This thread is has been updated with the new photos from the new photobucket account. This will help to keep the photos from being overloaded on the album they were uploaded to. New photos will be uploaded when available as this build progresses. Thank you for your patience.
This is a project that I have been working on for a few months now. I started this in May of this year initially but I originally had planned it last year. (I wish I had released this then.) Personal problems with my family had brought all progress on this to a halt. After months of lurking I decided to bring this over here to share. I finally had another member there go the the exibition where this model is presently being shown in Australia and measure this for me. I was off by eight inches. Needless to say I had to start over from scratch. He and I are going to cast this together instead of the guy that I was originally going to have cast it.
This is my tribute to the ILM version that was built about the time that Return of the Jedi was just begining production. This was originally a pet project of two of the ILM guys who were working there at the time that Lorne Peterson was shop supervisor. He saw this and showed it to George Lucas at the time and it was agreed to film it. This was never seen in the Return of the Jedi movie though as it was edited out for budget and time constraints.
I know that there is a smaller "studioscale" version of this being offered by several makers,but none of them are the exact same size,and length! Theirs are intended to be recreations of the Star Wars - A new hope models. I'm making this recreation of four foot version instead. I've only seen one successful attempt to recreate this on ebay but that version was too big (lengthwise) and disproportionate to the original. There's another person attempting to make this on another forum but no one has seen the final product yet and this will be HIS interpretation of the original ILM models of the first Star Wars movie - A New Hope. Mine will use accurate kit parts and construction according to the Return of the Jedi version. I'm a machinist by trade so this will make converting proprotions a little easier. A lot of time and effort have gone into figuring out what materials to use that are available as well as being the correct size for this. I've put many hours into figuring scale and construction methods as well as detail (kit part Id'ing). I hope that this will be the ultimate tribute to the original ILM guys when I'm finished!
Here are the photos that I have as of late. I'll be adding more today as this progresses.
Here's what I originally meant to post but I had to go to another forum to compose this message:
This one will be the accurate version of the Jedi model. This will have an armature in it. I'm thinking about lighting this but with fibreoptics in the cockpit as well not just in the engines. I hope that in time I can show what skills I have and prove that I can be a useful member here as well. I'll let the photos tell the story!
Here're are the first photos that I took. The last few with out the date stamp are the most recent ones. I removed the date stamp from last photos as it only displays military time (d/m/y) and won't work any other way now. Some of these are a little blurry. I apologize for that the camera I was using is crap! I hope you'll like them anyway. More to come. If you like what you see so far stay tuned!
This is a reducer cap that I cut into the flash suppressor (half moon shape at the end of the laser canon).
Here are the wings before final cutting and shaping. You can't tell from looking at this photo but these are about four and a half feet wide when spread out.
This piece of lint is acrylic fiber that melted and wrapped around the cutting wheel in small strands as I was cutting shapes out of it. Now I see how polyester and nylon are processed into everyday clothing items. Synthetic indeed!
This is the back of the wing stabilizer.
The hole in this wing is too big on the larger chevron. I'll have to cut more acrylic to piece back in before I fit the sheet styrene to it.
These are the intake plenums that go into the front,and back. This is the part that the Saturn V engines go on. I taped these together so that when I sand one side I can retape it after measuring it and making sure that all sides are congruent or rather perfectly straight with each other.
This piece has no real life function on the model. It's just there for ornamentation. Here you can see that the bottom of this is too small and thin but it's no big deal as I have to cut two of these anyway (one for each wing). I forgot to make this for the smaller PVC tubing that I've cut for this when I traced it out. This goes on the front of the wing to intake joint.
These were a bunch of Eddie Van Halen model musicman control covers that I made and converted into the engine bells for the inside of the engine intake. This is why there are circles drawn on them. I photoshopped out the holes for comparison. I used these because I have no other use for them right now.
This is a comparison shot. This was 1/4" of an inch thick. Now it's 3/32" of an inch thick. This was neccessary for the difference between the top and bottom of the engine intake. This will have greeblies attached to it with to reinforcing ribs glued along the front edge.
Here's a better shot from above.
Here you can see both the old and new Phantom engine parts shown side by side for comparison. The smaller ones on the left of course are the original ones I made but I can no longer use. The tube on the far right with the line on it is the one that I recently machined smaller in diameter. The first one was too big around and I didn't know this until I looked at the reference photos. I then decided to cut a new one and leave the mount on the end of it until I'm satisfied that the two pieces match the reference photos.
This is the laser canon in the making. I still have yet to make the heatsink. The smaller part on the left is the reducer that I made from the black coloured mounts from an RC car.
These kept it from being jostled around inside the box it came in.
The other parts are a needle-less syringe that I cut down for the finial in the end and a brass tube inserted into a half inch diameter PVC tube.
Although a little haphazardly assembled for this photo - this is what it'll look like when finished.
~ Cobra Chris