The old Royal Dockyards became the last Corellian shipyard when work on the structure began in the cold and drafty western hangar at the start of January, 1978. A dozen steel platers, welders and pipe fitters began to fabricate sixteen "slices of cake", as Brian Johnson (Special Visual Effects Supervisor) put it, from two-inch mild steel box sections that could be easily bolted back together.
Keeping a lid on the true nature of the project was easy. With several other Marcon jobs on the go at the same time the hangar was a busy place. None of the workers had time to speculate what the steel wedges being constructed was for, and any enquiries into their nature were met with a shrug of the shoulders.
Richard Rees, who was the general foreman at the site, says that to most of the men working on it, "it was just another job. It was interesting in as much as it was for a film company," but other than that, it held no special interest for them. Even today he is non-plussed about his contribution to the original Star Wars trilogy. Mick Marchant, a pipe fitter who built the steel sections alongside Joe Hovarth, agrees with Richard Rees but states that once he found out what the work was for his interest increased.
To assist the crew in moving the behemoth around, compressed air hover pads were fitted to its feet. With the pumps running, the set hovered a fraction of an inch above the ground and allowed it to be repositioned with little effort.
Once the work on the steel frame had been concluded a team of a half-dozen local carpenters, watched over by master carpenter Mike Clancy, added rows of two-by-two inch beams on which a layer of half-inch thick plywood was added as the outer skin. Each panel had to be precisely cut to fit because no two steel edges were alike. At nearly 90 years of age, Mike Clancy still remembers the enjoyment he had working on the Falcon, and believes that Marcon Fabrication made a first class job of it. Onto this layer the final outer detailing would later be fixed once the ship had reached its final destination.
