Building the Falcon

The dishes are done

2007-09-02T00:15:00.000-07:00

Well...just the master copy. I finished the back of the dish yesterday. The details were much easier than the front to create. However, because the parts that fit to it are more complicated than the cone, it still required some effort for a good fit. As promised, here are some images of my new dish master mounted to the rest of the Fine Molds radar dish assembly parts.
After a brief photo shoot (see above) and moment to appreciate the completion of the dish work, I took it all apart and prepped my new dish master for molding. More info on that later. For now, I leave you with this photo of the completed dish assembly mounted to the hull.

Details of the dish

2007-08-19T22:22:00.000-07:00

Creating a scratchbuilt dish for the FM falcon was no easy task. It required a lot of hours and some very tiny bits of styrene (many in the 1mm ballpark). The photo below shows the details for the front all in place before some minor filler is applied and the surface primed.Here's an earlier shot where you can more clearly see the lines I drew on the surface of the dish base to space out the parts correctly. The shine on the surface is from the superglue.It was truly a tedious task to rebuild this part. After putting it off for so long I was in no hurry to get around to it. However, I knew I couldn't finish without replacing the tiny FM one, so I just got to it. I'll post final pics of it front and back while mounted to the hull next time.

Painting the Sidewalls

2007-08-06T09:20:00.000-07:00

It has been way too long since I posted an update on this project. I picked the kit back up again a week ago and started back in on it after a very hectic month or two in the real world. I managed to get a good amount of work done in a rather small amount of time. Below you can see the upper hull paint job is complete with the spatter pass as well as some minor adjustments to the engine deck weathering (airbrushed neutral grey around the rear section of the turret sidewall and around the engine grills and streaks).The side walls are also complete now. I started at the outside of one of the mandibles as worked my way across the back and around to the front again. This process was rather painless and quite enjoyable seeing as it consisted of fairly low detail distressing. Seems like the ILM folks took it easy on this part of the ship.
From the rear right of the ship you can see how deceivingly simple the weathering job is. It's really several passes (as with the rest of the ship). I start by darkening the dirty, blackened/brown areas. Next, I go through and add in subtle orange, yellow, red, and light brown accents. With a wet brush loaded lightly with pastels, I add in rust marks, streaks, etc. And then hit it once more with a thinned out black to get some dark lines, runs, and smudges. A very gentle pass with the airbrush and neutral gray ties the weathering together. Top it all off with a super thinned out spatter that is almost invisible.
I'll be getting to the interior surfaces of the mandibles/jaw box next to complete all but the lower hull. This should go quickly but requires separating the hull in half again to really get in there. I'm glad it isn't screwed together just yet and that I opted to do all the extra work in the beginning to magnetize this model so that taking it apart is an easy task. It's paying off already. I'm very satisfied with how the paint job has turned out. There are a few more parts to customize before all painting is wrapped (cockpit and radar dish), but the bulk of the work is nearly behind me.

The Engine Deck

2007-05-07T08:04:00.001-07:00

Here is a look at the rear engine deck in all its dirty glory. It took a lot of will power not to do this area first (It's my favorite section) Basically more of the pastel work. some minor detailing with thinned out paint/wet pastel. And of always, I still haven't done the spatter pass!
I'm going to finish off the top hull with some minor airbrushing of Tamiya Neutral Grey around the rear section of the turret sidewall along with a few other minor places. Needless to say, it's a big relief to have the upper hull paint work behind me. It was fun while it lasted!

Deconstructing the damage

2007-03-25T15:35:00.000-07:00

As promised, I took some photos of the different stages of my hull weathering process so that I can better illustrate how I am going about adding all the grunge and grime. I hope this helps.

First, I want to show some closer images of how I do the streaks themselves. In the left photo, I'm using a thin piece of paper (a sales receipt in this case) like a mask to define the edge of a dark streak. In the right photo, you can see that I'm holding it in place while brushing black pastel dust onto the surface. I try to brush right along the edge of the paper to keep the streak as thin as possible.

After removing the paper mask, a nice streak is left on the hull. I go heavier at the top when brushing on the pastels and use less toward the end to make the streak fade off. Before doing the streaks in this manner, I have pre-shaded the area the streak will be made to soften the mark a bit. After this step, I make a thin mixture of water and black pastel dust to brush a fine line in the streak to make it pop.

