The Millennium Falcon

I talked to a friend who’s an electronic quiz about how to add real lighting to the inside of the ship, and he got over enthusiastic about transformers, drilling holes everywhere and really expensive components that just doesn’t fit with the aim of this project of building the Millenium Falcon while spending as little as possible.

So here’s the affordable way of doing it….

Nowadays you can buy led Christmas lights that run off 2 AA bateries. They cost around £4 in the run up to Christmas, or a quid in the January sales.

I did but a problem with the battery pack – the door to change the batteries was on the opposite side to the on/off switch, so I didn’t have a side to your to the underside of the ship. I fixed this by gluing the battery compartment closed then cutting a new access panel on the other side with a dremel.

I wrapped the battery pack in black insulating tape and superglued it to the bottom of the ship.

The thin copper wires can be bent to shape and wrapped around things, so I led the lights up the ramp and into the ship, following the outside wall. I had to fix the wire in place, and had initially intended to glue small cable clips in place, but superglue would just not stick to them. Neither would contact glue. I had been trying to avoid using hot glue, as I was worried it might melt the very thin wire, but it was the only option that worked. I actually nailed a few clips in place to hold the wire where I wanted it, then used lukewarm not-glue to reinforce the clips and fix the wire where I wanted. Normally I let a bit glue gun get quite hot, but I kept turning it off whenever it got too hot to touch with my fingers.

In the next part, once the glue has fully set, I will paint the hot glue, cable clips and copper wires black, and disguise areas I am unhappy with as rust or by adding more “model” cables  and details over the top of the real wire.