Moving on from the massive engine area of the Franklin, I finished boxing in the main hull shape with thick styrene sheets. When cutting long pieces of plastic, I just use a metal ruler and an Exacto knife, then bend it until it snaps. You don’t have to cut through it, just score it with the knife.
Here, you can see that I’ve cut and placed the panels for the entire bottom of the starship. I use masking tape to hold them in place while drying. I use nothing exotic to bond them, just Tester’s model cement—the little red tube. The metal blocks are called one-two-three blocks; I use them to hold down things because they are heavy and flat.
After the frame is boxed in, I start messing with the larger greeblies to see what will look good and somewhat match the details in the drawing. Some things stay, like the little red cups and some things are swapped out for something better to my eye. The details on the bottom of the engine area are pretty locked in at this point. You can see the mount pole in this image – an aluminum rod from the hardware store.
More parts are lined up for the bottom area. My greeblie bins are just about used up at this point, so everything but the kitchen sink is going into this model.
To kill time on the greeblie search, I continue boxing in the bow of the starship carrier.
I’m not concerned with perfecting all the edges because I’ll lay in thinner pieces on the hull as I go.
As you can see, many details have now been added to the bottom. I know this won’t be seen in the cover shot, so I don’t sweat the details too much—a particular franchise droid has made its way into this model.
I have flipped the model on it’s back to work on the bow section. Again, it’s slow going with the limited parts I have. I might need to invest in some cheap models for parts.