This series of images begins with the hull quadrant free from any weathering. I begin darkening the areas with black pastel dust and a medium sized brush. I softly indicate where the streaks will be as well as dirty up any areas that are dark in the reference photos I have. Next, I add some color to the armor plates by brushing in browns, oranges, reds, yellows, etc. It's tricky to keep the balance so I go slow and step back to look at the area as a whole frequently.

Now I add the streaks using the technique described earlier. I use the method for both the black and rust streaks. Finally, I paint the blast marks using Tamiya German Gray with a super fine brush. Once that dries, I take my base hull color (50/50 Grime/Reefer White) and outline them looking at the reference. I also have added the chips in the red hull panel using this paint. The access wells/ports get weathered with black pastels, rust, and a little red. That's pretty much all there is to it.

Hull of a day

2007-02-19T09:34:00.000-08:00

I had a pretty productive day. The quadrant with the radar dish got a lot of attention as did the two escape pod walkways. I had a real good time weathering these parts. I brought out the airbrush and the Tamiya Neutral Gray to darken the turret sidewalls, back end of the jawbox, and a few areas with blast damage. I really like this photo:
This angle shows off the radar dish quadrant of the hull and a good look at the blast holes I cut into the hull. Still missing from the finish is the spatter/speckle pass. I want to get the upper hull completely weathered with paint/pastels so that I can apply the spatter for the top all at once. When the final coat of clear (Testors Dullcote) gets applied, I will call the finish complete.
Many images of the same area from different angles are required to do a thorough recreation of the weathering on this ship. Rob is starting to archive all the print-outs we've accumulated over the course of this project into a 3-ring binder. I will have to take a photo of that next time as it is an impressive volume.

What a dish.

2007-02-17T15:38:00.000-08:00

Here's a good look at the where I am on the dish assembly. I cleaned off the back of the donor dish and filled in the old mounting slots. I added new ones that fit the FM hardware and have begun recreating the details on the back of the dish. The front is going to be very time consuming, and so I started with the lighter work.Below is a quick comparison of the size difference between the supplied FM dish and the new correct-scale blank I created. I can't get over how small the stock dish is.
Somebody just got an upgrade! Here's one last photo to show how much of an improvement the larger dish diameter makes when presented with the rest of the falcon.

Year of the Falcon

2007-01-22T09:12:00.000-08:00

Welcome back. I've been away from the falcon project for a good month and it feels really good to get back into it. I've been working on the cockpit lately and it has been really fun. Here is a photo of the front seats all painted up.
To paint these, I wrapped a popsicle stick with blue painters tape (inside out) and then pressed the seats down on it firmly. For the front leather seats, I mixed a brown base color of raw sienna and yellow oxide and airbrushed it on. I aged the leather with pastels in passes or burnt sienna and raw umber. Next, I worked on the back seats:
I used the same method to secure these to a stick for painting. I mixed a dark grey base coat and applied it via the airbrush. Unbleached titanium was used to create the light pads of the seat. Again, pastels were used to give the seats the worn look.
Above you can see how the front end turned out. I took a break from the hull weathering after getting the left mandible and jawbox area completed. It's fun but I needed a break from it. I'll move on to the quadrant with the radar dish mount next. Then I can add some last minute airbrushing/spattering and call the front half (of the upper hull) finished.

Moving forward

2006-12-08T09:22:00.000-08:00

I took the right mandible weathering to a point that I felt acceptable to photograph. There are still a few details I want to add as well as some missing passes (airbrush/spatter) but it's really close to the final look I want. The final passes may only add about 5% but are so crucial to the overall feel in my opinion.
Below is the same section from the reverse angle along with a better look at how it integrates with the cockpit side front quadrant of the upper hull.
I can't wait to finish this part of the buildup. I am really looking forward to lighting the model.

Weathering the upper hull

2006-12-03T23:21:00.000-08:00

I spent a few hours today working on the dirt and grime on the upper hull near the cockpit walkway. It seemed like a good place to start since the walkway looked funny next to a clean hull. Using my trusty palette of pastels, I began the transformation.This quadrant of the hull isn't finished yet. I still have to add the chipped paint effect in the reds, airbrush Neutral Grey along some of the edges, paint the little dark cores of the blast mark near the jawbox, and apply the hull spatter over everything. Below is a photo showing the effect when looking at the whole ship.
I think I'd like to finish off this side of the upper hull (including the mandible). I'm going to work toward that.

