Incom T-65 X-Wing Fighter

Building the famous Star Wars Starfighter

The X-Wing Fighter has always been my favourite Star Wars starfighter, and I love how so much of the final model used in the films resembles the original production paintings by the magnificent late Ralph McQuarrie.

My model has been built entirely from scratch and is mostly made up of cardboard of various sorts, with only minor use of some other materials.

How it all started

I started with this project early in October 2016 – facing long and dark winter evenings, I suddenly felt the urge to get creative. Like so many other Star Wars fans that grew up with the classic Kenner toys, I also owned the X-wing fighter made for the vintage Star Wars action figures, but I was never really happy with the proportions. While accepting that obviously compromises had to be made in order to reach a balance between accuracy (as regards the film model) and affordability as a toy, I always felt that it didn't do justice in particular to the X-wing, since the original movie prop was such an elegantly shaped and perfectly proportioned model.

So I had a look around, searching for whatever sort of cardboard I could lay my hands on (to get started, some not yet discarded amazon delivery boxes came in handy), and I started taking some basic measurements for a more realistically proportioned model, using information on the length of the X-wing from various Star Wars printed source material (see below) and the height of the vintage action figures as standard measure.

Measures (S-foils deployed)

• Length, overall: ca. 70cm (from nose tip to engine exhausts)
• Length, fuselage only: ca. 63cm
• Width, overall: ca. 59cm
• Diagonal width (wing-tip to wing-tip): ca. 62cm
• Width, fuselage rear end: ca. 11cm
• Height, fuselage rear end: ca. 12cm
• Height, laser cannon to laser cannon: ca. 22cm

Kenner Toys X-Wing for comparison

• Length: ca. 35cm
• Width; ca. 31cm
• Height: ca. 7cm (from Artoo's head to bottom of fuselage)

Reference material

• Star Wars Technical Journal (Shane Johnson | Boxtree | 1995), pp. 128 ff. (photo & cross-section foldout) & p. 137 (cockpit interior shot)
• From Star Wars to Indiana Jones - The Best of the Lucasfilm Archives (Mark Cotta Vaz & Shinji Hata | Chronicle Books | 1994), pp. 30/31& back cover
• The Art of Star Wars - A New Hope (Carol Titelman (Ed.) | DelRey | 1979), pp. 108/109
• The Star Wars Chronicles (Deborah Fine | vgs | German edition | 1997, ), pp. 112/113

I mostly referenced the photos in the Technical Journal (which are actually identical with those featured in the Art of Star Wars), but at the same time I was scanning multiple websites for comparison.

It was especially hard to find usable photos from the cockpit interior, and mostly I ended up referencing the interior shot from the Technical Journal (which also mostly appears when googling for cockpit interior shots). Some of the websites I took most inspiration from are:

• Starshipmodeler - an original X-Wing prop from a museum display, with various shots from all sorts of angles, therefore providing excellent reference photos
• Modelermagic - a beautifully rendered re-creation of the X-Wing by Sean Sides, with loads of details (based on a kit)
• Starshipmodeler - another rendering by Carlos Zangrando, featuring some awesome detailing (also based on a kit)

Building materials used

• Cardboard (from supermarket and Amazon cartons, A4-size high quality carton, egg carton, etc.)
• Transparent plastic (from yogurt plastic cap)
• Seat cover (cut from a black satin sock, courtesy of my wife)
• Some wood for the cockpit hydraulics (cut from flower bar)
• Shoe laces for tubes (inside the cockpit and behind Artoo)
• Plastic bag binders (for the structured surface around the engine exhausts)
• Several cardboard tubes (from poster rolls, kitchen & toilet paper rolls, etc.)
• Styrofoam for rear end surface (from Natto package)
• Straws (for the lasers - the red markings on the straws turned out to be rather difficult to spray-paint white, but I found the see-through red to be a nice welcome touch)
• Wooden shashlick sticks (for the laser tips)
• Rubber foam (taken from a sunglass holder, to hold the laser straws in place)

Tools used

• Adhesive (mainly UHU all-purpose adhesive in a tube)
• White spray paint (fuselage and wings)
• Red paint pen (fuselage and wing markings)
• Dark grey spray paint (cockpit canopy, two pieces)
• Black, Light Grey, Dark Grey paint (engines, rear end, top engine & laser details)
• Black edding pen (proton torpedo outlets, cockpit interior)
• Silver marker pen (cockpit interior, wing engine wheels)

Major steps

• Measuring the basic shape, length of the front and rear part of the main body (built in two separate pieces)
• Front part frame assembly (without nose cone)
• Rear part frame assembly (with two toilet paper rolls inside, representing the S-foil mechanism visible between the wings)
• Attachment of front to rear part
• Nose cone (tough & long process, esp. to get the curved shapes right)
• Rear end guard attached (also tough, to get angles right)
• Cockpit interior details, incl. dashboard and pilot seat
• Cockpit canopy (long process, multiple attempts)
• Wings, basic shapes (three layers for sturdiness and realism)
• Wing engines and support structure
• Fuselage top detailing (behind Artoo)
• Laser tubes assembly
• Display stand assembly (preparing this prior to attaching all four wings turned out to be good idea, since otherwise I wouldn't have been able to put down the model anywhere anymore without potentially damaging it)

The beginning was comparatively easy, but by deciding on the basic proportions at the start, I was worrying along the way that this would unavoidably determine the overall proportions of the entire model - but hey: no risk, no fun!

Getting started - basic outline of the front part of the fuselage, with the opening for the cockpit:

I decided early on that I wanted to build the ship with its S-foils deployed, since this way I believe it is much more of an eye-catcher. However this meant that the S-foil mechanism would be visible between the deployed wings, hence the cut-out part on both sides of the rear part of the fuselage.

