Today I got a few hours to work on my droid so I did as much as I could.
First thing I started to work on were some ankle cylinders for the center leg. I started with a 1.375" OD PVC tubing and cut it to the proper length. I had enough PVC to get 4 pieces out of it.
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| PVC Pipe Cut to Size |
Next, I needed to cut the grooves into the pipe. Using some scrap PVC I did some trial and error to get the correct depth for the groove cut on my table saw. I then measured for the first cut and slowly pushed the pipe over the blade and while keeping it there turned the pipe until I had a groove completely around the pipe.
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| Cutting the First Groove |
Since the grooves are equidistance from each end, once I completed the groove on one side I flipped it over and made another groove on the opposite end. Once done with the outer most grooves, I measured for the next set, and after that the last set.
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| Cutting the Last Groove |
All in all, there are 6 total grooves in the cylinder. I only need 2 cylinders for the center ankle, but since I have 4 pieces cut, makes sense to just do all 4 and save the other 2 for another droid :-)
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| PVC with Dowels Inserted |
Once the last groove was cut on the last cylinder, I found a 1" dowel and cut it into approx 8-9" pieces and inserted them into the PVC. The dowel does 2 things for the cylinder: 1) It will give you more of a surface area to use when attaching it to the ankle and 2) Gives you material to fashion the trapezoidal end of the cylinder. These 2 points will make more sense as I get further along in it. Unfortunately, I only had enough 1" dowel for 3 of the cylinders so I will need to get more of it before I can continue. I would like to do all 4 at once and not leave one hanging.
After the cylinders I moved on to the cylinder holder. In an earlier post I showed the cylinder holders that I had cut from .75" plywood. Now, I needed to fashion an arc in the bottom of the cylinder so that it will sit flush against the ankle cylinders on the outside legs. I had been attempting to get the arc by holding some course sandpaper around some PVC and sanding the flat cut edge of the holder. I did this for a little bit every night this week but it was extremely slow going and I made very little progress. After much thinking and discussing it with a co-worker I decided to try and cut away a little of the wood with the table saw. I raised the blade a little bit and cut a small groove lengthwise down the middle of the holder. Then I lowered the blade a little bit and cut 2 smaller grooves on each side of the first groove. The end result gave me a step look on the inside of the holder and removed much of the wood for me. Then I resorted to the sandpaper on the PVC and sanded away. It took some time but I'm starting to see the results I wanted.
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| Cylinder Holders (Left sanded, Right Not Sanded) |
The above picture should make some sense out of what I've been talking about. The one on the right shows that cuts that were made. 1 tall one in the middle and shorter cut on each side. The one on the left, shows what the end result will look like after sanding. It took a long time to sand down the one on the left and it still needs some work but I had to take a break from it so I stopped there.
At this point I decided to try and get the other leg to the point where I can consider priming it. The sides of the leg had been skinned with styrene but I need to put some wood filler on the edges to make the styrene and wood blend together so I spent some time doing that.
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| Filling the Outer Edges of the Leg |
Once the wood filler is dry I'll use a sanding block to smooth it down. I'll repeat this process 2-3 more times before I will consider priming it.
Moving on...
This past week, the weather had turned unseasonably warm so I decided to see if I could get the skirt sanded and primed.
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| Bare Skirt |
I used the wood filler to fill in the edges and level off some pits and sanded it down nicely with a palm sander. It really did a nice job with smoothing out the wood. I got lucky and the following day the temp was suitable for priming. Not great, but suitable. So I gave it a whirl. I put 3 coats on during the week. Then today I noticed a few rough spots so I used the palm sander again and went over everything. After that I gave it another coat of primer.
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| Primed Skirt |
I'm very happy with the look of it right now. I will give it a few more coats of primer and then sand it again with a fine grit sandpaper. After all the priming and sanding I will need to attach the ends (which I cut out earlier this week), a few ribs, and then prime it some more. I hope to be able to complete it in about 2 weeks.
So anyway, that was my hodge-podge day/week of not concentrating on any one thing but trying to do as much as I can. I feel like it may be this way for the next few weeks as I try to get a lot of this done before I move to the big stuff.
