So you know how sometimes you come up with a bright idea and then quickly realize that you grossly underestimated the amount of work involved?
Yeah well that's me, like 90% of the time. Just like this time!
But lets first skip back 3 or so years. Hasbro put out a roughly 1/18 scale X-wing. Oh boy, right? Well, no, as most of you already know. The thing was horrible and I have no idea how it was ever approved for manufacture. The wings were molded shut, which is ridiculous (it's called an XWING for crying out loud), several parts of it were molded open on the underneath (wings, cannons, and rear part of engine nacelles), no cockpit (black stickers where the glass would be), and it was made of soft ABS plastic (which I hate).
The overall dimensions were nearly spot on though, surprisingly, and the panel lines and smaller details weren't terrible (except the cannons, cannons were bad). The price was also ridiculous. Wally World originally had them for $35 bucks.
So overall a big pass. Until....
We jump ahead a couple of months, and I see one on the clearance isle at Wally for ten bucks. Crap. I can do something with this, I think. So...
I get the thing home and immediately tear it apart. Fuselage is upper and lower halves screwed together, top engines and wings molded to upper half, bottom engines molded to lower. I separated the halves and cut off the engines and wings. At least ABS (still hate it) is soft and easy to cut. Cannons would snap onto wings, but I didn't bother.
Then I did the usual and procrastinated for several years, until...
DA RONA.
Lots of free time now. And bonus motivation, my daughter is a Star Wars freak (go figure, NO idea where she got that from) and she started dropping hints.
So, yeah, lots of time on my hands. And as I figured, I was gonna need it.
First I picked up a bunch of styrene sheet, various sizes of tubing, fresh model glue and some Loctite 404 and got to it.
Wings and cannons were fabricated from scratch, engine nacelles were reused and mated to new wings, and internal engine bits fabricated on the inside of the wings (pain in the ass). Hollow parts of engine nacelles were filled with foam and covered with bondo. Bondo was then carved to match engine details (also pain in the ass, but much less PITA than scratch building new ones).
Cockpit canopy came molded with fuselage, so I somewhat carefully cut it out along with where the glass would go (extreme pain in the ass, and only cut myself twice). Cockpit was fabricated (not as much of a pain in the ass as I thought it would be).
So at this point I should mention that I'm not a rivet counter type (obviously). For reference I found a website with really excellent pictures of one of the original pyro xwing models from ANH. Random photos of other 1/1 and smaller props were used, so the cockpit I built is a bit of a frankenstein, as the pyro and 1/1 cockpits were completely different. Likewise on the paint job. Started on Red Five, ended on Red Two, and went kinda sideways from there. Wedge can sue me.
Weathering was about 40% unintentional, and I need to do a bit more. Paint really didn't wanna stick to the ABS (yup, STILL hate it).
The wings are fixed open (I didn't need any more pains. In the ass).
A note on the pilot - he's the most expensive part of whole thing, $40, 3D printed by Falcon 3D Parts in Canada. They actually sell just about everything I fabricated. But the price would have been astronomical. Turns out there was a bunch of people out there doing the same thing I was doing.
Anywho, have some pics while I figure out how I'm gonna hang this heavy sucker from the ceiling.
