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:

Incom T-65 X-Wing Fighter