X Wing: Scratch building a Death Star Turret

Imperial Lacky: We count thirty Rebel ships, Lord Vader. But they're so
small they're evading our turbo-lasers!

FFG's X Wing game was an instant hit around here. However with the initial release including only 4 ships I wanted a little more. I had visions of X Wings dodging and shooting Death Star Turrets in my head,  I'd even found a couple of other sites and posts where people had built Death Star Turbolaser Turrets for use in game.
however none of the ones I saw really did the original tower justiceso I thought I would try building my own from scratch.

Now  I will confess right now, I am not a expert modeler but I can fake it if I need to.

First off I would need to gather some reference material of what I wanted to build. First stop was my Star Wars Blu-Ray.

Blu-ray screen of the filming model

another helpful image showing scale.

While the turret is basically a big block it does have  a slight taper to it so using my research I started playing with angles.

my first sad, sad attempts to find the right angles for the tower.

I played with paper until I was happy with it. Basically I held my paper up to the TV screen and overlaid it on the Blu-Ray screen until the angles matched. Sure, it's not scientific but hey, it's close enough to my eye on the big screen of my TV it should be close enough in the tabletop.

My first real decision was what size to make it relative to the 1/260 scale FFG ships.

I built a rough mock up of a large and small turret to see what I liked against a FFG ship.

I took a picture and sent it around to friends, some liked the big tower, others liked the small one, some wanted something in between.  Thanks guys!!!

So, using some sheet styrene I build my third tower, and this one was just right....

A Scratch Builders best friend

Template taped to the sheet styrene

Papa, Momma, and baby Towers

I assembled the basic shapes by cutting out my template while taped to the styrene sheet. A brand new X-acto knife blade and a good metal ruler are crucial for getting straight cuts.
 I then assembled it with masking tape and liquid cement.

Apple juice lid to the rescue!

When I was done I had the tower and turret basically assembled.

Next I needed the detail of the turret. There is a ribbed track that pivots the guns in the turret. I didn't relish building it from scratch so I looked around... to what I was drinking. My Applejuice lid had the perfect texture!

Sawing and cutting finally gave me two correctly shaped pieces...




now that I had the basic shape built up I needed to add panel lines. In Star Wars everything is covered in panel lines and some can be pretty crazy. Fortunately the Death Star Turret has a pretty basic pattern. I simplified it a little to match my meager skills and set to work.

Before I could add the panel lines I needed to clean up my construction with some GW Liquid greenstuff. I could have also used Squadron green putty for the same effect.

I puttied the seems and let dry, then sanded with the finest grit sand paper I had in the house.

for the actual panel lines I used Dymo tape (the stuff you use to make labels) to give me a nice sharp edge and then used a old electrical tool to score the panel lines.


So now I had panel lines.







 The next step is probably the most fun... adding the grebbles.
Star Wars is famous for the worn look of their models. Most have an incredible amount of detail built into them.  I needed some of the same detail on the Turret to "Sell" the Star Wars look.

I cut up some thin styrene sheet and pulled out some photo etched brass sheets I had from a Naval Ship project.

Brass.... shiny!

I didn't want (and don't have the skill) to build an exact copy of the Filming model, especially at such a small scale so I took the "does it look cool approach" and just starting gluing things on.

The goal was to give the impression it matched the filming model while not worrying about matching each individual little detail.

Now that the turret was grebbled up a little it was time to add the last bit... the gun barrels!

I looked at plastic tank barrels and mechanical pencils but didn't find anything the right scale so I took the plunge and used brass rod.

I had a few different sizes, cut them up in a pattern that I though looked good and glued them together.

Nothing fancy!

I even put them on my dremmel and sanded the end cap a little to give it a little bell curve... but you have to look closely to see!

Yes, the barrels are pretty plain, but I can always revisit them with more detail if it ever starts to bug me!

One of the features I don't like about the "real" death Star Turrets are the gun shields, they just seem awkwardly placed especially if the barrels elevate too high. But I was already hip deep in this project and there was no stopping now!

building the gun shields

I basically just cut some styrene in the basic shape, glued some brass doo-dads (Yes that's a technical modelling term) and called it a day.

Barrels and gun shields added

Side view of the turret

The whole tower next to an FFG X Wing

If you made it through this post, first I applaud your patience! In the next post we will paint and weather this beast, maybe even mold it to make copies and then eventually use it in the game!

Stay Tuned!