Busy Work Day

Gaffi stick primed and ready

 I love the days up in northern Michigan when we have nothing planned, especially when I have a project like our friend R2-M5.  I worked for 8 hours today.  I had a lot of little things to do today and one really big goal to tackle.  Starting with some of the little stuff, I multitasked and also did some prep work for the larger task as well.
       My gaffi stick needed some attention so I primed it early in the hopes of getting a second coat on it before going to Traverse City tomorrow and getting some new spray paint.  I also had to correct some mistakes to my legs and horseshoes.  The other day I tried taping off and papering the horseshoes so I could chrome the inside rings to make them look like metal.  I did a pretty good job taping but then I thought, "I can just paint them upside down because I don't care about the bottoms."  Great ideas usually have some sort of consequence to me, in this case because I had paper on them (now on the bottom) the spray paint splattered under the paper and onto the white horseshoe in places.  That was one of the corrections that I had to make.  The second was just touch ups on the legs.  I had been touching the legs quite a bit while getting the four hole/six hole conundrum figured out.  In playing around with them and handling the bolts, I smeared dirty fingerprints on several places and couldn't get them completely washed off.  Repainting was the easiest and cleanest option.

Chrome painted inside

First painting of the day

          While waiting for those parts to dry, I started on my big job for the day getting the skins done.  I had cut out all of the pieces of the skins and filed down the burrs yesterday.  First thing to do was to wash the pieces and make sure any oxidation was cleaned off so the paint would adhere.

Washing the panel of the skins

         After the skins were sufficiently dry, self etching primer (wait 1 hour) was applied then two coats of white primer + paint 10 minutes apart.  Because I painted them in the most natural position, the paint ran a little bit and collected in certain areas.  I wait another hour and then sanded those areas to repaint and everything turned out ok.  I would stand up the skins if I had to do it again.

First coat needed to be sanded.

         While I was waiting for the paint to dry, I went over to the panels and glued them together.  There are thin rounded pieces that are part of the "outer" skin that adhere to the rectangle "inner" skin pieces to make the different panel doors on R2.  Once they have all been cut out and burrs removed, you have to reattach each door and frame.  I am using E6000 silicone adhesive for this.  It is easy to work with, adheres very strongly, and can be removed (with great effort) if it ever needs to be down the road.  But, make sure you use it outside, the fumes are crazy strong even a day after the piece has been cured.  The glue does need about 30 minutes to really adhere well before taking your clamps off, some pieces need a bit longer.

Clamping the frames to the panels

         Once the skins were dry and I had finished with the panels, I switched places.  The panels went over the the spray paint area in the woods and the skins came out to the deck with me for more gluing.  There was a debate online and with my wife about whether we should paint the inner and outer skins white, do them glued together or not, or whether to leave the inner skins aluminum and paint the outer skins separately.  The reasoning on the website was that canon for some of the screen R2s is all white, but guys say that an all white droid does not photograph well because a flash will white out all of the panels and there will no definition.  The next school of thought is that if you do paint both white, that is fine, but you probably need to weather the droid to get some dark colors into the nooks and crannies for great looking photos.  The final idea is to leave the inner skins aluminum, giving the panels a darker inside color, and paint the outer one white thus giving some definition.  Stephanie wants a clean droid, at least to start, so we opted for the aluminum inner skins and white outer.  When I did finish them and put them on the frame, they look great and they really do give some shadows for the pictures.
          Gluing the frame together was a slow process, but there were plenty of other little things to while waiting.  I had some touch-ups to make on a few of the leg details.  The iodized red spray paint has been a vexing product since the beginning.  I love the look of it but it has caused so many problems.  After the front skins were done, I taped in the panels for now not knowing which ones will be attached to hinges.  The back skins had a lot more to do because it is covered with panels and there is the rear door to attach as well.  When it is all completed I attached them to the frame*.

Lots of clamps

The trashcan and me

Looking like R2-M5, no longer a naked droid

See that definition

*for those reading for instructional purposes: I pre attached the inner skins to find the proper placement for the holes to drill.  There were mistakes made but it doesn't matter on the inner skins because they will be glued to the outer skins.  Once the outer skins were glued on, I drilled a hole from the inside through the hole I already tested on the inner skin.  This made it clean to screw the completed skins onto the frame.