Estes Maxi Brute X-Wing Fighter

[James Duffy]

Made a bit of progress on the other three wings over the past couple of weeks, and thought I'd provide a quick update. The first task was to cut out the balsa cores and the .015"-thick styrene fascia sheets. After cleaning up the cut edges with sanding sticks we can spray them with 3M High-Strength 90 contact cement. After the contact cement flashes off for about ten minutes the parts can be joined.



After this sets up for a couple of hours the panel lines are scribed into place, followed by gluing the void inserts in place with epoxy. (The completed wing panel is shown for comparison.)

The wings can then be sprayed with Tamiya white primer, lightly sanded, and then sprayed with the AS-20 Insignia White lacquer base coat.

More later,
James

 

[James Duffy]

Here are a few highlight shots of the detail painting of the wing panels. Since the process was highlighted on the earlier test wing, I won't go into much detail on the process.

I ultimately decided to go with purple as the squadron color for this unit, as that color doesn't show up often in the SW universe (Mace Windu's light saber is a notable exception). Because "Purple Squadron" sounds stupid, we'll call this the "Royal Squadron," and this fighter will be "Royal Three." As mentioned before, the backstory will also dictate that many replacement parts were scavenged from other damaged X-Wings, resulting in a variety of mismatched components.

Fin flash being masked.

Here are the completed wing panels. The primer/repair colors differ slightly to provide a bit of interest.


Just for grins, here's a preview of how a wing will look attached to a wing saddle.

We the time comes we're going to weather the s@#% out of everything.

More later.
James

 

[afadeev]

That's not an unreasonable request, and frankly one that I have expected. At this point I really don't wish to get into the resin parts business, but I may have a better idea. What if I were to send the masters to an established 3D printing company so that they could duplicate the parts digitally, and offer the fiddly bits as 3D printed parts?

James,
The challenge is that I am not aware of any "established 3D printing companies" that would do a laser scan of a part, and output a .stl files for 3D-printing. At least not at below 5-digit price points.
Once one has a .stl file, there is a slew of printing options available: from free at local libraries (and personal 3D printers), to inexpensive "for hire" printing arrangements (upwork.com and similar).

The starting point for 3D printing is a .stl file.
Once can build it by hand, but I'm not sure if you are up for that, James?

Fun fact: the wing saddle contained in the original Maxi Brute and NCR kits was a single component. Here, we've added a total of 23 resin and styrene detail parts.

Out of curiosity - what are you planning to do to structurally reinforce the wing?
All these holes, in the already flimsy balsa wings, can't be good for strength.

On my model (just finished 18mm MMT X-wing, about to start on 24mm MMT one), I felt compelled to paper and CA-impregnate the wings to strengthen them for flight.

What, if anything, are you planning to do with yours?
Will yours fly?

a

 

[James Duffy]

The challenge is that I am no aware of any "established 3D printing companies" that would do a laser scan of a part, and output a .stl files for 3D-printing.

When the model is complete I'm going to lack up all of the detail masters and ship them off to Mike Nowak of Galactic Manufacturing. He will reverse-engineer them into the appropriate format and make 3d-printed versions available for sale. No idea when that will happen, though.

Out of curiosity - what are you planning to do to structurally reinforce the wing?
All these holes, in the already flimsy balsa wings, can't be good for strength.

Because of the laminated structure the modified wings are stronger than the standard kit components.

What, if anything, are you planning to do with yours?
Will yours fly?

It will certainly be capable of flight, but I won't make that call until I complete construction.

James

 

[James Duffy]

The wing panels have just been mounted into the wing saddles with epoxy, so here's a bonus photo.

Upper wings are at the top of the photo, lower wings below.



More later,
James

 

[James Duffy]

Work on the airframe of the X-Wing commenced over the weekend. The process was completed pretty much as directed in the kit instructions, and nothing unexpected happened during the process. The fuselage is easily the best part contained in the original Estes kit, and the reason why the model is sought after by serious modelers to this day. If you want a large, studio scale model of the X-Wing fighter with an accurately shaped fuselage, your easiest starting point is the Maxi Brute kit.

