Millennium Falcon Build Journal No. 09: Issues 29-32

The Arrival

This month’s box arrived in perfect condition a few days before Christmas. The only damage was on one of the assembly jig pieces, which isn’t a big deal.

The assembly jig is a temporary construct that will be thrown away in the end, and the damage was not severe enough to compromise the part’s function.

With the final two pieces, I can finish the assembly jig and store the hull frame on it instead of in my closet. That solves one storage problem, but it brings up a new one.

Since this month’s parts are mostly just assembling the hull frame, now is a good time to focus on storage solutions that I’ve been either neglecting to mention or are brand-new.

Storage Solutions

Before the completion of the assembly jig, I stored the lower hull frame inside my closet. It hung from a modified clothes hanger that was used to store the Jack Skellington that I built last year. The hull was carefully sandwiched between clothes that I rarely wear, ensuring that the hull plates stay on (they’re not yet screwed to the frame), and that the whole assembly doesn’t get jostled and damaged.

Now that the assembly jig is finished, the hull needed to be stored flat. The assembly instructions say to use a stiff board measuring 24-inches by 32-inches, but a lot of that space is wasted since the assembly jig easily fits on a 24”x24” board. Granted, the ship’s mandibles will hang over, but they’ll be supported by the assembly jig.

The bigger problem is that there will eventually be two assembly jigs (upper and lower hulls) that will need to be stored in the future, and I don’t have the storage space for that. To solve my problem, I built a custom work table/storage area with some lumber from Home Depot. I’m no carpenter, but I was able to create a sturdy 3-shelf table in a single afternoon.

The top two shelves are designed for the two hull assemblies, and can be removed for working in a more convenient area. Underneath the top shelf is a storage area for model parts, tools, and supplies. The bottom shelf is fixed and is used for storing miscellaneous items such as my airbrush compressor.

The table has caster wheels on the bottom for “easily” shifting the whole out of the way if needed. Unfortunately, I cheaped out and bought small casters that couldn’t handle the weight, and do not swivel. I’ll have to replace those at a later time.

One thing that I have been struggling with is how to store the magazines. I don’t like the binder that comes with the model, and the magazine holders that I was trying before became a nuisance. Ultimately, I bought a jumbo magazine holder (pictured differently) that will easily hold fifty magazines. I found that I prefer to look at one magazine at a time, and the magazine holder lets me quickly find the magazine that I want. A simple solution to a simple problem.

I finally got tired of my poor, battered pill box and bought a new one with double the storage. One side is for screws, and the other side is for miscellaneous small parts and bits.

Assembling

The assembly instructions say to use double-sided tape stick the jig to the board, but it didn’t work well for me. Instead, I used painter’s tape around the perimeter to hold it firmly in place.

As I mentioned earlier, there wasn’t anything to do this month except to complete the assembly jig and attach more of the lower hull frame. One of the major parts is the center ring which finally adds some much-needed stability to the metal frame.

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