The Millennium Falcon
Revisiting the rebuilt hull
I wasn’t happy with how the re-built hull (where the nerf gun used to be in the ship) tuned out. I picked up some styrene stips from my local model shop (I can’t call them tubes as they ‘re rectangular in cross section – but you get the idea) and glued these on, removing any excess grey card with a sharp knife. Note I used superglue – not glue would have just melted the styrene. I glued on some metal wire, making sure these joined up with some of the “wiring” moulded into the rest of the plastic hull, to pull the two areas together.
Painting this rebuilt area to match the rest of the ship proved problematic. I painted the new wife and styrene with white primer, then repeated the stages I had used previously to paint rest of the ship. The wire blended in ok, but the styrene was too flat and smooth for drybrushing to work well in it – in the end I stippled on sepia shade and then once this was dry stippled on the lighter colours instead of drybushing. It’s Not a perfect match for the previous colours, but no doubt I will be tweaking that but of painting as I go on to try to make the match close hit
I hit some panels of the hull with light grey, to lower the intensity of some of the Sepia shade and appease any star-wars-grognars who think the ship should be grey (I think the falcon is really white and just discoloured by whatever dirt and grime is costing it currently- I’ve been aiming for a dirty off white).
Finally, I add soot trails behind the circular heat vents using my airbrush. I’m not sure why soot would not just blow out into the vacuum of space, but it’s part of the iconic look of Han’s ship. That’s the first time I’ve used an airbrush on this model.
Leave a Reply