In this episode of Quick-ish fix I’m going to fix the broken landing gear feet that I magnetized for my Finemolds Millennium Falcon. I had this on the wall of my cubicle at work, and some jerk decided to move it while I wasn’t there and broke two of the landing gear feet off. To be fair I had broken them myself a couple times. But that doesn’t excuse randos from messing with my shit.
- 1/144 scale Finemolds Millennium Falcon
- 1/144 scale Bandai Millennium Falcon
- Magnets I used for the feet
- Styrene Tubes
- Latex Masking Fluid
I’ve gotten tired of fixing the Falcon feet, it’s not the first time I’ve had to do this, so this time I’m going to make a small modification to it. I’m going to cut some styrene tube very thin and put the post of the foot/landing gear through it to give it extra support. The hardest part is getting lined up because there isn’t much support to keep it in the correct place.
If you are thinking about doing this, modify the landing gear feet before you attach them to the model kit. I didn’t do it this way and broke a couple of them in the process. One other thing, embedding magnets into the feet is not enough alone, it will stick to metal but it will slide down to the floor pretty rapidly. I applied latex masking fluid and let it dry to give the feet some extra stick. It’s enough to keep it in place, but if you have it in a place where it will be vibrated often, you can expect it will fall. It’s best placed somewhere that doesn’t get much vibration (so not on your refrigerator). Another option would be to get a smaller Millennium Falcon model to magnetize and a different size magnet, but you’d have to play around with the kit and the magnet sizes to find a good match.
