It had been a long time. While the magic of reviews might seem like there has been little pause between magazines, for my eight-year-old daughter – Ember – and I, it had been over two months since we had worked on this epic project from Fanhome. It is the first time in over a year and a half that we have had a problem with the deliveries of this project. While we had been mounting up the boxes arriving with different issues in, there have been a lot of key ones, missing, halting us in our tracks as we try to complete the Millennium Falcon. I know a lot of other subscribers have had the same problem with installment sixty-three, but I hadn’t quite realised just how many installments we had been missing. The ‘missing shipment’ had this magazine as well as sixty-six, seventy-one, seventy-five, I mean it is a mishmash. I can appreciate why subscribers would get frustrated while magazines stacked up and not actually be able to carry on with construction.
That said, I am very happy that it has arrived and the supply problems that Fanhome have been having at least seem to be getting sorted now. So, it was time to return to what Ember, and I began over eighteen months ago. Like I always do, I scout through the issue to see if there’s anything that we might struggle with or that I might need to do some prep work for. As Ember has begun to learn more and more skills with this project, the less and less I have needed to do. This instalment is no exception. Looking through it was carrying on with the upper frame as well as adding some detailing to the port recess. Not too much and I found myself reaching for the next magazine. It was here that I paused though. Two months is a long time to have away from a project. Although Ember and I had both commented in the last couple of weeks that we had missed doing the project, I also felt that we needed to find our feet with the project again. Instead of rushing into two installments, I thought one would be good to get a feel for it again and then start revving up to carry on with the rest.
Before we sat down to follow the instructions, I had a brief look through the magazine. I was not disappointed. There is an article on blasters that was fascinating but the thing that really caught my eye was at the start: the heavy corvette Imperialis. As a fan of – what is now known as – Legends, it’s great to see some focus on the ships that could be found there. It’s these little snippets that I really enjoy finding and takes me back to my teenage years.
With the slight distraction read, it was time to get back to our project. You might notice Ember is very dinosaur obsessed (don’t ask how the masking tape fits in) but having just gone to her first dinosaur convention, I thought it best to leave her as is! We started in the top frame. It was shocking to see what a couple of months break had done; we weren’t quite in our typical flow. Ember knew what she was doing but the ease at which I had been so impressed with in earlier issues was not quite there. We muddled through. The only part I was a bit frustrated with was the rib, which I would have probably added after both sets of complete frames were added.
Then it was onto the port recess. This was where things came a little undone for us. We started in our usual rhythm of Ember cutting and me gluing. Ember started to show the confidence that she usually had with the Falcon and rushed ahead of me. Before I knew it a part was in front of me that I didn’t recognise. Bewildered, I looked at the instructions to find that she’d snipped a part we didn’t need but also had snipped it in the wrong place. We definitely needed our flow back! We finished the pieces which surprisingly went absolutely fine. I went back to the damaged piece, praying it would be an easy fix. The glue did not work but thankfully, having just got into 3d printing, I had some five second UV resin. It worked like a charm. Perhaps a little too well as Ember loved setting it with the UV torch while I held the part… I’m not convinced she might not try that again as I could see her face light up using it!
With that the elusive issue sixty-three was complete. It is a shame that we had had such a delay, I could see the difference with Ember but also with me. It has been a regular activity in the house for eighteen months and the pause has definitely had an effect. I’m very pleased we only sat down to do one instalment this time around; we certainly needed to find our groove. With so many back issues being sent, at least I know now that we shouldn’t have any more interruptions. There are still thirty-seven issues to go, but for some reason, I feel I can see the end!
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