AMT X-Wing Rebuild - Complete

That is the best thing about the Fine Molds and Bandai kits; the standard scales of 1/144, 1/72 and 1/48. That and the outstanding quality of their star wars kits. That's something MPC/AMT/Ertl never reached.

You're too right about that Rob. This kit scales out close to 1/43 (I think) and I'm going with 1/48 for the figures and other bits. It's as close as I'm going to get without designing figures and having them 3D printed. That's a skill set I don't have, and don't have the time to develop. I do have a couple of the Bandai kits and will be getting a lot more as I can afford to get them.

So here's where I'm at.  I did a wash with a mix of black and burnt umber acrylic craft paint and sealed it with Testor's dull coat.  Just a little bit more to do on the fighter then I'll move on to the figures and scratchbuilding a tool cart and working on the base.  I'm entering cruch time to get this done by the time The Last Jedi comes out next month.

Now that I just have a few things to do on the X-Wing I've been looking at doing the other parts of the diorama.  I astromech units that come in the AMT kit aren't that great.  I wanted a couple other kinds of droids that I would have to scratch-build and my spares box was failing me.  So I did some searching online and ordered a few from Shapeways.

I thought the head of the treadwell droid could use some work.  Here's what I started with:

And here's where I am now:

I'm thinking about adding some things onto the ends of the arms, but it might be more trouble than it's worth for the scale.  I also modified one of the figures from Monogram's 1/48 F-4C kit to be General Merrick.  I even found a head with a mustach, even if you can't tell from this picture and my horrible teenage painting skills.  I still have a bit of work to do on his helmet though.  

Nice, how much did the R2 and R5 units cost?

Good thing about ANH X-Wings is that they were beat up looking. Cobbling together this build should look great.

All four droids were about $30, the R5 was $6.56 and the R2 was $5.48.  

One of the best parts of building X-Wings is beating them up . I'm going to do some streaking and carbon scoring with pastels once I get all the other parts on.  With any kind of luck I'll be finishing by next Friday.

Well, I didn't get this wrapped up before Episode VIII came out, but I'm pretty close.  I just have a few details to add to the X-Wing, the groundwork, and the figures.  Here's a little teaser before the holidays where I'm at.  Hopefully with the time off from work I'll be done by New Year's.

Well I'm finally done!  This project really seemed to drag at the end with a lot of life getting in the way and being put out of action by the flu for a week.  I didn't take any WIP pictures of the diorama accessories as I just wanted to get this off the bench.

To recap, this is a maintenance diorama of Antoc Merrick's (Blue Leader) X-Wing at Yavin Base sometime prior to the Battle of Scarif in Rogue One.  

Thanks for following along!

Good job

Thanks Rob! I don't usually do figures so I'm pretty pleased with how these ones came out...much better than the first time I tried it...

I believe this is one of the very first MPC Star Wars models I ever built. I remember our local JC Penney had a clearance table of stuff that I guess had been ordered by catalog but returned by customers. There was Vader's TIE, the X-Wing, R2-D2 and C3P0. I bought all of them and still have R2 and 3P0. These old kits were open box, beat up and still hold a special place in my heart.

Awesome love them 3d printed droids

Thanks guys! That's awesome that you still have those old R2 and 3P0 kits Rob. I wasn't around when the first movie came out, but I do remember Return of the Jedi being the first movie I saw in the theater.

Very cool! I love the droids. I've made my own in the past, but it's getting harder to that since my vision is getting worse as I age. Now small things are blurry when I look at them. I hope to get the money to buy some more slicone rubber and resin to finish the builds that I started so long ago. I have to repay my Mom for the payments she made on my car when I was out of work last year. It's going to be a while before then! I'll post what I can in the meantime. I've done some serious work on a 1/8th scale Fiat racer that I hope to finish before I die. That needs some work in rubber and resin too. A lot of things to do. One of them is to release my version of the X-wing with 100% accurate detail including a lighting kit. I hope that I can last long enough at my job (physically) to get some place to work. Thans for showing this to us. I can't wait to see the diorama in its' finished form. ~ Cobra Chris

Thanks Cobra! I was going to try to scratch the droids, but everything I tried just didn't look right. I'm a terrible sculptor, and everything was getting to look either too overscale or underscale. That's when I started looking around and discovered Shapeways. There is SO MUCH there it's overwhelming. I started looking into accurate parts for the old MPC Millennium Falcon I have, but to get all the upgrade parts printed would cost several times what I paid for the kit. So I guess I'll have to detail it the old fashioned way when I get around to building that beast.