It’s always exciting when a new box shows up at the door; new issues filled with goodness knows what to add to this mammoth project. This is a project that my seven-year-old daughter (Ember) and I have been doing for almost six months now. We’re always excited for the next batch to show up. As I looked down at the box in front of me, it looked rather larger than usual. In fact, the only time we’d been sent a box this size, was at the very start of all of this, when there was the oversized issue one. What was in this delivery to require such a big box? I mean, this project was already taking up a lot of space!
As I opened the box with Ember, I found the next five issues, a new organiser and the contents of the issues themselves. Ember’s eyes went wide seeing the latter, the parts in this delivery were huge! Massive plastic structures that were taking up most of the space. They looked cool and very space-like, but goodness knows what they were for! It wasn’t what either of us were expecting.
Although the huge structures were a surprise, the biggest surprise for me was the fresh organiser for the magazines themselves. We have only had one so far, but this has been more than enough. I had a quick glance at this one, even with the blueprint poster, it still had plenty of room for these issues and then some! Not that I’m complaining, I would much prefer to have the organiser early and have plenty of space for the upcoming issues rather than waiting and having issues loose about the place. Another set of stickers (in case you have lost the last lot), it sits perfectly against the last one. I’ve found the first invaluable for keeping everything tidy and I’m sure this one will be no different. The thickness of the card and the glossiness of the whole thing, makes this very durable and I’m sure it will last for years.
Onto the issues themselves, as I always do, I looked through the issues to work out how many I would do with Ember, if there was anything I’d need to do before I started building with my daughter and if there was anything Ember might struggle with that would need some prior thought on my part. While working my way back to the assembly instructions, I got completely distracted by one of the articles: Orbiting a planet. Ember and I haven’t spent too much time looking at the actual content, although it is one of the things we have both said we want to read. However, this article really caught my attention and was a fascinating read. I’m pretty sure I’m going to look at orbiting ships in the movies a bit differently from now on!
This issue is all about carrying on with the corridor. While it seems very a straightforward issue of clipping and glueing, the sheer number of pieces that need locating, clipping, filing and glueing into the correct place is rather large. I knew this would take Ember and me a whole sitting; one issue it was. I also made sure if there were any parts we didn’t need to do. The top of the corridor the magazine says that you can place together but not to glue, as it will make it easier for later issues. That was one part I wouldn’t do with Ember for two reasons. The first is that I didn’t want to assemble anything and then take it apart, it makes more sense to do this when it’s ready to be glued. The second reason is that in the hold, the beige parts of the falcon I added a light brown wash to, in order to emphasise the details on the model. With the same coloured parts, I wanted to do the same. Leaving the top of the corridor off would allow me to do this between issues.
So, we began the issue. When Ember saw it she already knew what roles we would take. She wanted to do the clipping and the filing; she wanted me to do the glueing. I like that we are now having our own assigned tasks (obviously assigned by Ember herself!). It was straightforward as this was the entirety of the issue. What I really liked with the sprue this time round, was that the different parts came numbered. Previously, there have been sprues where we’ve had to be super careful as they weren’t numbered and instead had to refer to the magazine itself. The only number we had to take a bit of care with was number six. It looks at a glance like number eight and Ember almost cut part nine. Other than this, it all went rather smoothly. I had wondered last issue why it had said not to glue the rings into place. I still had them attached in this issue, but with no glue, I was able to move them slightly out of the way, so it was easier to glue the cushions in. Also, when we tried very slightly to put the top of the corridor on, it was obvious that there is going to be a lot of lining of different parts up. Having them glued into place would really hamper this.
With the parts for this issue finished, we placed the top ever so slightly on to see what it looked like. The fanboy in me took a little leap, it looks great. It should only be a corridor, but it is featured more in the films than you might realise. I could hear the TIE fighters streaking past and Threepio getting knocked by the blasts: perfection! I’m not quite sure why we need to leave the top off, but from a painting aspect I am really happy about this. I am going to be able to apply a wash once all the glue is dried and just give the cushions a bit of a weathered look. From a building point of view, this was extremely simple and there’s a part of me that wishes we’d done two issues. Ember likes clipping and filing but her real passion in this project is affixing things with screws, which even though there are some in the issue, there’s none to be done in the construction. Even so, to see the corridor come to life so quickly, after the long construction of the hold, is very much welcome.
