Nope, this one isn't about Thanksgiving. (I'm bummed... the weather around here doesn't look conducive to frying a turkey this year. Rain and thunderstorms are predicting for Thursday. Drats...)

A few (well, many) weeks ago, I posted about the work I had done on my astromech's legs. The work on the legs took a back seat to the body work that has been going on. The body is now cosmetically complete (more on that in a later entry), so I got a chance to further refine my Bondo-ing skills. Believe it or not, this stuff is pretty easy to use, and it makes for a baby's-butt-smooth finish, even on wood.

Here are the legs all slathered and sanded. I could only work with the Bondo for about 6 minutes before it started to set up, so I did one side of each leg, let it harden for an hour, and finished the rest of the leg. I let that sit over night, then started in sanding this morning. Three or four sheets of sandpaper later, everything looks great.

This little droid is a bit of a pain, though. I was trying to hold up one of the legs to get at the edges, and it slipped through my grip. (Yeah, it's that smooth. ) I tried to catch it, and caught the tip of my finger between the leg and the bin I was supporting it with. I lost a bit of skin, and left a souvenir of the blood, sweat, and tears I've put into this guy so far.

I'm pretty psyched, though. There is a simple detail on the legs, nothing more than a groove that run around the entire lower section. I have been dreading it ever since I put the legs together. Luckily (as far as I can tell), my table saw blade was too wide. So, I used a hacksaw and a straight piece of wood to cut the grooves, as you can see here. They are nice and straight, and will be painted silver (as opposed to the almond of the rest of the leg).

Here are a couple of other pictures. Here, you can see the hub that connects the shoulder to the pipes that support them. Here, you can see the lower end of the leg, at the ankle that connects to the feet. On the shoulder, there is a small hole drilled into it. At the end of the leg, there is another hole. In between them runs a channel that I cut out of the MDF that is sandwiched between the plywood layers. This channel will allow me to run control wires down to the feet, to control the droid's motion. Of course, I need to get that far first...

(Oh, yeah... the blue tape is holding the styrene details on the shoulder hubs, so that they can extend a bit "into" the body and look like they're solid all the way through.)

I still have the feet, the shoulders, and the underbody skirt on order from Andy and Alex. I'm investigating a couple of possibilities for an acrylic or polycarbonate dome, and hope to have one on order before Christmas. That will put me a bit behind schedule, since I wanted to have a completed droid by then. Ah, well, better late than never...

To the folks reading this in the USA, have a happy Turkey Day!

Bob
November 29, 2007