Star Wars fans are the best; they’re determined, detailed, and always ready to take their fandom to the next level. James Benini was asked by a friend to make a life-size replica of Poe Dameron’s T-70 X-wing also known as Black One, featured in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Answering his friend’s call, Benini had just 5 months to create this fighter and to make it even more difficult, it had to be transportable and big enough to actually house an adult in the cockpit. These sort of challenges are nothing for Resistance fighters.
Benini told Makezine how he started detailing the huge project. To start he looked at a 1977 Kenner X-wing toy for measurements as well as a Revell model of the black X-wing. He determined that to fit a human occupant the final design had to be 23 times larger than the toy models he’d used for reference.
The interior was created much like an airplane, with hollow ribs, stringers and plywood forming the body. While X-wings look beautiful, the actual build of that design put a lot of strain on the wings. Benini solved the problem by attaching the wings at attach points, much like “plugging and appliance into a wall outlet.â€
The rest of the ship was built out using sonotubes, cardboard, fiberglass and Styrofoam, with the specialized weapons systems created from the same supplies plus PVC pipe, plastic drain pipe.
The impressive fighter took over 250 hours to create and it’s next stop is in 2017 at Star Wars Celebration Orlando. It will definitely be a photo opp not to be missed for Rebels attending the con.
Check out the gallery below for more process photos.
Would you want to fly your own life-size model X-wing? Let us know in the comments!