That is not to say that there are not some challenges to be faced. In particular, the injection molded styrene cap has an indifferent fit onto the blow-molded main structure, and will need extensive filing and sanding in order to look presentable.

There's also a little injection molded part that fits on the underside of the nose cone that is a bit of a mess. There are some tricky part geometries that necessitate the inclusion of the detail as a separate part, and it frankly could have been done a bit more elegantly. However, I can imagine that the pressure on the Estes designers to get the product out of the door in early 1978 was pretty brutal. ("Good enough is the enemy of great," or something like that.)

We'll call this injection molded part the "beard," as it fits onto the chin of the blow molded nose cone part. Makes sense, right? The chin part is simply too long, so a bit of length needs to be trimmed to make the flow and fit between the parts make sense.

Once trimmed to length, the transverse left-right fit of the parts are wonky, so a shim made from .010" thick styrene is attached to the nose cone.

Finally, the beard is glued into place underneath the chin.

We'll need to do a significant amount of filling and sanding, but the initial fit is pretty good.

Before we do that, though, let's take a moment to bring the fuselage parts together and see how it looks. FYI, the fit of the aft plate and inner stuffer tube was great, and required no unusual trimming or fitting. Assembly of the stuffer tube was completed using 5-minute epoxy.

Some initial work on the turbines has also taken place, and I hope to share that in the next few days.

More later,
James

 

[mo2872]

Ok, what happened next????

 

[James Duffy]

It has been 16 months since my last post to this thread, and I've decided to get back to work on it. The last year and a half of my rocketry life has been consumed with a variety of other projects, most of them with some sort of "how to" video aspect. You can see those here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMb0g2tgJlcSVE_niblHbwDD5Ckwek4On

Time to get back to work on the X-Wing, though. We'll pick up exactly where we left off, integrating the injection molded and vacuform plastic bits at the forward end of the fuselage. Recall that this model was developed very quickly, almost a panic project at Estes in late '77/early '78. The goal was to get product out the door and into the hands of Star Wars obsessed kids, not produce a perfect kit. As such, these are not Tamigawa-quality parts, and just about everything requires a bit of fiddling to achieve a good fit. Generous shimming with sheet styrene scrap is being used to fill the canyons between poorly fitting parts, and that is followed up by generous applications of Tamiya white putty.



After the putty dries we begin sanding with a variety of sanding sticks. So, so very much sanding...

More later,
James

 

[James Duffy]

After several putty/dry/sand cycles, the final bits of excess putty are cleaned up and polished by working the surface with a series of Q-tips, moistened with Tamiya lacquer thinner. This little trick was stolen from a scale modeling DVD set hosted by Floyd Werner, a master craftsman renowned for his helicopter and Luftwaffe models. I repurposed the technique while building my V-2 and Bumper models.

This short video will recap the technique, if you're interested. I cannot recommend using alternate products (such as Squadron putty) using this trick, as I've never tried it. Tamiya products have never let me down, so I keep using them.



More later,
James

 

[James Duffy]

The blow-molded nose piece has a thin area that has unfortunately developed a small tear, and we need to fix that. There's a quick and easy way to do that using medium CA glue. Here's the hole that we need to fix.



Just hit the hole with a drop of medium CA, followed by a drop of accelerator.



I use a small bottle with a needle dropper for applying accelerator. These are available from Amazon, and beat the heck out of spraying your desk, model, and dog with the aerosol or pump applicator: https://www.amazon.com/Squeeze-Plastic-Dispensing-Dispenser-Applicator/dp/B07M5NL9LL

The drop will cure right away, after which a few passes with a sanding stick will smooth the spot and fair it into the rest of the part. Pro tip: sand it right away, as CA glues have a funky two-stage cure process. After a few hours the CA drop will become rock hard and unworkable, so don't think that you can come back and work on it later

It may take a few glue/cure/sand cycles to fill the spot. This particular repair took two cycles and a total of about four minutes.



