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Of all the
ships, the straight-wing TIE is my favorite. Not finished in
time for the theatre display, it still draws comments like
"where did you get that 'kit'?" every time.
The
cockpit 'ball' is a "heat and smash" over an acrylic sphere that was almost the right
size. Two half spheres were glued together, and a tube was
mounted through the center to start building up the 'arms'. Add
to that a jigsaw puzzle of plastic parts, all custom cut, to form the
rest of the ship. Crazy? Yes. But it looks soooooo good!
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The detail was again taken from many
sources. Pictures of the film miniature were a great help.
The basecoat of the TIE Fighter was made with one bottle of
Model Master Flat White with 52 drops of Flat Black added to
make the overall gray color. Flat Black was used for the solar
panels. The window was a Humbrol Dark Gray.
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The cockpit is fully
detailed, however it is not a match for the cockpit used for filming. The comments
I received when I was working on the panels at a car/train/model show prior to
putting them in were in the "and I thought 'we' were nuts!"
category.
The cockpit was Model Master greens and grays with Flat Black, Chrome Silver and
Citadel Green, Yellow, and Red for certain buttons and lights.
This picture was taken with a flash and the TIE cockpit 'window'
was removed to better show the detail.
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The toughest part of the
model: making the cone for the aft window and the detailing the area took weeks. I'm not totally happy with it but I haven't recovered enough to try making another
one...yet.
I would like to someday have "black Flight" complete—two straight-wing TIEs and
Vader's TIE Advanced X-1 in 1/24 scale!
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Every detail times two!!! The detailing in the "spider" and
center section was a challenge. Very few kit parts were used; the
center ring is the rim off a truck, there's some brake parts from racing cars but
that's about it...everything else is sheet styrene or evergreen
plastic modified, filed, cut, layered and drilled to shape. Keeping yourself motivated to do everything 4 times is hard, but the
results are well worth it.
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Photos
by Stephen L.
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