Dash Rendar (Human Mercenary / Smuggler)

Dash Rendar was a mercenary and a smuggler who occasionally ran supplies for the Rebel Alliance. He was trapped at Echo Base during the Imperial invasion of Hoth and volunteered to fly a Snowspeeder with Rogue Squadron. He was later hired to help locate Boba Fett before the bounty hunter delivered Han Solo to Jabba the Hutt. Dash was believed to have been killed when his Outrider was destroyed in a space battle over Coruscant. However, he later showed up in a cantina on Hurd's Moon.

Parts: Head (Dash Rendar), Upper Torso (Dash Rendar), Lower Torso (Cantina Han Solo), Upper Arms (Dash Rendar), Lower arms (Cantina Han Solo), Legs (Cantina Han Solo), Gloves (Dash Rendar), Blaster (Dash Rendar), Blaster Rifle (Stormtrooper).

Supplies: Dremel, Super Sculpey, X-acto knife, file, emery board, super glue, brushes, Testors paints and Testors Dull-Cote.

Reference: The Essential Guide to Weapons & Technology, Steve Perry's novel Shadows of the Empire, Dark Horse's Shadows of the Empire and Shadows of the Empire: Evolution comic series.

Step One: First, I cut off Dash's arms right at the point where they meet the shoulder armor. Then I cut the torso in half where the body meets the lower edge of the chest armor. I was left with Dash's armor and head.

Step Two: Next, I cut the gloves off the arms and set them aside.

Step Three: I took the Cantina Han figure and cut the upper torso off. I had to be especially careful here. What I was trying to achieve was to get the lower torso and legs to match up with the armor that I'd already worked on. When I finished this step, it only required a little bit of fine sanding and the two parts fit together perfectly. I super glued them together. At this point, I had a full body except for the arms.

Step Four: I cut the Cantina Han lower arms to the proper size to fit the Dash upper arms and then super glued them in place.

Step Five: Then I took the gloves and glued them on to the Han lower arms. This completed the figure.

Step Six: Next, I Dremeled off the existing holster. I glued Dash's blaster to his leg and sculpted the new holster around it using Super Sculpey. I cured the Sculpey with boiling water.

Step Seven: I painted the figure, as desired. My goal here was to make him recognizeable, yet different. I liked the character, but disliked Hasbro's figure so I wanted to make him really cool. I painted all of the exposed clothing a dark blue to give the appearance that Dash is wearing a flightsuit under his armor (the novels describes Dash wearing a grubby flightsuit). I painted the hair a better shade of orange and gave him green eyes. I scarred up the armor a bit to make it look "battle-worn". I detailed the weapons using gunmetal, carbon and steel paints.

Step Eight: Finally, I applied a coat of Testors Dull-Cote to seal the paint and reduce the shine.