January 30, 2008 - Old Chrome Dome

Sorry, everyone... I haven't been writing much lately. We're doing all our strategizing at work, and building has been relegated to the brief moments of inactivity that punctuate the hours between 9pm and midnight. Nevertheless, I did get some work done on my bird-baffle dome. As you can see below, I plugged up the hole in the top of the baffle with Bondo. I then sanded off all the letters and other junk from the outer surface of the dome, and put a couple coats of primer on it.

What I never got pictures of, though, was the work that went into (or, more realistically, onto) the dome before I primed it. First, I added a plywood ring at the base of the baffle, to keep it from flexing when I take the dome on and off the body.

Then, with everything fairly rigid, I took a pencil and marked off where all the panels were supposed to be on the dome. There were several excellent images of the panel layouts on the R2Builders group's pages, including lots of details on panel heights, lengths, and positions. This was a fairly intense piece of work (which explains why I didn't get any pictures), and required some fancy footwork to get it all laid out. Every try to draw a straight line on a curved surface? It ain't easy, let me tell you. I first laid out the major panel positions around the base of the dome, then used a plastic straightedge to draw the lines from the base upward to the top. I then drew in all the horizontal lines using the schematics. I also had to mark the positions for the holoprojectors (camera eyes), logic displays, and the main radar eye, which will have to be cut out later.

The picture above shows the lines that I drew in pencil. This picture shows the inside of the dome, so the pencil marks are actually on the outside. After getting all the pencil marks right, I then took my Dremel and the 1/16th-inch engraving bit, and traced over all the pencil lines. All this work was required because, if you look at a close-up of R2-D2's dome, the panels appear to be separate from the rest of the dome. This becomes obvious in scenes where R2-D2 uses his lifeform scanner and periscope in Episode V - some of the panels can be opened and closed! I'm not going to that much detail on this first droid, and will use an aluminum dome if I ever want to get that detailed.

With the lines etched, I then sprayed on the primer. Once the primer was dry, I had to mask off the panels so that I could paint them. The idea was to paint most of the panels the same metal-flake red as the body details. I got fairly close to the etched lines, but figured that I didn't need to be too fine about it, since I needed to cover the rest of the dome with aluminum-colored paint later on. The (not really) finished product is shown below.

Then, I had to wait for the red paint to dry so that I could mask all of the panels off and paint the rest of the dome aluminum. After this ordeal, I understand why the motorcycles on American Chopper cost so much. It's not the hardware, it's the paint job! Once the panels were all safely masked off, I put three or four coats of aluminum spray paint on the entire dome. In the picture below, you can see the masking tape through the paint.

While the aluminum paint dried, I turned my attention to the dome ring. I showed you a while back the plywood ring that supports the dome, and adds the extra height to the entire head. Well, it's supposed to have two detail stripes around the outside edge... one aluminum and one the red color of the panels. However, I was not sure how to actually form the outside edge of the dome ring. I figured it could be 16th-inch styrene, but each piece had to be one or two inches tall and 56 inches long! Buying rectangles on eBay seemed like too much work, since they would have to be glued on around the ring. Inspiration hit me at the hardware store the other day...

Remember last time I showed you a piece of red-and-white plastic on the MDF battery box blanks? Well, it came from a plastic FOR SALE sign. The sign measured 24 inches by 19 inches, and was formed from 16th-inch styrene. All I had to do was cut the strips out and glue them to the ring. (Three joints was a lot easier than six or seven.) There are actually three main sections: the inner ring, and two thinner outer rings. When the glue had dried, I used a little Bondo to smooth out the gaps and joints, then primed the ring. You can see from the pictures below that I have the red ring painted up, and will mask that off when it dries and paint the rest aluminum.

Yes, there is some drippage there... I'll sand that down and repaint it later on. The problem was trying to paint a complete circle and letting it dry without getting any spots where the spray paint dripped. As far as I can tell, this was the only major booboo.

Bob
January 30, 2008