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Revell’s 1/241 scale Corellian YT-1300 Freighter “Millennium Falcon”

This is going to be a quick photo journal of some aspects of my build of a Revell 1/241 Millennium Falcon build. I picked this kit up cheap on Amazon for less than £6. Please be aware that it is tiny at under 11cm long. But don’t let the size put you off.

Assembly was a snap

Assembly was childishly simple. There are maybe 16 parts to the whole kit. As already mentioned it is not a big kit and can even be put together without glue if you wish. It’s basically snap-fit.

However, I chose to use Tamiya Extra Thin Cement and some pressure to remove the slight panel gaps.

Primed and ready

Painting was a simple affair. I used Vallejo Surface Primer – Grey to apply a couple light coats from my Airbrush. I also decided to ditched the decals for the cockpit, and the top and bottom turret glass. I instead painted the frames by hand without masking the glass at all. 

Getting cocky

I wasn’t sure how best to do the Ion Engines and in the end decided to paint a gradient by hand. I’ve seen YouTubers like Miniac explain how to wet blend. I mean how hard can it be?

It turns out it’s harder than it looks, they just make it look and sound easy. So after an hour and a half of applying and overlaying paint and countless and restarts I was happy. I also had a blue mouth from licking the brush frequently – something i need to address in the future.

Far too cocky

The kit also came with a bunch of red decals for applying to specific panels. These looked wrong to my eye – just a bit bold and bright. I also thought, how hard can it be to neatly paint some raised panels. It turns out it was harder than it looks at this scale.

I also decided to compound the mess I was making by randomly painting some other panels in greys and browns to break up the uniformity a little. Again I free-handed this with sloppy results. 

All washed up

I was feeling a little disappointed at how this was going, but decided to press on anyway and get it done. This could just be one of those kits that serves as a learning experience. So with a quick couple of coats of gloss varnish I moved on.

Out came the only wash I have, a Vallejo Black Wash.

I applied this liberally hoping it would:

  • Pick out the panel lines to give greater detail and definition
  • Build up some grime up the model and knock back any shine
  • Level out the panel highlights.

Cleaned up nice

As I applied it and then removed it with a cue tip, the model started to come together. The Millennium Falcon was coming to life.

And done…

Some final pictures to enjoy of the finished build.

Wrapping up

Now I have a super cool star wars model that I can show off and that cost me very little. Go pick one up and give a sci-fi build like this a go.

If you’ve not done a sci-fi build before then you can’t really go wrong with this one. 

Next steps

I have a real want to do more sci-fi stuff. Maybe an other star wars kit, maybe something else. I have already picked out a Gundam kit to build.

More on that to come and in the mean time you can get updates on any progress my following me on Instagram.