Next, we'll begin defining the panel lines on the fuselage and begin scribing those details.

James

 

[James Duffy]

The Estes Maxi Brute fuselage has the right shapes (more on that in a bit), but it is devoid of any interesting surface detail. The studio scale models were covered with a network of panel lines and greeblies, and just about everything was painted in a slightly different shade of filth. The next step will be to scribe panel lines onto the fuselage using frames from the films, photos of the studio miniatures, our little Baidai reference model, and intuition. Unlike a traditional "real" scale subject, the references often conflict with each other, so we have wide latitude for interpretation.

We'll be scribing the panel lines using Dymo tape, the back side of a broken X-acto blade, and a purpose-built panel line scriber.



After choosing a pattern, we can draw the details onto the surface of the model with a pencil.



Next, we lay a strip of Dymo tape along the line. The Dymo tape serves as a guide along which we can drag our scribing tools.



If you'd like to see a bit more detail about this process, take a look at my Bumper WAC build, starting with this post.

Once a section has been scribed, it is lightly sanded to clean things up a bit. The pattern is then drawn and scribed on the opposite side of the fuselage. Just for grins, I highlighted the panel lines with some accent color so they would show up a little better for the camera.



I noted in the first paragraph above that the fuselage shapes were pretty good. In transferring the pattern from one side of the fuselage to the other, I learned that they are not quite perfect, though. In particular, I learned that the fuselage is not symmetrical! That's not really a surprise, as we know that the model was designed quickly, using 44-year-old tech. Still, it's fun to find the flaw, even if it won't impact the final model.

There's a great deal of real estate to draw and scribe. This may take a few days.

James

 

[James Duffy]

Here's some more progress scribing detail into the surface of the fuselage, completed over the last two evenings of League Championship ball in both leagues. (You'll need to click on the image to see the detail.)



Searching images of studio models has proven to be a real PITA, and most of the images seem to match the little Bandai model that I have on hand anyway. This little thing is great, and has become my primary reference for the scribing process.



More later,
James

 

[James Duffy]

The past few days have been spent watching playoff baseball, and I am happy to report that my Houston Astros (yes, they are mine) will be facing the Atlanta Braves in the World Series. I used this time to complete the bulk of panel line scribing on the fuselage of the model. With that done, attention can now be turned to "greebling" the surface of the part, or adding details.

We'll start with the three prominent hatch details on the left, right, and underside of the fuselage. There are pretty good references available for these hatches, and they all pretty much match our Bandai reference model. Unfortunately, the side hatch detail on the Estes fuselage is the wrong shape, molded as square elements instead of the appropriate trapezoidal shapes. We could correct that via major cosmetic surgery, or we could simply make the best of the shape that is already there. Let's take the simple path, no?

The first task is to create a set of pattern drawings, which are attached below as a .pdf file. Working from that, styrene strip and sheet stock is used to create the simple flat shapes that we need.

Left side:


Right side:


There is no bottom hatch detail on the Estes, so that element was cut from .010" styrene sheet and attached in the right spot with Tamiya thin cement. Greebles were then glued onto the hatch.


This is quick, easy, and fun to do, and adds a great deal of interest to the model.

There are a bunch of raised greebles all over the forward end of the fuselage. We'll get to work on those next. If you're interested in learning more about greebles (or greeblies), here are two great Adam Savage videos that touch on the concept:





James

 

[GuyNoir]

I'd seen the Adam Savage bit on the Universal Greeble before. A quick scan of Thingiverse found it right away:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2053541

 

[John_lennon]

To some, a greeble is an invisible critter only seen by cats. Ever watched your cat intently staring at something you can't see? It's a greeble!

