Wookiee Not Included: A Millenium Falcon Playhouse
By Donald Bell
Inside every Star Wars fan is a yearning to sit at the controls of the Millennium Falcon. But assuming that Han and Chewie aren’t landing in your yard anytime soon, the best chance you have at making the Kessel Run in 12 Parsecs is to build your own Millennium Falcon.
We’ve seen every form of DIY Millennium Falcon projects at Make: over the years, from insanely detailed model recreations and full-scale prop-quality cockpits, to easy weekend projects you can do with your kids.
LED Christmas lights help to illuminate the interior details of the cockpit.
Kyle Gilbert’s Millennium Falcon Cockpit Playhouse on Instructables falls into a sweet spot right between geeky detail and weekend practicality. To keep things focused, Kyle sticks just to the cockpit — leaving the holographic chessboard and smuggler’s compartment to another day. He also keeps things on the cheap, using MDF, PVC board, bondo, and some junk drawer odds and ends to populate the dashboard.
The dashboard of this Millennium Falcon cockpit is outfitted with an eclectic mix of switches, wheels, and dowels.
And really, it’s the dashboard in this project that puts a smile on my face. With office chair wheels for knobs, and silver-painted dowels for kicking the Hyperdrive into high gear (which I would do, over and over again), Kyle’s cockpit is a Wookiee away from practical perfection.
The view from the Millennium Falcon’s cockpit.
Of course, part of me can’t help thinking about how the ways you could kick this project up a notch. Maybe you could enclose the cockpit with a larger box, rigged with a fiber optic starfield. Or how about adding a simple sound effects board and some speakers to fill your Falcon with Wookiee grunts or stalling Hyperdrive sounds?
More from Make:
Detailed Cardboard Millennium Falcon
Millennium Falcon Savory Pie Recipe
Make This Mini Star Wars BB-8 Ball Droid with a Hacked Sphero
