Salzo V5 X-Wing pattern work

A is scrap from the Sealab tanks (these fragments not used on the X-Wing), B is Red 5 only, C is what Mike said, D is on thelaser cannon bodies.
 
You guys are amazing. Thanks everybody for their input.

A is now in the trash.
B is now glued to the back plate.
C I'll hang onto in case I ever do a Snowspeeder.
D is a spare in case one of the other 4 fall off.
 
Ah yes, indeed, my bookmarks to the documentation are dead and I did not download it. Looks like Jason closed or moved his blog. There were some interesting stuff about which Plastruct beams were needed. moffeaton any chance to see it again someday?
 
If any of you have the instructions I can post them on my server and post a link for everyone. I'm not going to take down my server anytime soon so it should be a stable link.
 
moffeaton Jason, I was able to grab the text portions of the instructions from the wayback machine, if you still have the photos available we can reconstruct them!
 
X-Wing Fighter - V5 instructions Part 1 (inventory)


Posted by admin on Dec 27, 2017 in Star Wars | No Comments


This is a guide for assembling a V5 X-Wing. You will need the set of castings, brass tubing (if you choose to use them on the laser cannons), Plastruct, and an armature.


A quick word on terminology. There are laser etched labels on the parts that vary wildly between X-Wings, to help you in their placement. First the top of the wings. There are four Sealab “squares” that get glued to the sloping side of the box structure on the wings. One is labeled “TOP L” and the other is “TOP R”. That will mean Top LEFT or Top RIGHT, as seen below. In this instance, the “top” of the wing is the root where it mounts to the armature. There are two more wings though, right? Yes, they will reverse on the underside of the X-Wing, and are consistent enough (luckily) that if you make two sets of TOP L and TOP R wings, it will be correct. As always though, CONSULT YOUR REFERENCE. Once you glue these down, they are pretty much glued down. I will address this in later updates as well, with pics!





The other big one to look for are the engine cans. These are all over the place on the varying X-Wings, and it was very interesting to map them all. What I ended up with are six different can patterns for all the X-wings. Two of these are unique to the Red 2/Blue 1 X-Wing, and therefore don’t need a guide on the insides of the parts. For every one else, there are legends showing which can goes where, using abbreviations. There is upper left and upper right, and lower left and lower right. Unlike the method above, you cannot count on the bottom of the model having the same pieces mirroring the top. And when you flip the X-Wing over, left is still left and right is still right. So, that being said, look at the pic below, and look at the legend inside the cans for your particular X-Wing, whether it be a hero or pyro (the pyro will have a “P” at the end of the abbreviation), and place those cans accordingly. As always though, CONSULT YOUR REFERENCE. Once you glue these down, they are pretty much glued down. I will address this in later updates as well, with pics!








First, get to know your parts, and do an inventory. NOTE – your parts may look different depending on which X-Wing you are building.


Here you have the fuslage (top and bottom), butt plate, mount plug, droid strip, cockpit (two pieces), nose cone, and “plugs” for the inside of the armature when the X-Wing is in an “open” position. If you are making Red 5, there will also be a small fender piece for the butt plate, not pictured.





Wings and the inner plant ons – four total wing tops, four laser cut acrylic wing bottoms (not pictured), two Sealab parts, two half tanks, two full tanks, two more Sealab parts, four Phantom engine halves (two different flavors out there depending on your X-Wing choice), four Sealab “squares” (these may look different depending on which X-Wing you have chosen), four trapezoids, four trailing wing edge pieces (these also could be different looking), two sets of two leading edge wing pieces (a total of 4), and two Sealab “cages”.





Guns guns guns! Four gun mount trapezoids, four laser wheels, four body plugs, four bodies, four heatsink with rings, four body plant ons, four body plate plant ons, four cannon stalks (not pictured – they are the long tapering cannon body parts that have a brass insert in them), and four laser cannon “C” tips.