Like an old friend

2006-11-27T09:00:00.000-08:00

After a long break from the FM kit (due to real world work), I finished the underside of the cockpit walkway. Weathering this piece was fun. There are some interesting colors, rust, the damaged corner, some greeblies, and another instance of the modeler's name that appears on the upper half of the walkway. I am definately getting faster at this pastel technique.I'm re-mastering the dish on this falcon. Fine Molds made theirs beautifully detailed but noticeably undersized (about 1/4 inch in diameter too small). The ERTL/AMT kits had an oversized dish (about 1/4" too large). I've decided to trim down an ERTL, shave off all the inaccurate details and start with a fresh blank in the correct scale. Below is an early progress shot:
I'm going to move on to weathering the hull while I work on the new dish. I should be able to make a large impact on the overall ship by banging out a few quadrants of the upper hull. I'll be back...

Back in business.

2006-10-08T20:09:00.000-07:00

The falcon received some more attention this weekend. I completed the upper portion of the cockpit walkway. I applied the same techniques used on the turret here. It's really starting to come together now with the weathering.
If you look closely, you'll see that I'm even including the hand written names of the modelers who built the original. They wrote their names on the model in various places knowing it wouldn't be picked up on screen. Rob and I decided early on that we wanted to include these details to make the ship more authentic. He made these tiny decals.One of the escape pods is finished (with the exception of a small blast streak I need to add). It's nice to wrap up the very first piece I assembled at the beginning of this journey. Because of the small details, this piece took longer to weather and detail than I imagined. There's a lot going on in there.
Here's a look at the other side of the same escape pod:
I'll be completing the underside of the cockpit walkway during the week (it's smaller but just as involved). And there's another name written at the cockpit edge.

Painting with pastels

2006-09-24T15:57:00.000-07:00

I've never used chalk pastels before. But, some great model buildups praise them and I decided to incorporate them into my weathering technique. Combined with some airbrush work they definitely are well worth the praise. Below are my results and a brief 'how-to' on the top turret:
I used a few colors from a set of 12 earth tone chalk pastels. Using sandpaper, I made chalk dust that I could load onto a small brush and then apply to the model. Thin washes were achieved by dipping the brush in water then picking up some pastel dust. For the scorch marks/blast hits, I took my airbrush with thinned down Neutral Grey and first created the soft burn-like pattern. With a fine brush, I hand painted the dark cores with German Grey. Then, I highlighted the core edges with a mix of Titanium White and Light Grey. Finally, I gently spattered some very thin Neutral Grey onto the entire assembly with a toothbrush.

The mystery piece

2006-09-18T12:12:00.000-07:00

Sunday was a good day for the falcon. I swung by Rob's place and started working on the 'mystery piece'. At least that's what I'm calling it. There is a small trapezoid shaped plate in front of the gun turret on the upper hull. I built this out of styrene sheet cut to size and then drilled the two holes out with a pin vise. It was then primed, painted, and glued on.
I painted the six large engine exhaust grills on the rear deck (as well as the three other grills on the escape pod walkways) with Tamiya German Grey. This color is dark but not black and has a tiny hint of blue in it. You can still make out the grill details with this color. Painting them was difficult because I had already glued the grills to their housings. I carefully painted the edges with a brush then filled in the centers and blended to the edge with the airbrush.
Here's some more missing pieces I added to the ship. On the lower hull jawbox, the studio model has what appears to be a piece of t-track with a flat strip of plastic running along the bottom edge.
At first I considered this pretty minor because it's on the under side of the ship. However, when viewing the front of the ship, the extra raised strip and the 't' cross section definitely change the silhouette of the lower jawbox. I masked off these new details and base coated the new details.
The last thing I did was to spray the pits of the lower hull with the same Medium Grey paint I used on the upper hull. No photo of that for now. The painting of the grills definately made the ship feel more like the falcon for me. I'll have to take a photo with all the parts in place for my next update. I believe I am about ready to begin the next phase of the paintjob...weathering.

Progress report

2006-09-14T09:07:00.000-07:00

Here's a peak at the upper hull. Last night I added the little reddish-orange reflector looking rectangles to the jaw box, cockpit walkway, and one near the rear engine deck. These were more difficult to mask because they are so small. I used Testors orange mixed with a bit of crimson red. You can also see the yellow and red panels are finished as well as all of the little lines drawn in with the fine tip detail 'Gundam marker'. The ship is almost in a state where I can begin the weathering phase.Before I get there, there's a piece missing from the upper hull that Rob discovered. There are four good sized details missing from the sides of the lower hull jawbox. And I need to paint the engine exhaust ports and gun turret interiors with a nearly-black grey color.