Rear part of the fuselage, with the opening for the S-foil wing engines:

Two toilet paper rolls to serve as S-foil engines that would be visible between the deployed wings (and also for stabilizing the body); on the right Artoo's pit can be seen from below:

Some of the interior stabilizers for the front fuselage (seen from below; on the right the bottom of the cockpit interior can be seen):

Fast-forwarding a couple of weeks - after attaching the front and rear part of the fuselage (the torpedo launch tubes still look rough, but I later covered them up with another thin layer of carefully cut-out cardboard):

The more I got into it, the more obsessed I also got with getting loads of details right, so I ended up spending way more time on certain parts of the model than I had ever planned for (it actually made me appreciate the modeling work by all those ILM folks back in the days all the more).

The nose cone took a lot of time:

For the cockpit I mostly referenced the live-action shot from the Star Wars Technical Journal - look at all those angles (they nearly drove me nuts):

One of many cockpit dashboard templates:

The cockpit dashboard, without any detailing yet... but with the angles:

About three weeks into the project:

Many weeks later...the downside of applying the canopy was that a lot of the cockpit details became rather hard to discern through the window panes, so here are some close-up shots of the finished cockpit details yet without canopy:

Cockpit close-ups with canopy in place (and the pilot trapped forever):

When I finally wanted to start work on the engines, I realized that the tube-shaped toilet (!) and kitchen paper rolls, which I had already set aside, were much too narrow in diameter - they would look disproportionate (something that also bothers me about the LEGO 10240 UCS X-wing). What I needed was a cardboard tube with a diameter of 5,5 centimeters - and I luckily found it in a poster tube.

Engine tubes (top half and engine intake top part already covered with kitchen paper roll; the conically shaped parts inside are made from pieces of egg carton):

Once I had the tubes for the engine main parts, I could finally move on with the wings. For these I decided to attach three layers of cardboard to each other; one reason was to make them more stable (so they wouldn't "wobble"), and the other was that by continuously scanning various close-ups of the wings I found they are actually layered, with a slight indent that adds to the overall impression (or so I thought at least).

Wing template (right) and final wing cutout (left). The cutout shows the areas that will later be visible on the inside of each wing:

Top left wing with engine mounted (on the wing the areas to be painted with red markings are outlined in pencil):

The almost finished and painted wing (laser tubes still missing; in the bottom right sprayed detailing for the engine exhaust ports can be seen):

Four months into the project - finished detailing on the top rear part of the fuselage (before spray-painting...Artoo couldn't wait to try out his pit nonetheless):

Rear details (the rear end guard was a bitch and took multiple attempts; rear details are made of either cardboard or pieces of styrofoam):

Just by applying the red markings on the front fuselage, the model suddenly looks much more elegant, and its slim shape is a lot more accentuated (or at least that's what I thought):

Laser tube assembly (note the black rubber foam part that holds the straw in place):

The display stand, freshly painted:

I applied the finishing touches (i.e. attaching the laser tubes to the wings) towards the end of February 2017, making it a total of 14 plus weeks (most of the work was done on weekday evenings after work and on weekends).

The finished model:

Rear view (here you can see the three-layered wings and the exposed engine parts inside the wings):

And navigating the skies above Iceland (not quite ILM-level visual effects, but getting there...):

The vintage Kenner toy and my version for comparison...size does matter after all:

And for a final comparison - the X-Wing as depicted in the Star Wars Technical Journal:

I am still thinking about ageing the entire model a bit by applying some special black paint, but haven't decided yet, since not doing it properly may easily ruin it as well.

Difficulties

Especially tough parts were the nose cone and the cockpit canopy. I always felt that if the cockpit is not done right, it ruins the overall impression, therefore I tried to pay particular attention to maintaining the right length and angles. As a result I ended up cutting out about five or six cockpit canopies - each of them made up by a front and rear part -, before I was satisfied with the proportions.

The nose cone - being the front part of the fighter and therefore rather conspicuous - took more than an entire weekend. Before deciding on the final length, width, and curvatures, I also cut out multiple templates for this part.

It also took surprisingly long to come up with just the right tube-shaped cardboard that I could use for the lasers. To fit the remaining proportions of the model, their main body had to be about 2cm in diameter – try to find something like that! Although it wasn't my preferred solution, I finally draped two pieces of wine cork in thin cardboard and worked from there (read: it helps if you like drinking wine).

After more or less finishing the fuselage and all four wings, I ended up hesitating for quite a while until I finally attached those. This was due to their weight, and I was also concerned about getting the angle right (since the rear fuselage didn't come with perfect angles to begin with). Interestingly enough, I later found that the wings' angles aren't always perfectly aligned on the original props either that can be found on some of the conventional websites.

Regrets

• Not having used high-quality cardboard more consistently from the start (in order to avoid rough edges and texture which are still visible after spray-painting the model)
• Overlooking the fact that the lower front part of the fuselage should slightly angle up towards the nose cone (although I referenced several photos and blueprints from the start, I simply missed this)
• The diagonally shaped sidelines of the front part should have extended a little further until behind the cockpit; instead the straight sidelines of the rear fuselage starts too early behind the cockpit (with parallel sidelines)

But then again...when I finally finished the model, I realized that by having spent week after week doing measurements, then re-measuring, always up close in front of the work in progress, I had almost become too conscious of some details - once I saw the final model on display, and looking at it as a whole for the first time, I actually wasn't bothered by some of the points mentioned above that much anymore...but hey, find out for yourself!

And who knows - one day I may end up starting on another one...