Star Wars Millennium Falcon [WIP - Heat Exhaust Vents on the rear section of the Upper Hull at 1/144 scale]

Continuing a long neglected project is turning out to be more difficult than I had first anticipated. It had gotten off to a good enough restart with the base-coating, panel lining and decal application on both the Upper and Bottom Hulls. Then the issues started trickling in: mixed up unlabeled parts that had been removed from the sprue ages ago; a horrifying realization I had glued shut an armor panel providing access to the LED power unit thus removing the lighted-engines-display-option; frustration at having also glued away the landing-gear-display-option leaving me with just the Millennium Falcon flying-with-its-engines-powered-down-display-option; etc, etc, etc.      

Bandai Star Wars 1/144 scale Millennium Falcon Work-in-Progress: Heat Exhaust Vents

So until I can sort out which-part-belongs-where based on the only display option I have left to me, I did the next best thing. This involved working on clearly defined parts that could be attached to an existing section that had largely been completed i.e. the six Heat Exhaust Vents on the Millennium Falcon Upper Hull. Unlike the Perfect Grade 1/72 scale Millennium Falcon kit which had photo-etched Heat Exhaust Vents, the 1/144 scale kit I'm working with provided only plastic ones. Despite this, one can still achieve a high level of realism. Clearly molded details on the plastic pieces help; coupled with an application of metallic paint on black primer and topped off with a black wash. 

Plastic molded pieces of the Heat Exhaust Vents

Heat Exhaust Vents primed with Mr.Hobby Mr.Finishing Surfacer 1500 Black

Gaia Color No.020 Gun Metal Metallic was then airbrushed onto the black primer

Mr.Weathering Color Multi Black was later applied to enhance vent details as well as reduce metallic shine

With the fit of the Heat Exhaust Vents onto the exposed Hyperdrive Engines being rather loose, I chose to utilize the adhesive properties of Blu Tack rather than glue the vents onto the engines. The finality of the latter wasn't an attractive option to me. Instead I preferred to retain the possibility of having exposed engines for future display options. After attaching the vents onto the engines using Blu Tack, I proceeded to do some weathering to showcase exhaust stains trailing from the vents.     

Millennium Falcon Upper Hull with the exposed Hyperdrive Engines before the Heat Exhaust Vents were attached

Fully painted Heat Exhaust Vents attached over the Hyperdrive Engines, and exhaust stain weathering completed

Millennium Falcon Heat Exhaust Vents on an Upper Hull placed against a black background

There's still a lot of work to do with regard to weathering the rest of the armor panels located on the Millennium Falcon's Upper Hull. But that's a task for another day. And in the current pandemic that is the global COVID-19 outbreak, I wish you safe days and remember to wash those hands!