H_Solo

Bricklinking the 10227 B-Wing Starfighter

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I was always very fond of this oddball Rebel Alliance starfighter... A very bold but also sleek and streamlined design.

The system scaled version, I bought last year, was nice but didn't quench my thirst... I knew, there was an UCS out there, but I read very bad reviews and a lot of rants about it... and the cockpit area wasn't really "good" to say the least...

I got an offer for a sealed set at 250 Euro shipped, which seemed decent, but I already had my mind set on doing some small and some major changes to the set, so the premium to get an original was imho wasted money!

Bricklinking!!! I kind of like Bricklink and even if its tiresome at times you can always get great stuff from a lot of nice people sharing the hobby or the business... my last project was the UCS Deathstar Hangar...

So I decided on getting the parts I needed which took about 3 months and I started looking for applicable mods, but there are only a handful... finally I found a great cockpit mod at fbtb that I wanted to integrate, and I made A LOT of smaller changes as I went along lengthening building time to about 2 full days.

After all I got all the parts plus spares, original instructions, canopy and stickers for around 175 Euro... I really like the result, and think its a great rendition of this classic trilogy ship.

See for yourself:

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What did I do?

- the cockpit was completely reworked to get the look and the size about right... I put in Ten-Nunb to have a pilot working there, even if he's not in scale...

- backside of the cockpit was worked on, some of the gaps were closed, the tan-colored parts were swapped for DBG

- the neck was streamlined and plated and I added greeblies

- the round parts in front of the engine, that are known to leave nasty gaps were closed with small technic pins and a clever plating design...

- the topsides of the wings were plated (one sloped tile is still missing, because one of my BL-orders was short one piece...)

I left the undersides without plating to keep the perfect shilouette of the wings intact... plating would make the too chubby, imho.

- I tweaked a lot of fine details with small greebling parts, making it more interesting to look at

- Used some old gray and old dark gray parts to give it that used-universe look

- I switched all colorful parts that would be visible in the finished model to gray, which makes it much more realisic... (I kept some of the peeking parts in tan in, because I think it fits nice to have some discoloration here and there...)

Edited by H_Solo

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The B-Wing doesn't get much love on EB, but I share your liking for what may be the weirdest starfighter of the original trilogy. Bricklinking UCS set is a great hobby if you like those sets, and you got it for a fair price compared to other sets. I think you modded it quite nicely, without going crazy like I did :classic:

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Nice! Some really well done additions there (I've got the UCS B-wing) and your version looks great :thumbup:

The great thing about bricklinking UCS is that you (well I) don't feel as much need to keep it accurate to the TLG model. I'm looking forward to tweaking the Falcon, which will be my first bricklinked UCS. I think my originals will stay true to instructions though :sweet:

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Thank you guys!

Bob, I didn't think you went too crazy with your B-Wing... I was really admiring your pictures on my way, but decided it was just too much effort for me to go all the way and rather took some shortcuts...

Soul, I feel exactly the same... Original sets should stay original (at least my UCS-sets do... I do take some liberties with "normal" sets, though) nice to read someone who can relate to this thought.

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I think you did a great job with the B-Wing. I've always loved this fighter, and I was one of the people who jumped on this set when it was 50% off.

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Well done, H_Solo, the cockpit is a vast improvement on the original :thumbup: I know that I've said it before, but I really don't understand why TLG made such an awful job of designing it compared to the rest of the set. I purchased my set when it was on sale, shortly before it was finally discontinued and in hindsight it was a good deal.

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I knew nothing about this set, but when it went on sale, I bought it. Still sealed. I'm torn on whether to build it or not. I knew nothing about the actual ship really, but I have been seeing these modifications to it and it looks a lot better than the official version. Maybe one day I'll get around to modding it to match some of these.

You did a great job with it. I like the shaping of the cockpit for sure.

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I also really really moved this set. I think that the ship itself so so unique. I also think that the Lego version is unique in that, to my knowledge, it is the only UCS set to not really do that well commercially (relatively speaking). I heard from an unnamed source that the poor sales were the reason for the very quick run and 50% off sale. Which all might sound like common sense but it is nice to have it verified. I love the modifications you did... :sweet: :sweet: :thumbup: :thumbup:...... and I am always a proponent of doing things on the cheap. I also built the set, and added my own modifications. Major modifications to the wings..... IMO TLG can't have a UCS ship and show the underside of the plates for the wings. :sceptic: :sceptic: :thumbdown: :thumbdown:

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IMO TLG can't have a UCS ship and show the underside of the plates for the wings. :sceptic: :sceptic: :thumbdown: :thumbdown:

Having tubes outside is something very normal for any part of a build that need some stiffness and that is not very thick.

"Smoothing" the underside of a wing requires some SNOT technique which is not very stable, and it adds an extra thickness which not welcome at all.

There are plenty of example where the underside (or the inner side) is not covered, and it doesn't detract the final result. Look at the wings of 10215, 7181, 7191, 10240, 10175, 10129, 75060, 75095, bottom of 10212 and 10179. Same for the models I do. The wings of my UCS A-Wing aren't covered on the inner side, and that's fine.

This is Lego. When you build something where the outside is also used to structure the build, you have studs on the top, and tubes on the bottom.

However, when the model has a structure inside, you can use some techniques to put the construction upside down and have some nice fairing elements on all the outside. 10227 is a good example. On the body, there are fairing elements in 6 directions to give a nice result. 10019 is very interesting as well.

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On the contrary, 10221 is the perfect example of a poor looking model. It is huge, has a huge structure, and the bottom is poorly stacked like it where a boring 250 part model... Pictures speak for themself...

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"Smoothing" the underside of a wing requires some SNOT technique which is not very stable, and it adds an extra thickness which not welcome at all.

I agree that one more layer of plate looks a bit off. On my model I managed to keep the 5 plates thickness, but at the cost of some strength in the wing structure, though my wings aren't exactly built exactly like TLG's.

On the contrary, 10221 is the perfect example of a poor looking model. It is huge, has a huge structure, and the bottom is poorly stacked like it where a boring 250 part model... Pictures speak for themself...

And that's why we create our own UCS models :sweet:

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Nice mods, Solo.

Could you do a breakdown of your cockpit mods, please?

I changed mine to a system scale falcon-like design, but I like yours much better!

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Thank you regimus,

I fear I didnt take any pictures of the built... Tinkered around two days with the cockpit using the mentioned pictures from fbtb.

I also dread taking it appart right now, as it is rather fragile, but I could take some more photos of it in time. The top layer can be guessed really easy but the lower layers are more of a hit and miss, I tried several solutions but always ended up with too much layers and a too thick cockpit not maintainig the bullet-shape of it.

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