It's Spirits definitely spirits your greebles are. You like that how I threw that Yoda part in there. Lol

 

[John_lennon]

@James Duffy you're a true genius this model work up is a great read & you do a lot of amazing work. I'm just starting out in building my 1st kit with my grandson when I see him which isn't often turning an easy buil into a month by month project. But I don't want to do all the work without him so he feels left out. I'm a Star Wars fan and I'm not surprised that Estes came out with their models. Although I think you're highly detailed rework of the kit is mind blowing and astonishing. I hope one day to be able to scoop up an X wing kit. Just for my love of the movies. I remember going as a kid with my Dad to the 1st Star wars movie I was very young but a memory engrained upon my mind nonetheless. It was probably my 1st ever movie experience and I'm sure my Dad was left to be the babysitter that day, thinking how do I keep these kids excited and not screaming for a few hours. So he brought us to the movies, Thanks to him and probably my older brother suggesting or even begging to go see the movie once he'd seen the trailer commercials on the TV. How long have you been building models a lot of what you're doing is foreign to me as well as processes or products used in your build. But you use these things to an accuracy like non ever witnessed by myself. I loved reading about your process in finding the most accurate model to work from. I'm following this till the end. Thanks again.

 

[James Duffy]

...you're a true genius this model work up is a great read & you do a lot of amazing work.

Thank you for the kind words, but I'm just one of many here doing cool stuff. I resolved recently to get some of my techniques out of my head, and share them either here, or via video. You can find a playlist of my technique videos here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMb0g2tgJlcSVE_niblHbwDD5Ckwek4On

Nothing that I do is especially hard. I've mentioned before that I do a whole bunch of simple things in a logical sequence. What that sequence is seems to be the secret sauce that comes with experience.

As for the most recent work on the X-Wing Fighter, the greebling of the fuselage has been completed, and here's the current state of play.

Left (port) side:


Right (starboard) side:


Upper surface:


Lower surface:


A quick count reveals that I have added 87 separate greeble details to the fuselage and about 200 separate panel lines. Next, the fuse will be carefully sanded to clean things up, then sprayed with Tamiya primer. We want to preserve as much of the detail as possible, and the Tamiya stuff is much, much thinner than the high-solids primers traditionally used in rocketry.

More later,
James

 

[neil_w]

Nothing that I do is especially hard. I've mentioned before that I do a whole bunch of simple things in a logical sequence. What that sequence is seems to be the secret sauce that comes with experience.

There's an important second ingredient: patience. If you're in a rush to get it done, or just don't feel like dealing with it anymore, the sequence won't save you. Gotta be willing to go as slowly as needed and spend the time.

 

[Stewman]

Patience, bah humbug! James, I started following this thread and continue to be amazed at your meticulous work. It's like a surgeon working a scalpel. Can't wait to see how this turns out. Me, I would be overjoyed just to get a really smooth finish on a balsa fin, LOL.

 

[James Duffy]

Progress on this project has paused for over a year due to other demands on my time. I'm the Event Director for the upcoming World Spacemodeling Championships, and that is a full-time-plus job. Once that is over, the X-Wing is my very first hobby project that will resume.

In the meantime a fascinating eBay auction popped up recently. In the first post of this thread I noted that the Estes Maxi Brute X-wing kit is the preferred starting point for serious replicas of the studio scale models used during production of the original ST trilogy. This auction is for a remarkably well-done example of one of these, using the Estes Maxi kit as a basis.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/234693877504
The fuselage is from the kit, but resin cast parts pulled from molds taken from original ILM parts were used extensively. It appears that some of the Estes kit parts were used for the laser cannons on the wingtips.

This auction page is likely to disappear soon, so check it out quickly!

James

 

[James Duffy]

The FAI World Championships for Space Models are over, and my life is my own again. Yay! You guys have no idea now I have dreamed of returning to this project over the past few years. It has been sleeping securely and safely on a shelf in my studio closet.

Let's resume construction with the big turbine engines. The kit uses short sections of BT-60 tubing to represent these elements, along with styrene front and back rings. There is also an embossed paper bit that is designed to provide some surface detail. It's, well....okay, I guess. They've been a bit ravaged by 45ish years of storage.

These are not going on my model. They will make good guides for more detailed new parts, although we'll also be consulting the Bandai model and photos of the original filming miniatures.

