Talkin' 'Bout the Weather

I was hoping to have all the body parts installed by the end of today, but alas: all things droid take TWICE as long as one plans!!

Anyway, here is a better (somewhat) shot of the weathering I did on parts yesterday. I really went to town with weathering today...but first I needed to finish a few parts.



I believe I forgot to mention that these odd flat things I've been working on are called "A&A skin extras." I ordered them because, I'll be honest, I was tired of cutting styrene. They were still a lot of work, so don't think I started being a slacker or anything.

Anyway, I thought I'd finish the gluing of these parts by noon today. Wrong. Half the time they were glued to my own fingers. Or the squares I was trying to use to make sure they were nicely perpendicular.





Aaaaand multiply the above by about 80 and you have most of my day. Once those side parts were dry I was supposed to wrangle them into these adorable slots:



Here I am wrangling them. And getting more glue all over my fingertips.



Today I decided to get a picture of Krazy Glue+fingertip Action:



Pretty, no? Anyway, I plugged along and the parts came together:



I'm glad I prepainted. That saves me masking all those bits off, at least.



Hooray! Almost halfway done!! *quiet sobs*



Starting on the next set...



I'll spare you and skip ahead; suffice to say it was more of the same. Trying to true things up, long minutes with 1/2-glued fingers shakily holding edges down...anyway, here is the second set (and yeah, I'm jumping ahead to the weathered pics):



And the first set weathered. I loved the weathering! It was fun to smudge and spatter. I'm looking forward to doing the whole droid when I'm to that point!



I was still hoping to install all these body parts today so I started trimming the "center vent surrounds."



I did this freehand -- no line drawn out ahead of time! I'm such a wild child.



Came out perfect. Here I test fit the innards:



As happened yesterday...a bunch of photos vanished off my camera. Ugh.

The rest of the day was spent clear-coating the weathered parts, and painting the last body parts silver and yellow. Only the yellow parts pic survived. Still, it's pretty sweet!



Tomorrow, I hope, hope, HOPE to get some of these stuck on my droid's body!! For now...rest...

Body Parts -- No, Not a New Horror Novel!

For the last few days my updates have been off by a day due to when I post; today I'll put the last few days' progress up, and that should catch us up to this morning.

First I needed to primer some of the body parts:



If you see primer or paint with this sort of mechanism AVOID IT! Both of these failed on me today...one actually flew apart!



At least I was successful at getting the first layer down, the yellow:



While the paint was drying I began assembly of the styrene flat parts I'd sorted. I began with the "coin returns." I love the names the club gave some of these parts!





(not pictured: me getting Krazy Glue all over my fingertips!)

Assembly of the center vents was a bit difficult due to little tabs being present that had no matching slots. My solution was to slice 'em off!



There we go!



I decided to paint these before assembly. Oddly, from this point on, half my photos went missing.
I sorted the bits into parts to be painted aluminum, and parts to be painted yellow. You'll have to trust me on this. XD



Before painting I took the time to mask off the now-dry yellow parts that I needed to remain yellow. Rather than use tape, I decided to try some of my old liquid frisket.



I tried two different types. The one pictured below worked the best, as it was thicker.



Testing the frisket:



That stuff will ruin your paintbrushes. Be sure to have lots of cheap paintbrushes on hand for building Artoo!



Finally it got cool enough to do a little painting:



I had several nice shots of the final frisket removal (worked like a charm), but they have vanished. So here we jump ahead to my first weathering of a part.


Aaaand some more finished parts, ready to be stuck on R2!



That brings us up-to-date! More work tomorrow... :-)

Hidin' from the Heat, Buildin' a Droid

I had hoped to finish up the leg cuts this week, but that involved setting up the router table and drill press out back, and it's just too hot outside for that, so I moved along to some other bits.

First, some test fitting of resin parts on the body. Tweaking will need to happen!



In preparation for painting I did a little filing of resin blobs and such:



I figured since I was planning to work on body parts I'd go ahead and assemble some of the flat bits, like the coin returns. Unfortunately some pieces went missing during the move. Fortunately I was able to reproduce them.



A little filing to make the tabs, and presto!



Finally, I decided to start the "aging" of my battery hoses using a salt and vinegar recipe I found online. This didn't work.



So back to the table I went. I sorted all the flat parts out into baggies. Will glue them tomorrow!

...And the Lost Months of April, May and June!

I've been away from my droid. Sorry, little guy!

Back in April my droid had his public debut -- at the Anaheim Comic-Con -- thanks to Victor's invitation. It was fun to have a partially-built droid on display -- it really encouraged questions. I got to help Victor while he worked on a power issue, and Gene let me drive his droid. Afterward we all went out and had some fine beers -- it was nice to hang out with all the builders and get to know them!

Here are some pics (again, some are from Victor's awesome blog):



You'd think all of that would've inspired me to get back to building, and you'd be thinking right, my friends. Unfortunately Darth Real Life has been tossing distractions at me all Spring. All I got done in that time was digging out my parts, establishing where I'd left off building, and reorganizing.

Until today, that is...until TODAY.

Yes, I FINALLY got back to building! Well, the lovely laborious process of cutting-cutting-cutting -- Hoooo!



I found that some of the more delicate cuts required a little finesse -- I used my needle-nose pliers to wiggle the cut, with some success. Everything will need some filing I'm afraid!











After all this time the patterns were beginning to come unglued (like me?) and I had to use a bit of tape in places.



My first "I'm done for the day!" picture. Heh.



But I wasn't done; I had droid FEVER! I decided to tackle some of the more difficult cuts, like these tiny right-angles. And this is how I did it:



Again, with varying degrees of success. The good, the bad, and the ugly:



More finished stacks of parts!



Now there's a day's work!



(I started typing up this post on the the 3rd...but here it is the 4th already: Happy Independence Day!)