Star Destroyer in cardboardHaving seen Peter Thompson's cardboard Star Destroyer I thought," yeah, I can do that, how hard can it be?"

Well as it turns out "VERY".

The first hurdle was to printout the plans on the largest sizes paper I could get through the printer. This meant that each plans had to be assembled from six separate pieces of paper.

I decided to build the model from Grey board, a great material for building models. It comes in large sheets but not quite large enough for this model. So back to assembling larger sheets from the smaller ones.

For ease of assembly I had decided to build the model in four pieces. Front hull, superstructure and the rear hull split into two pieces. So that no single piece is larger than 24 by 48"

Next I had to transfer the plans from the printouts to the, now larger, card sheets. I used the tried and trusted method of taping the plans to the card and pushing a sharp point through every corner on the plans. The plan is removed and all of the "dots" are joined up. Simples! At this Stage I realised just how big this thing is. My "long" ruler turned out to be too short! A trip to a DIY store provided a 50" ruler to replace the now too short 50cm ruler. Long straight lines now appeared on my card sheets.

The next stage was to cut out the parts, the new long ruler came in handy again. After blunting a number of knife blades I had a stack of smaller pieces of card. The original plans called for the superstructure to be folded, as I was using a thicker variety of card I decided against this and cut out separate panels. This approach enabled me to reinforce the joints and make a more rigid structure.

I also decided to add a regular slope the hull and constructed a set of triangular pieces to support the hull.

So with a stack of cardboard bits, some strong glue, tape and balsa blocks I set about sticking things to other things. Until I had the rough star destroyer built.

This photo shows the construction to this stage. The one foot steel rule I added for scale just to emphasise how big this model is

Of course at this stage I had some "making good" to do as there were a few gaps to be filled in and trimming to make the shapes look symmetrical.

Next stage, let's add some detail

For the horizontal surface this meant scoring in a pattern of lines. If you watch the original movies you will notice that the pattern of lines is very fine indeed. I thought about trying to replicate that but decided "that way madness lies". I also added some card offcuts as the occasional raised detail. Other sections of the hull had larger detail pieces added.

For the vertical surfaces, this meant gluing on thin card strips.

The geodesic domes are decorative door knobs. I have not glued these to the model allowing them to be moved if they get in the way during a game.

The bridge and its mounting pillar came in for special treatment to try to match the look of the model from the movie.

Having finished sticking things to the hull I took the completed pieces out into the garden, scrapped the snow from the garden furniture and sprayed the whole thing. First a grey undercoat followed by a white top coat.

The final result was a bit too blotchy for my taste. So I repainted it using a foam roller. This gave a more even result.

So now the ISD Manet is ready for action.

The final stage is to build a box to carry this thing.

ReferencesInitial plans: Peter Thompson's cardboard Star Destroyer

An excellent book full of great photos: Sculpting a Galaxy: Inside the "Star Wars" Model Shop

To see how a proper modeller builds Star Destroyer models check out this site: stardestroyerproject