Date: August 3, 2007
Mixed day. Good news and bad news. Still, progress was made, so it can't be all that bad.
The day started off pretty well with a jaunt down to the garage to install the side and pocket vents.
One lesson I learned recently from installing the coin returns was about glue gush. That's what I call it when glue gushes out from around the piece that you're trying to stick into place. While the coin returns didn't actually have glue GUSHING out on the sides, you can still see traces of it around the edges. Not worth the trouble of cleaning it up, especially considering how tenacious that Maxim glue is.
But I figured IF I could avoid this problem, I should. So with the vents, I tried something different. I started out by using a TINY amount of clear, three minute epoxy. I put TINY dabs of it directly on the paint where the vent will go. I then hold the vent in place with my fingers until the epoxy kicks. Once that takes place, I then go inside the droid and slather on the Maxim glue. I make sure I cover the edges on the back side of the vents, and the border around the inner skins.
Here's one set of the vents in place.
And here's what it looks like from the inside. NASTY!
The bad news is that one of the pocket vents is the wrong size. To be more precise, one of the openings on my skins is the wrong size. Fortunately, droidstuff.com sells vents that account for this, so I guess I'll have to order a set. Oh well. Just means another delay in finishing, but what are you going to do???
But then it was on to more painting. I finished up the remainder of the pieces that need to be painted white! So no more white paint!!! I still need to clear coat a number of white pieces, but as far as painting goes, the white stuff is done.
I also started on the base coat for a bunch of the dome pieces. These have two coats of purple on them, and that's all they're going to get. As far as I'm concerned, these pieces are one sunny day away from being capped with a candy coat.
And that's about it for today. I did hit Home Depot to pick up some dowel rods. I'm going to use the dowel rods to hold some of the pieces while they are being painted or clear coated. For example, the ankle cylinders need to get clear coated in 360 degrees, so I need some way of holding them while spraying. I decided to use a dowel rod. Same thing with the tool arms. So that's up and coming.
A while back, I painted the holo emitters. I painted them solid silver, as I thought that was what I wanted to go with. I have since found reference pictures of the R2 I'm trying to copy that show that the holo eyes have a blue base, and a black cone top. So I will eventually need to fix that. I WAS going to do it this week, but then I looked at them, and realized they are fine they way they are, and can easily just be taken care of later. I really just want to get him finished at this point, and details like that can wait for round one of the "upgrades" that are sure to come. I've already got a few others in mind :)
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