Kenny Baker's autograph
Kenny recently was a guest at Steel City Con in the States. My good friend and fellow builder Oscar Banos also attended, and since I asked nicely and he's such a nice chap, he got me Kenny's autograph, which arrived the other day :)
Thanks a bunch mate!
Look how proud R2 is now:
an update long overdue
Hey guys and girls!
Wow, it's been a long time since my last post - more than a month actually.
As those of you who followed the posts know, Jedi Con - my "deadline" for the new droid - has already happened. And yes, I managed to finish the droid in time!
It was a real blast - We had lots of builders, 8 droids, our own room even, and the event itself was brilliant as well.
I will keep this post short and write some more, so I can keep topics divided. Progress on the droid, an in-depth review of Jedi Con, misc. news. You get the idea... They might actually end up being dated in the past, so you'll have to check the older posts as well.
That's it for now, I'm now going to check if I have any more progress pictures of the droid!
Oh, and because I hate posts without pics, here is one of the mess in my room when I finally picked up the droid from Siegfried's workshop:
more painting done
I'm back from a busy weekend! And this time it wasn't R2-busy... unfortunately. BUT I used as much time as I could to bring R2 closer to his finished state.
Just before I headed off to the youth leader workshop thingie I took part in this weekend, I painted the shoulders white - and when I got back today, I added some aluminium paint to them to finish them off - they look pretty nice now!
I might pick up the droid tomorrow or on Tuesday from the workshop and do the last remaining tasks here at home... not much to do, but not long to go 'til Jedi Con either!
r/c gone bad... but that doesn't stop me!
Hi guys. I promised a video, right? Well, things didn't quite work out as I had hoped they would... R2 behaved like a drunk hooligan on a rampage, I couldn't make him to go straight (hey, just like the original prop!) and he rammed into everything he could... and eventually one of the cheapo Hong Kong speed controllers just fried. Yeah, you know, my mother always says "buy cheap, buy twice!" and she's so right...
So I just went on and bought some really damn expensive speed controllers now, which should be here in a day or two, those should do the trick, if not - well, I'm gonna be pretty upset!!! But there's still hope...
However, there's only 2 weeks left til Jedi Con, so I thought I'd better use the day to work on the droid in another way. I picked up the skins and the shoulders from the workshop and brought them here to do a little painting magic in the attic - and it worked like a treat :)
I primed all the stuff, waited a bit, painted the skins white and filled and sanded the shoulders a little more around the seams (remember I had to wrap some styrene around them cause they weren't quite big enough, due to resin shrinkage).
And I'm quite happy with the stuff now :) At least some progress - and a huge step towards a finished droid!
Two pics, one of the stuff primed up in the attic, and of the finished stuff lying in my room:
making R2 move
I finally got all the components to make R2 take his first steps! I'm only missing a speed controller for the dome drive, but I'll try to install what I have next time I'm in the workshop, which should be Tuesday... so expect a video then! :)
back door, power couplers and paint!
Sooo, more building fun!
Yesterday we had another semi-fine day here in Germany (it was a little windy, but that doesn't stop me!) so I painted the last missing blue pieces, the large data port and R2's utility arms. Of course I messed up the paint job on one of the utility arms and had to redo it, I wonder if I will ever learn not to be impatient... oh well ;)
Here's a pic:
Today I went to the workshop again to work on the "main" droid, and did another step towards the finish line. First I finished the back door magnet attachment, which is basically an improved rip off of what Oscar did (thanks again ;)).
As you can see on the following pic, I installed four attachment points on the frame, with round holes in which I installed screws. The holes are just big enough to take the magnets I'm using, which I glued to the back door today. The screws hold the magnets in place, and the holes make it impossible for the door to move up and down, perfect - I hope! I couldn't check yet, as the glue I used needs 12 hours to cure. I'll go there to check it out tomorrow... patience, young padawan, you must learn patience... ;)
Another thing I started working on today was attaching the power couplers I got recently. I had some scrap plexiglass left, and needed brackets for the couplers, so I took out the heat gun! and it worked extremely well... I'm not reinventing the wheel here, so just check out the picture and you'll see how I attached the couplers:
simple solution, but works pretty well :)
Here is another pic of it mounted into the droid (the belts you see are there to hold the back door in place while the glue on the magnets dries):
and here the secured backdoor, waiting for the glue to dry:
That's it for now! All I need now is my r/c receiver to arrive, 2 or 3 more building sessions in the workshop, a nice day to paint the skins and legs and we're pretty much there :)
And there are still three weeks to go 'til Jedi Con... I'm quite positive that I'll make it! :)
dome drive installed
Ages ago I bought a dome drive on the club, as I knew that I'd need it one day. Well, the new droid's coming together now, and I guess there's no better place to put that dome drive than into the new R2. So that's what I did today - I screwed on the Rockler bearing and with a few tweaks I also managed to install the dome drive. I think it worked out really well :)
Next I will work on the back door attachment via magnets, got the idea from Oscar - Thanks for that!
Oh, as we had a really nice and sunny day here in Germany yesterday I thought I might just take another pic of my dome, as it looks so gorgeous in sunlight. Here it is:
