Hello again, folks! While the galaxy of Star Wars is full of iconic vehicles and characters and structures, a lot of the fun is filling in the spaces that we don’t see on screen. Sure, we’ve seen the shield generator on Hoth, but about all the other designs of shield generator? We’ve seen Corellian Corvettes, but what about small Mon Calamari ships?

In this first installment of our tutorial series, we’re going to discuss how to make some free structures from stuff that every model maker (and some people who don’t even build models) will have around the house. First things first, I’m going to show you some examples of the final products.

Are they as cool as some purpose-built terrain, like 3D-printed turrets and scaled miniature wargaming buildings? Nah, they’re not. But do they fit the purpose, and help to bulk out your battlefield? Yup! Are they ridiculously easy to make? Yup! And are they literally made from these:

…they certainly are!

Now, the first trick to making these is to start turning a critical eye towards the plastic you get rid of daily. If the plastic is very rubbery, or very thin, you probably can’t use it. Paint and glue will have trouble sticking to it. That means soda bottles and acrylic paint bottles are out, but many dry good containers (for candies, vitamins, pills, etc.) are good to use!

Be forewarned: if you have a small space you share with others and you start hording plastic bottles, you’re going to piss people off. It’s just the way it is. When my partner discovers my secret stash of empty pill bottles and soda bottle caps she may just leave me, so don’t tell her.

So, the things you will need:

Bottles and bottlecaps

Sandpaper or a file or a nail sanding file (the cardboard sort)

Superglue (I prefer Zap-a-gap)

Spray primer (you get to use the cap to become a building)

Random little scraps of plastic/sprue. In the biz, we call these ‘greebles’, and they’re used to detail. In mine I used some acrylic domes, pipeline pieces, and truss strips.

Regular pencil, brown or dark red colored pencil.

Something heavy that can potentially get a little glue on it

Optional: Sheet plastic or chipboard to base the buildings. These aren’t strictly necessary, but I like the look.

Okay, first things first. None of these plastics play well with superglue. It’s not that they give off extra gnarly fumes or anything, it’s just that they don’t want to stick. So, wherever you have a connection/glue point, rough up the surfaces with that sandpaper, add glue liberally, and apply pressure with your ‘something heavy’ for way longer than you think is necessary.

The tricks to successfully gluing: texture, pressure, and time. These three things plus a good glue work wonders for even the most stubborn materials. For sticking plastic to porous materials (wood, I’m looking at you), it sometimes help to pre-saturate with glue.

Start to play around with what you have at hand. Make sure that you sand off any visible words/logos, and then start stacking. Turning things upside down is a good start for sci-fi structures, and then going wide-narrow for a thin layer-wide is a classic technique for making sci-fi that reads like Star Wars. As in:

Fat cylinder, inset narrow layer (that reads as windows) fat cone with overhang. Same as:

Or as:

It’s all just cylinders of varying widths, stacked. Now, I didn’t do a particularly good job of varying those widths on my examples, but I made mine a decade back, so I wasn’t exactly the best at it. Cut me some slack, dudes!

So, once we’ve stacked our cylinders and glued as above, we can move on to detailing. Small scraps of plastic that can read as doors or hatches are great, and help add a sense of scale. Things like antenna and smokestacks and satellite dishes help give a sense of purpose. I used ping pong balls as fuel tanks, and a drywall anchor as a satellite dish. Remember to always sand/rough up before you glue!

If you’re going to base, what I would do next is cut your bases, and trace the building footprint onto them. I like to paint my buildings and bases separately nowadays, as it’s easier to get good contrast between the two, color wise. As you can tell, I didn’t do that with the ones in my photo. We’ll flock and paint bases after we do buildings, and we can cover that in another article, if y’all want.

So, prime the buildings with a cheap grey Rustoleum flat primer (make sure it’s not cold or humid where you spray, or paint can get weird). After it dries, apply a wash — a thinned out, dark paint that helps shade recesses. I like the Army Painter ones, personally, like Dark Tone & Strong Tone. You can make your own washes, but if you’re new to it, you’re better off using the store-bought stuff. As it dries, dab away any place it’s pooling thickly with a scrap of paper towel or a brush. (There are so many good articles out there about using washes by people more qualified than me. Google’s your friend on this one!) Once that’s all dry, I use pencils to add oil and rust streaks. There’s an absolutely ace guide to using this technique posted here by FFG forum user Barry Harker.

So! You should now have a pretty decent and very free selection of buildings to make your X-wing objectives, or at the least, you should know what items to start gathering up before you throw away. Give this a try, and let me know your feedback, and if you have any tips & tricks you learned while making them!