In my last entry ages ago, I mentioned realizing that the section of the Death Star "basement" that doubled as the bottom of the chasm Luke and Leia swing across may serve another purpose in recreating all the Death Star scenes from episodes IV and VI. Check these out:
Yep, the angle's different, but this spot serves nicely as the walkway Chewie and the guys walk along to get to the elevator that takes them to the detention center to rescue the princess. Factor in that an elevator will eventually go in the hole in the center and you're good to go.
I also realized that I hadn't shown you the sticker sheet that comes with the set. It's pretty small, given the scale of things:
I've already used a couple as mentioned last time, but you get the idea.
Anyway, day six was all about adding the first floor to the Death Star--the first one to really feature "stuff." Because the chasm is included on this level, the floor is divided up into three section, as the fourth quarter is left open.
First up is the section that will ultimately become a cargo bay:
Lego uses an interesting layered approach to give the floors added stability. Panels for the "ceiling" are connected by a series of "support" pieces, and then the "floor" panels over that:
Here's the finished section, with a mini-figure for scale:
It's pretty expansive for 1/4th of the level, yes? Here it is attached to the "foundation:"
Next up is the second section. Keeping things interesting, each section is slightly different even before adding surface details. Where section one was all grey, section 2 is half grey, half black:
This is because this section serves two different areas. The grey part is the armory, and the black part is one half of the trash compactor. Here it is with the surface details added:
The round disk will be the base of a turbolaser. It may be hard to see in the picture, but some of the smooth pieces on the black area are transparent. I was wondering why briefly, but then I remembered that the floor of the trash compactor was covered in water! Here it is attached:
And here's another angle showing a better view of the surface details in the cargo bay, which I forgot to show earlier:
Finally we have section three, which again, while identical in structural design is different in color, and this one's all black:
This section houses the other half of the trash compactor and the tractor beam chamber. Since this Death Star doesn't really structurally have room for two bottomless chasms, the tractor beam pod will be suspended over a black floor, creating the illusion that old Ben Kenobi could at any moment plunge to his death while stormtroopers chat cluelessly about that new T-16.
At this point my camera died, so these last pictures of all three floor sections attached were taken much later to finish out this entry and allow me to finally proceed:
With that taken care of, we can now start building up the first level. This is where the fun really begins. Meanwhile, I leave you with a shot of the completed utility cart--while working on this stage, I finally found that one errant piece! :)
Steps: 21 of 193
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