Punctuation is important.

2006-09-07T08:53:00.000-07:00

Last night I decided to sit at my computer, pour over reference photos, and draw the little tiny lines and dots on the lower hull. I used one of those fine tipped Gundam markers (kit builders use these to draw in the panel lines on mechs I believe). It took a good amount of time to be as accurate as possible. I started on the bottom so I could get a good system down before approaching the upper hull which will be seen more on the finished model.
Here's a closer look at what these markings look like. There are hundreds of little lines and dots just drawn on the surface of the hull. I chose to do these before weathering so that the dirt and damage will make these appear less 'new'.
I dug up these photos of masking the lower hull panels. I use good old 3M painters masking tape (low tack) and cut it to small piece to form shapes around areas I want to airbrush. I write the colors to paint on the tape so I know what goes where.
Here's another shot of the lower hull back end. It looks more complicated than it really is, but that's because I try to mask as many panels as possible at once.
Finally, I made a small collage of a selection of additional bits and missing details discovered and corrected on Monday. Some are not pictured here (perhaps later) while a few others still need to be corrected. I know, it seems a little late in the game to change things, but I would rather nail them before this thing goes in a display case.
Above you can see a little cylinder shaped thing sticking out of the side of that greebly branching the upper hull and mandible. Next is a small detail with a wire on one of the escape pod walkways. The opposite walkway now sports two little curved bits that cover the rails near the small grill. And the rear engine deck receives complicated three-tiered wedge piece on both sides. After I built these additional pieces, I attached them, masked around them, and sprayed them with base coat.

Shades of gray

2006-09-02T12:14:00.000-07:00

Today I took on the task of masking and painting all of the various dark gray panels on the upper hull. The lighter, bluer, panels from the turret forward are tricky. I started with a mix of Light Grey, Flat White, and touch of Medium Blue. Then for the side of the jawbox and the top of the turret I darkened the mix a bit.
For the darkest ones, I chose Neutral Grey. I sprayed this on some of the engine flaps and the escape pod walkway opposite the cockpit. Next up was Light Grey which in reality was just a shade lighter than Neutral. I used this on the other dark fins (doesn't show in the photo) and one panel next to the escape pod walkway.
Next I'll give the cockpit walkway and the lower hull the same treatment. Then I need to start mixing the red.

Masking the hull panels.

2006-08-28T22:43:00.000-07:00

The hull panels of the falcon vary in color. It looks to me like there's a faint greyish tan color, a dark cool grey that shifts to a medium blue-grey at the front of the ship, boxcar red (what I've heard it called), and a pale yellow. I've started with the lightest color:I cut masking tape to outline the patterns/panels I wanted to shade and sprayed them with a mist of the desaturated tan acrylic paint.

Airbrushing

2006-08-27T20:51:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick glimpse of the ship all base coated. I started darkening the recessed pits on the upper hull but felt under the weather this weekend. Hopefully during the week I'll get some more done.
As far as painting tools go, here's what I have at my disposal (from left to right): Iwata HP-C, Iwata Eclipse HP-BCS, Badger 150, and a Paasche H.
I purchased the Badger a few years back, but I wasn't happy with the trigger performance. I am absolutely thrilled with my Iwata HP-C. And the fact that it's a gravity feed (cup on top) means easier transitions between colors with less cleaning time. The Eclipse was given to me when I purchased a friend's compressor (more on that later). In all honesty, the HP-C and the cheap Paasche H get all the work done. Although it's a single action cheap airbrush, the paint flow control is smooth and extremely variable. It also has a fairly wide and even stroke.
My main compressor is that little blue Cyclone II (by badger). It's got a moisture trap, pressure regulator, and that little black box at the end is a manifold I built. It has two quick connects so that I can attach two airbrushes. Why you ask? This way I can load two brushes with different paints, hook them both up, and switch back and forth with no down time. Sometimes it comes in handy. Behind the Cyclone is the compressor I bought from a friend. I haven't gotten around to testing it. Supposedly it's one of those 'silent' compressors with a big air tank. It needs oil before I put it through some tests.

Painting the falcon.

2006-08-22T10:46:00.000-07:00

This is a very exciting update for me. I've changed gears from 'building the falcon' to 'painting the falcon'. I started airbrushing some of the separate pieces with the base coat mix (again 1:1 mix of grime and reefer white). I'm shooting this un-thinned through my Iwata HP-C airbrush. Perhaps next update I'll show my painting equipment and give a little run down of how I go about doing what I do. Without further delay, here are the first pieces I base coated:
Rather than spending the time (and paint) to pre-shade the deep recessed areas, I decided to carefully control my base coat spray to allow some of the grey primer to show through areas where shadows would pool. I think it looks perfect for this scale.
Did I mention I'm excited?

