Monday 4 November 2013

More X-Wing

In the last article I posted a few photos of my retouched X-Wing minis.  The extra paintwork was just a few minutes work, but enough to improve the models and make them a little more unique.  Below are a couple of snaps of the missing ships I mentioned:

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YT-1300
A buddy of mine had found some cool Falcon mods on eBay and figured I should have a go, after a little research on Wookiepedia I discovered that the YT-1300 freighter was often heavily modified, with cockpit alterations etc.  I liked the idea of shifting the cockpit to the centre to have two different looking ships for my games.  The Star Wars expanded universe agreed with the idea too, naming the "YT-1930" as a later mainstream design with a central cockpit.  During my research I found a guide (on this site) on how somebody else managed to do it, so I had no choice but to break out the hobby knife and razor saw and begin to hack...

Conversion details
The first job was to remove the original cockpit, but preserve the rounded tunnel part and nose whilst not invading the surrounding saucer section too much.  I also removed the two front sections of the original hull in preparation for the new cockpit position.  Everything was filed down and cleaned up ready for the conversion, but most notably the tunnel section was reduced to just the top part, I used a razor saw and a jig to get the cut accurate.  Lots of filing and dry fitting was done to get a good fit.  Below is a photo of the Falcon in bits!

As you can see there is a gaping hole on the starboard side as well as a big ugly, square front!  Note also the two blaster turrets and radar dish were removed for ease of painting and cutting, they're quite delicate and could have gotten damaged if they were left in place.
Once the dry fitting was complete I superglued the cockpit and cockpit tunnel into position and started measuring up the plasticard to fill the gap left by the original cockpit removal.  This was relatively simple to rebuild the basic shape as well as add in some panel details.  I used liquid greenstuff and more filing to get a decent finish.  Below are a couple of snaps of the finished conversion ready for priming and painting:
Cockpit and tunnel glued in place, plasticard and greenstuff complete

Underside; a bit of edge rebuilding and a lot of filing/filling to get a smooth finish

The side view, basically where the original cockpit was sited

Close up of the finished panel.  I added a couple of gubbinz off the discarded original parts to replace some detail.
YT-1930
For the paint job I decided to prime over the original paintwork, a little risky as the detail is so fine, but I felt it would be OK and the final paint job wasn't compromised in my opinion.  Below are a few snaps of the finished model, ready to out manoeuvre a few Imperial star destroyers or just smuggle something naughty!
Completed YT-1930

Completed YT-1930

Completed YT-1930
Completed YT-1930 next to the original YT-1300

3 comments:

  1. Looking good! I'm a big star wars fan so have been tempted but a) I find the models to be very expensive and b) not enough people play it locally as yet. Still, Xmas is coming... :)

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  2. Xmas X-Wing for the win :-)
    I wasn't too bothered by the cost of the minis, you can generally get them for 20% off and free delivery from eBay which helps. They are quite small I guess in terms of value for money, but as they're very detailed and prepainted (plus a load of card dials and pilot/upgrade cards) a tenner for a small ship is OK with me. You also don't need many ships so it is cheap compared to GW, mind you everything is compared to GW stuff!! If you fancy a game Pete, drop me a line and I'm happy to meet up.

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  3. Looking good and having seen it in the flesh you couldn't spot the join - top work!

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