Engines – Four phantom turkey feathers (Tall or short, depending on the X-Wing you have), four engine halves with a notch and four engine halves without a notch (two vastly different patterns as an option, you know the drill…), four engine “inner plugs”, four Sealab plug mounts, and four heatsinks.





Four large Saturn bell halves, four small ones, and four Sealab engine intake halves.





Four engine cans, and their mount plates.





These cans will be very different from X-Wing to X-Wing, and all four have a legend inside showing where they go (Blue 1/Red2 are so unique they don’t have or need this inner label). In this case, you can see Red 4 Pyro uses this one can on each wing, and Red 6 Pyro uses this on the upper left and upper right only, etc etc…





And finally, the three remaining mount plugs, the pilot (three pieces) and the Artoo mount plug.
 
X-Wing Fighter – V5 instructions Part 2 (4 Wings, hold the sauce)


Posted by admin on Jan 9, 2018 in Star Wars | No Comments


Okay, so the whole reason the V5 came to be was from my perhaps naive opinion that making an X-Wing with layered “hollow” wings like the ILM heroes would be “not a big deal”… it quickly spiraled out of control and you should all send Mike a basket of pears from Harry and David. I digress.


The goal is to get four wings built that will look like this – you CAN build them with the “L” brackets from Mike Reader’s armature removed from the “X” bracing, and it might actually be a good idea to do it that way to ensure things stack and line up correctly. Important things to note – the large Sealab parts that go inside the wing hollows are different from left to right, and mirror their counterparts per vintage ILM photography. There are always exceptions to what we think is the “way things are” with these models though, so consult your references, and understand that we might just be wrong about something, if new pics surface that shows that something was different… this is a good faith effort and as of this writing/patterning, reflects what we think we know. Forgive us, future people reading this. We tried our best!


Red 2/Blue 1 seems to have full Sealab tanks, while most others have just the halves. Do what you feel is best for your own model.


You will need to buy Plastruct ABS channel for the wings – 90043 is a pack of seven strips that will do a couple of X-Wings. It’s the 1/8th strip, aka C-4.








That trapezoid with the riveted detail piece should be glued down so that the widest edge lines up with the lasercut wing half’s cut out as shown below. It also pretty much matches up location to the one on the outer side of the wing, which rests against the “box” with it’s widest edge, pretty much centered in that etched panel. Again, consult your pics. Since this is Red 5, there is only one Sealab cage half glued against the inner Phantom engine half. Your C channel gets glued down to match the wing cut out angles:





With the lasercut piece removed, you can see how things are situated – those large Sealab pieces will need to be trimmed to fit – they both angle, and butt up against the Phantom halves. Also you might notice I was INSANE and routed out channels for 1/8″ steel rod. That’s a measure taken to protect against sagging… it may not be necessary but I spook easily. You can also line them up against the inner wall edges and save the chore of routing channels to hide them, but they will be slightly visible in the cut outs.





Apoxied into place:





A look at the other wing’s Sealab piece in place. Just repeat these inner wing arrangements twice and you are set:





The “L” brackets will line up flush once the lasercut acrylic is in place, and you can screw them to the resin using four screws (the centermost hole is for wires if you want to light the model). The two inner mounting holes will accept screws that terminate just barely inside the hollow, so you can then thread a nut onto the bolt and really lock these suckers down:





A note about this greeblie that glues to the leading edge – there is a separate piece which creates a great overhang. Don’t throw those wee pieces away when you are cleaning things! It’s the white Saturn engine fragment below:





The other side has no such add on piece, and again, these are mirrored for the other two wings.





Can tops and wee Sealab bottom one center on the can base like this – the notch echoes the part.





Remember “Top L” and “Top R” from before? Glue those down according to which one you are building.





The cans are mounted to a base – they lock in with the tabs locating things for you. Things on the rear are keyed as well, so it’s pretty hard to not glue these down correctly:











The engine will socket into this assembly pretty snugly – the engine itself sits on that little Sealab piece I am pointing to here:





They are all over the place on these models, but generally they sit like this. Also hey look – full tank inside the wing!





