The awl is also a good shape to hold and scrape away at the edges with its point to make them look less regular. A bit of fine sanding and they look OK. I'm quite happy with these!
The damage on the other side is harder. I couldn't find any great reference of this particular scar but it's like a cluster/barrage of things have hit at an oblique angle and made a series of irregular gouges and craters. You don't see it on every interpretation as I think it was much more pronounced on the 5' ILM falcon than the 32". Is seems to be there on the Force Awakens Falcon so this is my approximation. I used the awl at an angle and then scribed in the gouges with it, putting on pressure to go deeper and wider towards to impact craters. Mostly happy - they should come out fine with weathering.
Finally, I did the two long scratches on the underside. Same tools - I kept these relatively subtle and will add some nice 'carbon scoring' to bring these out. I chanced upon the best reference for these only after doing them so the placement's slightly off but not a big issue.
The Falcon in TFA appears to have much less damage to the escape pods and cockpit. I might use weathering to imply the damage there. I've got a while to decide. I've ordered some Green Strawberry photo-etch grills and also some Shapeways turret viewport surrounds (FZ6's work). I also ordered the upgrade dish to see how that looked. I'll set to and start painting once I have those. I'm probably going to put some teeny tiny acetate windows in.
So far, I think it was worth the 30 year wait!