The turbines were designed to be hollow assemblies. I've decided to place styrene bulkheads on the interior faces of the forward and rear detail parts, and even added some additional greebling to the aft bulkhead. Handling sticks fashioned from bamboo kebab skewers have been added to simplify the application of a high solids primer coat (Rustoleum auto primer, in this case).



We'll do several cycles of primer/sand/repeat until the spiral tube lines are gone.

More later,
James

 

[James Duffy]

The forward and aft end of the turbines feature corrugated circumferential features. This can be replicated by using simulated corrugated siding sheet styrene. The cool thing about this material is that this is probably exactly how the ILM model shop created the master for this part almost half a century ago. The version used here is Evergreen #4526 .040" siding, which comes in 6" x 12" sheets. Here's a view of a piece of scrap.

The pieces for our model were cut out almost three years ago. At the time I did a critical bit of pre-processing. In my experience styrene wrapped around a tubular shape will try to return to its original flat shape. To preemptively counteract that, I wrapped the cut parts around a section of BT-55 tubing slightly smaller than the BT-60 upon which they will be mounted. That was then baked in the oven for about 30 minutes at 175º, forming the parts to a curved shape. The parts were then stacked, a bit of tape wrapped around the outside, and stored for later use.

After the primer process is complete on the turbines we can attach these to the surface.

More later,
James

 

[lakeroadster]

Witchcraft I say.... witchcraft.

 

[James Duffy]

While we wait for the primer on the turbine bodies to cure we can begin developing a plan to detail those parts. Recall from an earlier thread that none of the filming miniatures really matched each other, as the modelmakers had not been commissioned to build anything like a scale model. There were no canonical drawings to work from, for instance, just concept art (you've probably seen the magnificent paintings from Ralph McQuarrie and Colin Cantwell). The orders were to work fast and cheap, and make George Lucas happy.

We can still make an educated guess at what the intent of the artists and builders might have been, as we have access to the films along with lots of photos of the models. There are also occasional opportunities to see ILM models up close, such as this X-Wing on display at the "Star Wars Docking Bay" attraction at Walt Disney World. Note that the details on the left and right upper turbines do not match. That's a unique feature of the Red 5 miniature that has been replicated here.



This isn't a filming miniature. Rather, it was intended expressly for public display, and is built to a much higher standard. Fun fact: the turbine assembly we're emulating right now was based on the third stage parts from an Airfix 1/144 scale Saturn V kit. Fast and cheap, remember?

With all of this in mind, the best single reference that I have available is the Bandai X-Wing model we've used previously. Working from that model I've developed a drawing of the size and arrangement of the details on the turbine assemblies, along with a list of appropriate Evergreen styrene bits we can use to create the details. That drawing is attached below. I'm also working on a drawing of the alternate arrangement used for the top right (starboard) turbine on Red Five. I have a theory about a potential link between that design and the paper wraps in the Estes Maxi kit.

More later,
James

 

[Mugs914]

Great stuff James, thanks!

 

[James Duffy]

In the previous post it was noted that the upper right (starboard) turbine for Red 5 (that's the X-Wing flown by Luke and Rey) is slightly different than the others. That may be by design, or simply an accident, possibly an oversight, or even a product of the rushed production schedule back in the 1976-77 push to release. At any rate, the general arrangement of this unique turbine seems to have been partially replicated in the paper wrap parts included in the Maxi Brute kit. In general, the Estes wrap parts have more in common with the arrangement of the unique starboard upper turbine than the standard turbines that show up elsewhere.

We know from the October '77 issue of Model Rocket News that a crew from Estes shot over 500 photos of the filming miniatures in preparation for the spring release of their Star Wars kit line. My gut feel is that the turbine wraps were based on the unique turbine design, with additional detail added to fill in white space on the embossing tool, plus some additional details from the other turbines. Further, the experts over on The RPF are convinced that the Estes crew left California with a number of parts in hand, either reject parts or broken pyro model bits. What if one of those bits was a cast resin upper right turbine? The mind reels...

