Today is a leg day

So the used legs I got from the junkyard showed up. I was pretty excited, as you can probably imagine. I got the wooden leg assemblies, the horsehshoes for the top, resin booster covers and booster pistons. They even had the "fat ankles" attached. So this will save me some time -- not to mention money.

That being said, I was later informed that bailing out of the leg run I had previously signed up for in favor of picking up these instead is frowned upon in the R2 club. It goes against the whole build-your-own ethos, but also it's best not to bail on a build run unless it's like financial hardship or something like that. So, now I know:

Lesson Learned:

• Don't bail out of a product run unless you have to

 Still, I've got the legs now, and they're all right. They've been glued together, and some smoothing has been done, but it's going to take a lot more. Still, this is entirely workable, and I can't wait to make it happen.

Here is one of the legs with the booster stuff, horseshoe, and the shoulder buttons and hydraulic I printed and painted a while back:

As you can see, the booster covers are going to need some serious trimming and painting and whatnot. I'll take them by the shop soon.

Lazy susan and painting

So today is a paint day. First off, I set up a paint area in my workshop, and by paint area I mean cardboard box with newspaper. Then I lined up my paints:

I hope that's enough. Note the XTC-3D on the far right.

Now, it's time to see about aging some of this stuff. I'm scuffing up some of the chrome bits to make it look old:

That looks nice and scratch-and-denty. Now let's see about adding some rust:

The one on top is the "Before" shot, the one below has been aged and had some Testors rust applied to it here and there. Taking a light touch, but enough to make it look like it's been around a bit.

Now, it's time to start in on the blue bits. I'm using the Krider Blue method because I'm a cheapskate. To wit:

• 2 coats of Rustoleum Metallic Blue 7251
• 2 coats of Duplicolor Anodized Blue
• 3 coats of Rustoleum Crystal Clear 7701

15 minutes between each coat, and 48 hours to cure. I'm starting with the blue bits for one power coupling. If these go well, then I can go ahead and do the rest. Wanted to make sure it came out all right before I tried it something big like the radar eye.

Meanwhile, my Rockler lazy susan showed up. This is a surprisingly heavy bit of hardware, but it's good and solid:

Also, my dome should have been shipped off today, with any luck. So, off to a solid start.

Painting and Printing

Got in to the Hammerspace this afternoon and managed to print out the Large Data Port:

That'll be at the top middle of the barrel once I get the fame and all that. The bit above gets glued to the top of the bit below (it's printed that way to avoid having to do support structure). It gets painted blue.

Speaking of paint, I picked up all the paints and things I'll need (I think) and started doing that while waiting on the print jobs:

Now, I've used the XTC-3D on the parts above. If you see some shininess then that's why. It seems to do rather well, but I'll have to see how it looks once painted.

Here you can see some of the parts that have been painted. This is a very good chrome paint (Valspar metallic). It gives a good look. You can see one of the shoulder hydraulics which I have also painted.
I'm going to see how to age the metallic finish on these parts, but they already don't look anything like the printed originals, so that's promising. More painting tomorrow.