Retraction

2006-08-20T21:25:00.000-07:00

I know I said that the hull was done. Believe me...I wanted it to be done. But today we discovered a pretty big opportunity to improve the Fine Molds falcon. It started with a little box I noticed on the cockpit walkway that was missing. As it turns out, there was a pipe that ran between this box and a detail Fine Molds included.
I confirmed this via a Star Wars reference book and the Master Replicas studio-scale. To replicate the detail, I scratched the box part and used a thin styrene rod for the pipe. I used a pin vise to drill a tiny hole in the upper detail and the lower box-like piece. The small gap between the pipe and the walkway is accurate and probably the reason this detail got broken off the real model. Here's it is with primer:
At this point I decided to fix one more area that lacked some of the detail that the 32 inch falcon had. It may be difficult to see below (the sun was pretty bright) but I added six new bits here. They are also hard to describe. To the right of the custom brass hoses I added is a tiny cylinder oriented vertically. Next is some monofilament line (three pieces) used to recreate what looked like a cable or wire over the 'T' shaped ribbed piece. Moving to the right, there is a cylinder piece and a more complex piece with a small box attached to the side of a cylinder. Now this area has the right look.I did some test spraying of the base coat mix on a scrap piece primed with the same primer on my bird. It looks like the 50/50 mix of Floquil brand "Reefer White" and "Grime" will be perfect (thanks Dean Dymerski for the tip). Sadly, my goal of base coating the ship was put on hold because of the additional work listed above. Almost there...

What the hull?

2006-08-18T00:39:00.000-07:00

The last piece of the hull is done. It's late, but I just finished snapping photos of the lower gun turret disc. It was missing many of the little styrene squares found on the original, some small raised circles, and a strange narrow block with rounded ends. Having done this type of work before on the upper turret, it was much easier. The difficult part is comparing what Fine Molds gives you with reference photos and temporarily drawing the missing details with a pen.After the glue set, I hit the new details with 400 grit sandpaper. I blow off any debris/dust with compressed air and head out to spray it with primer. A note on primer: when you get down to 25% left in the spray can, it may be best to start with a fresh can to ensure smooth coverage with no unwanted texture. Below is a nice example.
I am going to glue this one to the bottom of the ship permanently. There's no need to remove this one on my kit. Everything I need to get at will be accessible via the upper gun port. I won't be adding the rest of the parts for this assembly (window frame and gun) because the mounting point for my falcon is through this opening.

Cross off the cockpit walkway.

2006-08-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

This is the last update for today. I finished the walkway from the hull to the cockpit. I just need to glue the halves together and then attach it to the ship. I ended up using a combiniation of dremel and heated tools to make the dent/blast mark on the corner of the lower piece (top piece in photo). Then I added a few more details that are present in reference photos.
Here's another photo of the underside where most of the custom work was done.

Progress report

2006-08-13T11:02:00.000-07:00

I took the falcon outside this morning for some quick photos. It was a bit too bright (and hot I might add) so I apologize for the dark shadows. I'm moving on to the cockpit walkway next. I'll start by adding the dent to its underside.
I really liked this shot too:

Sidewalls are go!

2006-08-12T13:50:00.000-07:00

Today I attached all of the sidewall pieces to the ship. I chose to only glue the parts to the upper hull so I could separate the two halves later if necessary. It worked out great with the exception of one piece (near the cockpit) that wraps under the lower hull slightly. I will probably lightly tack this one with glue.
For the hoses below I recreated them by bending some brass rod. Fine Molds included some detail pipes that were too small and didn't have the right look to the bends.The magnetic escape pods worked great and with the small trapezoid-like sidewall panels installed on either side, they are snug and have perfect alignment.
Another sidewall piece glued into place. A note on construction: in order to ensure a strong bond, I scored the back of the sidewall sub assemblies with my trusty x-acto knife in a cross hatch pattern. I did the same for where the piece contacts the upper hull.
Here's the other side of the engine opening. On this sidewall, there are two small piping brackets (shaped like an 'H') that needed to be glued into place. I was able to glue them firmly to the sidewall without having to apply any glue to where they meet the lower hull.Scratch another item off the 'to-do' list. Did I mention the list is getting very short now?