Hero Version Tie Fighter

[DarthDuck]

I read in a build thread (by GF at RPF, fine model too!) that he shimmed his resin armature and believed the metal one was about 30cm in diameter.

The armature I received varies between 28.47 and 28.50mm which is close enough to just call 28 1/2 mm. That still leaves "slop" (if you wanna call it that) when you fit it into the kit pieces which explained the gaps I saw on prefitting. I'm using .010 plastic to sleeve the areas I had machined away and bring it back to a "solid" tube (looks wise) which will then take up the slack and accept paint better than aluminum could have. To that end I fashioned up some simple jigs which when slipped in place snug up the sleeve to enable gluing. A couple of those sleeves are very snug for where I'll be applying glue while a couple of others are looser just as "holders" but when you tilt them slightly off axis they do snug it all up again anyways. They're just easier to move around that way.