Boop! Slide the engine in so that the truncated cone hits the can.





Speaking of engines – they are easy to build – glue the halves together (A whole and a notched half), slide over the engine insert, the end:





Part two on the wings is next!
 
X-Wing Fighter – V5 instructions Part 3


Posted by admin on Feb 26, 2018 in Star Wars | No Comments


Okay, now we can finish off the wings and move onto the fuselage. The wings will need this Plastruct rod inserted into the channel at the back of the wings, from the plant-on to far edge.





The plant-on type depends on the X-Wing you are building. Since this is Red 5, the 8-Rad parts are featured:





You can also see those details to the right of the 8-Rad pieces – they “key” when the wings are closed, as shown.





You will need to sand/trim them a little to get them to fit.





I had plumbed the wings for lighting, but since I was traveling with this half-built for a show and tell with some fellas who worked on the originals, I made the wiring “removable” somewhat by initially using thread (concerns with TSA seeing wires, you know…). So this pic shows the thread replaced with wires that I AGAIN replaced when I realized the LED wires would be long enough. So that’s why you see the twisted wire in the next few pics and then it disappears.





The wiring (you can do whatever you decide) for mine goes like this: I drilled through the stub end of the engine cores to run lights and used a pre-wired LED that was seated in a lasercut disc that fits into the engine core (5mm hole in the center for the led to poke through) and wires trailing out of the mount stub. There was a hole drilled into that engine can mount plate that pops through the wing hollow below, in the area that gets covered by the Sealab tank plant on. From there it passes through the middle hole in the “L” bracket.





Like so.





Here’s two of them done, and you can see the LEDs centered in the engine cans.





The Aavid heatsink will friction fit into place in front of the LED.





I soldered the top LED leads to each other and added a small length of wire to bridge them to the bottom LED leads. All positives together and all negatives together.





Arrows point to the wires that bridge the top and bottom LED leads. The only thing you need to do here is ensure enough slack in the wires to allow the wings to scissor open and closed. Wires then are soldered to the two longer power wires. I will add a second set to these, as the client also wants a back mount power option.





The cockpit needs some 1/16th T rod glued to either side of the cockpit parts (the red line above). I am following the information Dave Jones gave me on this one, who said some had this and some didn’t, but in his opinion it should, so here we are. In any case, it’s a nice finishing touch and looks good once installed into the upper fuselage.





The hero Artoo holes looked like this. At least Red 5’s did. The location of these are pretty much the same, but just look at your reference photos. Since they were all hand drilled/cut, you can’t assume all were exactly like this. I also hogged out the underside to give the impression of a much thinner shell, as the Hero shell castings were considerably thinner than the replica ones.





It looks odd after seeing so many pyro droid builds, but this is how the Hero droids were usually seated. You can even see them sticking up this high in the movie!





Test fitting the top and bottom hulls now that the wings are done (except for the small Saturn V engine bells in the intakes)…





Holes were drilled to allow for every mount point.





Light test!
 
For the most part, the V5 can be assembled using the V3/4 instruction manual written by dyssts, here: Salzo T65 V3 Manual

The main differences will be with the assembly of the wings, since they are hollow, and not solid cast like the V3/4. I’m sure if one reads through this thread, there will be ample information and pictures to be able to figure out the wing assembly.
If I have some time this weekend, I’ll write up something using my pics, Jason’s pics, and other bits I’ve picked up by building 5 of these birds.
 
I have written a basic guide for the V5...using a mix of my pics, and some of Jason’s from this thread (I hope you don’t mind, Jason).
It’s too big to post here, but if you want it, PM me your email address and I’ll send it to you.
 
Anyone know if these Salzo kits are still available? Id like to buy one!
Mike, from what I understand is no longer making kits. I do believe Nice-N models said he may get the molds to start making kits but even if he did it would be a long while before that happens.
 

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