Blue Sloth

Cockpit Floor

Jedi Starfighter: Update 13

Ready to Soar

Jedi Starfighter: Update 12

Building the Wings

Jedi Starfighter: Update 11

You're now looking at work being completed in March 2008.

Rainy Day

Jedi Starfighter: Update 10

April 15, 2007

The thunderstorms chase us inside. Which is good because my hands were cracked and bleeding and my back was killing me - and it gave us a chance to run to the store and buy a huge roast and good bottle of wine. While the kids played in the bath, I took a crack at making real Risotto for the first time.

It came out pink because I had no white wine to add - only red! So it was the Red Sloth Risotto with onions and asparagus. Very delicious and colorful.

Building

Jedi Starfighter: Update 9

April 14, 2007

After two great soccer games and a delicious (if hastily devoured) breakfast at the Soda Shop, we bid Mama Sloth farewell and sent her on her grown-up adventure and set to working on our project in the backyard.

There's lots of measuring and cutting and hammering at this stage. In order to give the ship clean lines, I decided to create a visual border around the outside of the wings - think of using a black magic marker to outline a pen and ink drawing. It should give it a bold look.

However this has necessitated another set of structural spars, since the end of the planks which would have been secured at each end will now end six inches shorter than originally planned. Those boards need a place to be secured.

This also means that there is not a single 90 degree angle cut on the whole project, which means each board must be carefully measured and cut on both ends and then put together like a giant puzzle.

The kids love this of course.

To keep the ship from looking like it was assembled by Ewoks, I made Alex and Kelly a 'monkey board' for nailing in nails. You can see it in these pictures. Any errant hammer strokes fall on the 'monkey board' and don't leave those telltale half-moon marks on the wing.

Airframe

Jedi Starfighter: Update 8

April 13, 2007

Jedi Starfighter Day 9

I'm having more fun building this than I can describe. Kelly is old enough to really learn what's going on, and Alex is getting the basics of hammering, measuring, and so forth. They're all tuned into the notion that we've made a plan, and now we're executing it step by step.

As far as the actual ship itself, I'm very, very pleased with the structure rising up out of the ground. The lines are dead straight (not the easiest thing to do with treated lumber, particularly lumber that has been sitting outside getting wet, expanding and contracting under the sun and moon) and level, and it is positioned just high enough off the ground to appear to be floating over the surface.

We sank the last four posts for the wings on Monday - it took one more trip to the hardware store for 50 more pounds of concrete - and with 10 posts the thing is rock solid. We've been framing the wings for the last three days, finishing just before soccer practice.

Today we'll be designing the pattern of boards that will comprise the wing panels.

Progress

Jedi Starfighter: Update 7

April 12, 2007

Designing the Wing

Jedi Starfighter: Update 6

April 11, 2007

Site Prep Pictures

Jedi Starfighter: Update 5

April 2, 2007

Here are pictures from the first two days of building the Jedi Starfighter. I have a wonderful group of wookie helpers - enthusiastic, playful and marvelously inefficient.

There's alos a shot of froggie's pond being filled in (no more mosquitos this year!) and froggie himself. No telling what color he is beneath all the slime. I'm sure he will be quite happy in the large pond by the 15th hole - there are thousands of frogs there, so he should do just fine.

Lying in the dirt late yesterday, I was able to solve the last of my design questions, so I'm eager to get outside and get building today. The wookies are bouncing off the walls with anticipation.

We need to make a trip to a junk yard later this week to look for blaster cannons and other materiel to trick it out authentically.

The cockpit will be fun to design, but will probably take a couple of weeks to get right. I'm trying not to get too far ahead of myself, but as my mind solves one set of problems it immediately races off to the next.

Original Drawings

Jedi Starfighter: Update 4

It must be something about this time of year. The advent of Spring. Longer days. Sunshine and warm breezes. I have this powerful urge to trek out into the Sloth Forest and build things. To pull weeds, bag leaves, plant flowers, trim trees, repair stone walls. To make things right. To create things for my children.

I first drew plans for the Jedi Starfighter in late February of 2006, two years ago. I couldn't or didn't start work on the project that Spring. Last March I tackled the project but never finished. This year I am not only attacking the project, but taking it to new levels.

