TerranCmdr
Well-Known Member
I was in Harbor Freight a while back and came across these. I remembered someone had figured out this is the exact lamp used in Andor and at $5 a pop I decided to grab a few to make my own Star Wars-y lanterns. I ended up making 3, two as gifts for my buddies and one for myself. It was a fun process and relatively easy to accomplish! I've detailed some of the steps below.
Disassembling the lamps was relatively easy. Unscrew the bottom, remove the four screws, then one single long screw holds the top and bottom together. There's a captive nut at the top that can be accessed by unscrewing the very top piece. From there, I decided to remove the handles and the nubs they attach to and fill with Bondo spot filler. I then broke out my collection oftrash greeblies and slapped a few on for some visual interest. I painted two of the lamps in grey and one in brown; it was at this stage that I decided that one was going to be inspired by the Endor bunker charges.
Once the base coats were on I did some hand masking to make some various shapes on the lamps. I went with red as the main color for mine and purple for the other. The Endor charge obviously was relatively locked in as far as design so I masked off the areas to paint red and yellow respectively. The proportions obviously are slightly different so things didn't line up perfectly but I think they ended up looking good nonetheless. After the base colors were down I went to town weathering them with sandpaper, brillo pads, and a large metal file.
I wanted some lettering on these so after some quick designing in Illustrator I cut some masks out of removable vinyl. They worked out great, save for one area on the Endor charge that for some reason the paint didn't cure properly and a lot of it pulled off from the masking. I actually don't mind it though, it added some weathering that I think looks pretty good. For the lettering I used an Ubese font as I thought it looked coolest. I honsetly don't remember what I wrote for all the labels, I believe some say "light" and some say "activate." I also wanted some accurate-ish greeblies for the Endor charge and designed and printed some side vents for it that I painted silver and glued on.
Finally I hit them all with a weathering pass using acrylics. I may have gone slightly overboard but I wanted them to be very "used" looking. I went a lot lighter on the weathering for the Endor charge. I also quickly sanded the clear parts to give them a more diffused look. Overall very pleased with how these turned out and my friends love 'em! I took mine camping this weekend and it was very handy!
Disassembling the lamps was relatively easy. Unscrew the bottom, remove the four screws, then one single long screw holds the top and bottom together. There's a captive nut at the top that can be accessed by unscrewing the very top piece. From there, I decided to remove the handles and the nubs they attach to and fill with Bondo spot filler. I then broke out my collection of
Once the base coats were on I did some hand masking to make some various shapes on the lamps. I went with red as the main color for mine and purple for the other. The Endor charge obviously was relatively locked in as far as design so I masked off the areas to paint red and yellow respectively. The proportions obviously are slightly different so things didn't line up perfectly but I think they ended up looking good nonetheless. After the base colors were down I went to town weathering them with sandpaper, brillo pads, and a large metal file.
I wanted some lettering on these so after some quick designing in Illustrator I cut some masks out of removable vinyl. They worked out great, save for one area on the Endor charge that for some reason the paint didn't cure properly and a lot of it pulled off from the masking. I actually don't mind it though, it added some weathering that I think looks pretty good. For the lettering I used an Ubese font as I thought it looked coolest. I honsetly don't remember what I wrote for all the labels, I believe some say "light" and some say "activate." I also wanted some accurate-ish greeblies for the Endor charge and designed and printed some side vents for it that I painted silver and glued on.
Finally I hit them all with a weathering pass using acrylics. I may have gone slightly overboard but I wanted them to be very "used" looking. I went a lot lighter on the weathering for the Endor charge. I also quickly sanded the clear parts to give them a more diffused look. Overall very pleased with how these turned out and my friends love 'em! I took mine camping this weekend and it was very handy!
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