These models are remarkably tiny and detailed. The beauty of these things are the plastic quality is high as is the craftsmanship. The sprues are designed in such a way that after trimming, there is very little sanding or smoothing.
Every part is so tiny. But Bandai designed these kits with keyed parts. The keys prevent you from placing the wrong piece in the wrong place. One word of warning. If you dry fit some of the pieces, they are very, very hard to get apart. Just skip dry fitting.
I'm decades out of practice, so mistakes were made. I'll detail those last.
1 / 11
Laying out the first wing
2 / 11
Engine detail
3 / 11
The mess
4 / 11
Wing with one engine
5 / 11
Second engine
6 / 11
Wing 2 with both engines
7 / 11
Wings ready
8 / 11
The X in X-Wing
9 / 11
Close S-foils
10 / 11
Main body
11 / 11
Done!
A few details were hard to work on. Those two wings snap together on a pivoting hinge. It requires a lot of force on a tiny model. I found I couldn't do it with my hands and no tool seemed correct. I end up using a pencil sharpener by lining up the hole in the sharpener with the center of the hinge and pressing down hard.
Now, the mistake.
This image should have been a clue. That pivoting hinge runs down the back half of the main body. Somehow, I missed getting the hinge in the back hole which supports it. It felt right.
Yeah, no. As you can see the wings don't close. Nor do they open all the way. They have a springy feel to them and the right side engine naucell presses against the side of the body. Taking pictures at a jaunty angle hides the mistake, but I'm going to give this model another go.
(I might try the freezing technique to break the glue and refit it. We'll see.)
