We’ve seen several versions of the iconic Han Solo embedded in carbonite over the past few years. We’ve seen poor Han embedded in soap, molded in chocolate, made into a desk, and even as a crochet throw pillow. The image of Han Solo frozen in place is so popular that there are actually kits available in the community which allow you to assemble your own. It isn’t snap together though, you still have to put in the work!
Fred Berger put in that work and stopped along the way to take many pictures of the process for our enjoyment. He started with two kits which can be found on theRPF, a forum for prop and costume builders. Note that you can’t view the kits unless you create a free account.
For the bulk of the structure, the kit used was the Zenix Box Kit. Zenix actually spoke at our Maker Faire Bay Area recently. The kit comes as a collection of pieces that you assemble at home to make the box. The angles and holes are all just as they were in the movie. Note that this isn’t just a box, the sides and top all have a bit of an angle to them which makes it difficult to reproduce for someone lacking the tools or experience to do so. I asked Fred how he felt about the box kit, and his only critique was about his own haste:
If i were to do it again, I would have glued the front edge panels down, as well as screw them. I was in a rush the first time and didn’t bother gluing them and they kept popping up, which added quite a few hours of time to the build chasing gaps and filling them with bondo.
Han himself is a 3 part cast made by King Jawa. This is a foam filled, light weight version of Han that could really be mounted to anything. The ad for the kit shows it on a household door, a tempting idea.
As I stated before, simply buying the kits doesn’t give you a fully finished Han Solo. There is still a lot of work to do in assembling and finishing the project. You can follow along in the pictures below, or read the forum thread where Fred shares his experiences in more detail, including a lot more pictures.
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