So, in the spirit of completeness I've drawn up my best interpretation of the upper right turbine surface detail arrangement, attached below as a PDF. If you have a Maxi Brute kit handy, you'll note the similarities between your parts and this drawing.

More later,
James

 

[James Duffy]

The turbines are in the middle of the prime/sand/repeat process, which will go on for at least another day. In the meantime we can dig our some of the plastic parts and begin prepping them.

Recall for earlier posts where we mentioned the rushed creating timeline of this kit back in '77-'78. Add on top of the the fact that Estes kits of the era were not renowned for the precision of their plastic molding. These weren't Tamigawa quality parts. A quick inspection of the injection molded shows mold lines, ejector pin marks, and plenty of flash. They'll be easy to bring into line, though, as these shots of the laser cannon tips will show. It is worth noting that these are exactly the same parts Estes used in the NCR X-Wing that I built a quarter century ago.


This is how the cannons appear on the sprue. Note the thick bits at the tips of the "U" shaped element, and the monster ejector pin mark at the base of the U.


The thickness can be corrected by simply polishing the part down with sanding sticks and jewelers files. The ejector pin will be filled with a single drop of medium CA glue, followed by a drop of accelerator (note the needle applicator for the accelerator).



After that cures for a few seconds we can sand the spot down, then recontour everything with a flat jewelers file. Et voila, the ejector mark is gone!

There is also an small ejector pin mark near the forward tip of the laser cannon probe that is not nearly as deep, and can easily be taken care of with sanding sticks.



It's tough to see in the photo, but there are molding irregularities at the point where the laser cannon probe emerges from the "U" shaped bit. This is probably due to insufficient molding pressure leading to a problem called a "short shot." Essentially the plastic did not flow well at that point of the mold cavity, and created an unsightly void. We can fix that by applying some plastic filler, then sanding and polishing the repair. More on that in a future post.

All of the remaining laser cannon parts have been sanded and readied as an academic/skills exercise, as we probably won't be using them.

James

 

[Hobie1dog]

lots of fragile pieces

 

[James Duffy]

Here's a pretty significant update, plus an important revision to a post from a few days ago.

We'll start with the correction. The drawings I shared a few days ago for the primary and alternate turbine surface details contained a major error, specifically of the "measure twice, draw once" variety. The corrected versions are attached below.

Next, the priming of the turbine bodies is now complete, and the assemblies have been sanded through 1200 grit.



Next, the alignment guide contained in the kit is used to define the edges of the corrugated bits.



We next use tape to define the positions of the forward and aft corrugations, then attach those details with medium CA.



Here's the lineup of the turbine assemblies at this point. Next task will be to cut and attach the remainder of the details.



More later,
James

 

[James Duffy]

Progress! Sweet, sweet progress!

A couple of days ago I cut out several of the turbine surface details from .010" thick styrene sheet, and attached them to the parts with 3M double sided transfer film. Supremely pleased with myself, I went to bed happy. Upon rising the next day I was shocked to see that the edges were lifting up a bit. Crud.

So, what to do? Howzabout printing off of the details on a sheet of 8.5" x 11" sticker paper, cutting out the bits, and attaching those? Quick, off to Amazon to buy sticker paper! While I waited for the paper to arrive a new pattern sheet was created that could ride the lightning through the laser printer. (Attached below.)

The printed parts were cut from the adhesive/sticker paper with a fresh #11 blade, and the earlier turbine drawing was chopped up to create a positioning template, which we can tape to the turbine assembly. Little windows are used to position the parts in the correct places.





With the paper sticker parts pressed into place, we can remove the positioning guide. This can be reused as long as you don't tear it when you remove it (which I foolishly did, predictably).



Just for grins the turbine was placed atop a wing saddle for a quick sanity check.



This looks good, but ideally I'd like slightly thicker parts. I may poke around and see I I can find a printable vinyl that can be run through the laser printer.

More later,
James