Today I finished the wings. And I didn't just finish them, I nailed them literally, figuratively and everything in between. They are gorgeous even if you don't particularly know what a Jedi Starfighter is. I nailed the rake of the wingspan and the angle that they droop off the fuselage. The dimensions are spot on and the indentations and cut-ins are exactly as seen in the movie.

But better than that, the wings glow in the soft sunlight that filters through the Sloth Forest in the late afternoon. The lines respect the environment surrounding the work and the ship seems to float just over the surface of a natural berm of soft moss.

I am pleased on many levels, but most of all it is so much fun to watch the kids climb all over it when we have finished for the day. They look at me with two questions in their eyes as the sun goes down: Are we done for today? Can we play on it?

Yes and yes.

Sinking the Landing Gear

Jedi Starfighter: Update 3

April 1, 2007

Today we dug holes in the tightly-packed Carolina red clay. Aside from being very hard work, digging holes in the Sloth Forest involves a bit of luck. Trying to avoid the myriad tangle of tree roots is difficult and something of an art.

The first hole went smoothly, but the second hole hit a vertical petrified root that defied all logic. We had to shift the entire project over a foot (and re-dig the first hole to maintain the angle I had chosen relative to the house). The rest of the holes had roots, but we were able to chop them up as we went along.

Since we needed a place to put the dirt that we were excavating, I decided today was the day to clean out froggie pond and relocate froggie and his mate once and for all. The stagnant leaf-clogged pond was fetid, rank, and ready for a new life as a hole filled with dirt.

Froggie made a break for it and took off through the forest. His mate was too lazy to move, and she was easy to move into a bucket for relocation to the golf course pond. How they survived at the bottom of that pond with no fresh oxygen, covered in an impenetrable layer of leaves, is beyond me.

There are many mysteries in the world.

We sank four posts into the forest and poured concrete to secure them in between rain showers. I continued to play with the angles of my wing mock-up in the driveway, and worked on the engineering problems in my mind, jabbering aloud to no one in particular. Kelly and I went back to the hardware store to pickup the second load of lumber (and a post-hole digger).

Tomorrow will be a fun day - we get to start framing the fuselage.

Braintstorm

Jedi Starfighter: Update 2

March 31, 2007

Design work, mental blueprints and brainstorming in Lowes hardware store. I like to mock up my ideas on the floor right there in the store. Lots of problems and design issues get solved with the material in my hands, with different choices stacked up and down the aisles around me.

We picked out materials as I worked through the problem of cantilevering two wings away from the cockpit. Lots of curious onlookers, and Kelly and Alex delighted in telling everyone what we were building.

The craft is quite a bit larger once you lay out the lumber and my original idea for a location in the Sloth Forest was not large enough. Quickly rethought my plan and found a great spot where the ship's landing gear would rest on relatively even ground and would be facing toward the Sloth Castle, but at a slight angle - offering a dynamic viewpoint from the patio and Great Room.

Got my Imperial clearances from the Emperor's chief legal counsel to proceed in this location and reassured her that the ship would not be too high profile. (I did not mention the 20-foot tall spider droid I want to create next.) All permits have been signed off, the wookies have landed and are feasting in the kitchen in preparation for tomorrow's superstructure work.

Time for a glass of wine, some basketball, and playtime with my beasties.

Return of the Jedi Starfighter

Jedi Starfighter: Update 1

Sometimes when you feel totally overwhelmed with pain and can't stop thinking about all the things you can't do it's best to go out and do something that seems totally impossible. About this time last year I started a project with the kids to build a full-scale 1:1 replica of a Jedi Starfighter.

Along the way I got sidetracked by the Sky Garden project and the Ghost Jail, both of which were completed and are used every day by the kids - they love the Ghost Jail. It was supposed to be a Ghost Town style jail, but I believe they really view it as a jail for ghosties. It matters not, they are in and out of there with the neighborhood kids a dozen times a day.

The Sky Garden had to be completed ASAP as I realized the bushes had grown too tall to plant tomatoes in our little side of the house garden - so I raised the garden above the bushes.

I finished those projects, then we went to the Bahamas for 17 days and when we got back summer was in full swing. Right about that time, I got the angel commission and began work on preliminary sketches.

The poor Jedi Starfighter has sat in the ship yards, unfinished for a year. I am having a blast resuming work on it. Nothing like tackling a project for the pure joy of it.