Before you attempt this project, my advise to you would be, that you should give it a lot of thought and really do this 100% or else you might waste a lot of time and money. This project will not be cheap and it will steal a lot of you free time.

To start at the beginning, I am 35 years old, live in Denmark, Scandinavia and I love to build models. I have always been in love with any model related stuff, all from doll houses to Lego to models of landscapes shown in Museums and so on. The small miniatures have always fascinated me and I love to watch whatever extra material there is on a DVD-movie. In fact sometimes it is the first thing I watch before I see the film.

From my early teens it has been trucks and US-cars I build, but got tired of that in the early 90-ties. I took then, an 8-years break where I didn’t build anything and all my model related stuff were stored away, but when the Star Wars special edition was re-launched it more or less started again.

I don’t know why I choose the Millennium Falcon, but it might have been because I liked that old dirty spaceship right from the first time I saw it in Star Wars, which would be nearly 20 years ago when I was a Teenager, and it turned out to be my new passion. I cannot remember if I saw the 1st Star Wars movie in the cinema back in 1977, but I did see them on VHS in the mid ’80-ties.

Anyway, in the fall of 1999 I said to myself, “I want a model of the Millennium Falcon”. So my quest began. AND… I mean quest. Please do not attempt this model if you are not serious about it, it will steal a lot of you spare time and money.

I searched the Internet and found out, that there are a couple of model kits available on the market. The AMT/ERTL model company had made a model of the Falcon back in the early 80s, but it is off proportional wise and I do not like that model.

Eventually I found a webpage on which a person had analysed the ship from A-Z, as it was a real spacecraft. This was extremely interesting and I also learned that ILM, the model company that had build the original Star Wars filming miniature models for the movies, had build several versions of the MF. There is a 4 foot-, a 2 foot- and two other small versions. I had no idea this had been done.

On that website there was few links to a couple of modelling pages. Especially one caught my eye. A German guy called Tim Ketzer had build a replica of the MID (2 foot) size studio model, which totally blew my mind. That model was awesome. So after a lot of reading, looking at that Tim’s webpage again and again, I said to myself, “If Tim can build one, so can I”. But back then I had no idea what and how big a project I have gotten myself into.

Tim had also on his page mentioned several books that were nice to have as reference, so those were needed too. I bought them, and spend, again, lots of time studying pictures. Now I was more or less ready to start my blueprint.

So it all began….

The Blueprints:

The Blueprints was the first thing I needed, but those are not possible to get at all, so I had to make them myself. Once again I turned to the Internet, it is a very good source for searching reference, but there just is not enough available, but I read on Star Wars’ official website, that there were an exhibition in London called “The Art of Star Wars” which I simply had to visit. Another expenses, but I did not care and beside that, had I never been to London even when the city is only 1.5 hours away by airplane.

It was a thrill to see all the original models, drawings and costumes from my favourite movies. What a creativity these guys had had back then.

At the same I was amazed how detailed the model builders had made these models. But I believe it is therefore the movies worked so well, because of the details.

I took about 8 rolls of film of the MF and was more prepared than ever for the task ahead of me. I really wish I had a digital camera back then, because the quality of the pictures would have been better than a regular 200 ASA film. I was also depended of the cameras lens which meant that I could not get close enough to some of the details.

Luckily I had at this point found a very good friend in USA, who had a bunch of pictures on a CD, which he copied to me. This way a huge help and now I could start the huge job finding the model kit parts. More about this later.

When I made my blueprints, I think I looked at it a bit differently than most people do. I saw it as a geometric shape and worked on it for quite a while before I was happy with the shape. The Falcon is more or less a circle with triangles attached, it would seem pretty simple to make, but isn’t. This appealing shape might be the reason that many people love this ship. It is simple, have a nice shape and have a personality. I did not rush nor force this stage even when I was impatient and wanted to start working on the physical model. A good set of drawings makes a better model.

I also had in mind that back then there were most likely 10 people working on this model, so I put myself in their place. What would I have done if I were a model builder at ILM. I would probably have asked a Carpenter to build the basic shape, and the carpenter would probable have used simple measurements like 1 inch and not 1,23586 inch and so on.

They were in a hurry with this model, it was not on the budget and was build in the model builders free time.

Another thing was the size of the model, but first I didn’t concentrate on that, just the plain shape, but when it was time to upscale the drawings, I had to find some of the model parts used. I had to find some “key” parts.

When making the blueprint I used a lot of the invisible lines that cross each other, that helped me getting the shape right. I had some fix-points I more or less used all time. I used 2D programme on my computer for this task. It is very easy to draw circles, lines, make guideline or even import some pictures into, which can be used as guidelines or reference as well. Sometimes I draw directly, in another layer, on top of the picture.

I can only recommend this process, it is not so difficult after all.

Furthermore I found out that all the details on the MF came from regular model kits like ships, racecars and tanks. It’s a technique called “kit bashing” which basically means, “to cannibalise a regular model kit for cool parts”.

So to get this ship as accurate or close as the real ILM model is, I needed to find the exact same model kit parts that are used and located on the model. This proved to be a huge tack due to the fact, that the original filming model has never been properly documented and none of these kits have ever been put to a list. So all I could do was do some more research on the Internet and go thru a lot of different model galleries, to spot any possible kit parts. I visited also my local hobby shop and did open a lot of boxes, and whenever I was lucky, I bought the kit. I think the owner loved me, because I did spend a lot of money at his. Ebay has also been my major marketplace, some of these kits has not been available here in Denmark, therefore I had to find them elsewhere.