Date: June 7, 2007
Total hours spent today: 1

Painting continues! I had such success yesterday with the legs, that I decided to tackle the body today. Nothing like some significant progress to get the motivation juices flowing.

Here's the body after one coat of the DuPont super paint.

Hard to really tell from the pictures that it's very different, but trust me, it's looking good. The white goes on very smoothly with the spray gun, and I'm getting a really good effect. I'm very happy with it. I'm going to do another coat, and then I think I will call the torso done. Well, done until I get the clear coat on it.

But still, I'm pretty happy. It's really coming together. The body is starting to look like a really nice little droid. It'll be cool once I get the clear coat on, because then I can start attaching other pieces, like the coin returns and whatnot. Should be good.

And just to make the rest of the world jealous, here's the view from my balcony this fine June morning. It looks like it's going to be another beautiful day in Southern California, and I had to share it. Makes for great paint drying weather.

Here's a little update for you, later on in the day. I flipped him over and painted on the second coat. I think I'm going to do one last coat, as there are a few thin spots here and there. I'll take a closer look after it has dried, but it is indeed looking really good.

As the day wore on, I did more and more work on the paint job. I did a light sanding of the body with 2000 grit sandpaper, just to knock out some of the stray hairs and dust that got caught under the paint. Overall, I'm very happy with the way it's turning out. It is NOT looking like an automotive finish at this point. I think the clear coat will help that a bit, but there's going to be a bit of a texture to it. Frankly, I just don't have the interest or patience to wet sand the whole thing all to heck until it looks like a car finish. Besides, he's going to get weathered all to heck anyway, so it will be a moot point.

And speaking of moot points, I'm no longer worried about the amount of white paint I have. I burned through my initial three small containers of paint pretty quickly, but they were all used on very large components. In fact, on the largest components of the whole droid. The body and the legs take up a lot of real estate. I mixed up another six containers of the paint, and I'm not even half way done with the can. So I'm pretty sure I'll have plenty of paint left over.