HOW TO BUILD A PODRACER

THE WINGS

Honestly, when sketching this Podracer, I didn’t really spend a lot of time thinking about how I would actually build it.

Much like Padmés and Anakins marriage, it just became what it had to be. It was the Force, I suppose.
But now, I faced the challenge of bending styrene 180° around a fix radius to achieve the folded, wing-like shape of the engine extensions. This was something I’d never tried before and it scared the Sith out of me.

But first! Something fun.
In true Star Wars fashion, I’d drawn a few missing panels into the sketch to reveal some of the mechanical inner workings of the racer. So, I built four separate ‘trays’ that would later be glued to the hull from the inside, holding the detailing and providing structural integrity to the wings once folded.
As expected, this is where the fun began. I knew these would be difficult to paint later, so I did it while they were still accessible. As Palpatine used to say, “Masking them later is not a biggie”.

But there was no way around it.
That styrene had to be bent eventually.

The good news was that I could use my concept sketch as a cutting template for the ‘unfolded’ wings. This was very helpful and it was also useful in the surface paneling.
Some test bends revealed that what I had set out to do was entirely possible and less difficult than I thought. But it would require an inner support to define a smooth outside radius and prevent the styrene from bending weirdly out of shape. I made this support by cutting an acrylic tube in half lengthwise and gluing it to the centerline of the wing, right where the fold would be - a small adventure in itself.

To my surprise, bending the styrene worked as flawlessly as enlisting a 10-year-old to a deadly race.

It just needed a bit of force, patience, and heat from a hairdryer. By this point, I had put quite a bit of work into the wings already, and breaking them would have been really frustrating. But I didn’t and I must say - much like Anakin after Order 66, I was quite proud of myself.
The construction, though somewhat improvised and a bit messy in places, was sturdy enough to race for decades.
The rest was a walk in the park. Some styrene detailing all around, more kit bashed mechanical details, a super big cooling grille at the front, and these things were good to go.