The Republic cruiser is the only craft in Star Wars - Episode I bearing any close resemblance to the look of the classic trilogy, and therefore a natural choice when deciding which ship to model next.

I made the construction plans based on the excellent reference pictures found on the Episode I Insider's Guide CD-ROM. I also found many good pictures on the Internet showing a lot of details and alternate angles.

The construction of this ship is fairly simple when it comes to the basic structure. There is an acrylic tube running through most of its length, and everything is sort of added to that tube.

The barrel shaped front section of the ship is built of styrene and pieces of urethane foam. I turned a PVC disc on my lathe to fit on the front end of the acrylic tube. The front section was then mounted to this disc.

The mid section of the ship was then built around the acrylic tube. I first made styrene ribs to support the shape of the outer hull and glued these to the tube. The styrene hull was then added to the ribs. The hull had to be covered with surface panels. I cut the main hull plates from .5 millimeter thick styrene sheets. When I had the main plates ready, I scribed fine panel lines in them with the blade of my x-acto knife. This made the surface of the plates a more dimensional and sharp.

I then started building the bridge-section. To ease the handling of the model under construction I decided not to fasten this section to the model at this point, so I built it as a separate piece that fit exactly onto the front barrel and the mid section. I added a sketchy cockpit interior to give more depth to the ship. The cockpit details were made from battleship parts and styrene rods.

I covered the bridge section and the front barrel with hull panels the same way as I did with the mid section. The curved hull panels on the barrel section were made by heating a sheet of styrene over a propane burner and pressing it over the barrel. I scribed some additional panel lines here as well.

The sides along the mid section were now ready to be covered with details. This was the fun part - I just went crazy with kitbashed parts from battleships, tanks, trucks and cars. It was important to mimic the look of the original. I never bother to find the exact same parts as they used to make the original, so I took great care with what I used. I am very fond of using styrene rods and profiles to connect clusters of detail. It makes everything seem more functional.

The large area between the mid section and the engines consists of some horizontal "wings" and a huge array of antennas. I made the wings from 2mm thick styrene and mounted them on brass rods protruding from the acrylic tube. Here I made a big mistake as I used cyanacrylate glue (superglue) to fasten the wings to the acrylic rod. The acrylic rod was affected by the glue and actually cracked down the middle. Left with a model in two unexpected halves, I had to turn and insert a block of PVC to strengthen the weak point. I glued the halves back together with epoxy resin.

Happy to see that the model was now repaired, I could start working on the antenna array. This section also had to be made as a separate piece so that I could later work on the underside of the model without destroying the antennas. The base for the array was quite a challenge since it has so many angles and levels. I made it from styrene (surprise) and then I detailed it as described earlier. The antenna dishes were vacuumformed. The largest one I actually formed in three layers, using the middle layer as the main dish and the two other layers for smaller details and surface panels.

Having completed the antenna array I could now focus on finishing the bottom half of the ship. This area was not too well documented in the pictures I had acquired, so I had to figure things out as I went along with the construction. This is actually not a bad way to work, since many solutions present themselves once things start taking shape.

The engines were another challenge. Since my lathe is way too small for the task of turning the round parts needed, I had to approach the problem in a more clever way. It is incredible what you can do without advance and expensive equipment at hand. I decided to actually laminate the parts in styrene (see the article on how to make round shapes). This proved to work out quite to my satisfaction. I laminated both the front and the rear of the engines. Once the large front section was laminated and sanded smooth, I vacuumformed a 2mm shell on top of it. From this shell I cut the raised panels and coverings.

Now I had a perfect set of engine parts, but I needed three sets. The next thing to do was make silicon molds from these parts and cast the copies I needed. This technique will be described in depth in another article under the Modeling Techniques section very soon.

With the front and end sections of the engines molded and reproduced in resin I could focus on constructing the rest of the thruster section. I decided to build it all in styrene. First I had to make the engine barrels. I made these with slices for the connecting bridges (the double decks between the three barrels). I made sure the cast parts had a tight fit with the barrel on each side.

After each section was finished it was fitted to the rest of the ship. The front resin parts were glued to the “wings” and the center tube in perfect alignment. I could not glue the rest of the engine section to the model until the whole section was finished and the barrels glued together with the double connecting bridges, or the construction would not come together properly.

With the whole engine section in place I had to detail the inside of the connecting bridges. This had to be done after the bridges were joined to the barrels, or they would be too thick to get through the slices. I made the details on sheets of styrene. I first scribed panel lines in the sheets and then I added tubes and surface details. I then glued the finished pieces to the inside of the bridges. The pieces had a tight fit to the rest of the construction.

The topside of the connecting bridges was paneled in the same fashion as the rest of the ship. The reinforcing details where the bridges meet the outer engines was made from 0,5 mm styrene. I could have made one prototype and reproduced it in a silicone mold, but I had ran out of silicone and found it silly to buy another kilo just for a small piece like this. I ended up scratch-building them all.

The fins inside the exhaust ports were also made from styrene. I cut the basic shape from 2 mm sheets and filed them thinner towards the edges. I also scribed some thin lines in the parts before I assembled them. The engines internal details were not shown on the original studio-model so I had to come up with my own stuff.

With the exhaust fins assembled and fitted to the internal details of the engines I definitely got a good feeling about the progress.

There are ten breaking thrusters along the belly of the ship and two in front. These were all scratchbuilt from styrene. I used thin strips from Evergreen to make the edges around the thrusters and a very thin drill bit to drill the jet holes. The thrusters were airbrushed in Tamyia gunmetal and washed with a mixture of dark oils and turpentine.

As far as I could tell the model was now finished and ready for the base color. I went over the whole ship to make sure everything was in place and undamaged before I started spraying it.

I mixed the color from Tamyia flat red, hull red, yellow, medium blue and some other colors in small amounts. It all came out quite well I think, regarding the fact that the color will change when you start to work with it and when the washes are applied at the end.

The next thing I did was to mask out the white areas. It is important on a ship like this to paint all the primary colors and tones before you start weathering the model. I used Tamyia masking tape and carefully cut it to shape around the curved sections with my X-acto knife without scratching the red basecoat too much.

With the primary colors in place I could now start the fun process of weathering the ship. I mixed all kinds of tones from the red base color. Some shades towards the orange / yellow side, others toward the green or bluish. Almost every panel had to be masked out and shaded or peeled. For the peeling effect I first painted the color I wanted to show beneath the red. I then dabbled liquid rubber (Maskol from Humbrol) and sprayed the whole panel with another tone or color. I often did this in several layers to mimic heavy peeling or burn marks.

I first did a weathering sweep over the whole ship before I assessed the result. I then made another sweep to adjust panels where I felt it was necessary. Some panels had to be subtler while other panels had to be greased up some more. For the burn marks I mixed thin washes of Tamyia black or dark brown, which were airbrushed on in layers.

After I had completed my tour of rampage around the ship I applied several thin washes of turpentine and oil colors like burnt umber, burnt sienna and black. The washes darken the base color slightly every time you apply another layer. It runs into every panel line and detail making them darker, more marked and a lot clearer.

After the washes had dried I drybrushed the model with light oil colors, mostly white. This is done by putting a small amount of oil color on a sheet of paper or cardboard, letting the fibers soak up some of the oil. You then take a stiff and semi-wide brush with the hairs cut very short. Apply very small amounts of oil color to the brush, wipe it off until there is almost nothing left and start brushing lightly over the raised details on the model. The light paint will build up on every raised part while the dark washes remain in the deeper details, bringing it to life. Be careful not to start too heavily with washes and drybrushing. Do it in several turns and in light tones.