August 25, 2007 - I'm Not A Leg Man, But...

(from my Star Wars Blog)

Well, a new batch of pictures are ready! I'm actually a bit ahead of these pictures, so bear with me...

The first leg I got "finished" for my astromech was the center leg. It was, of course, the easiest, being a simply glue-up of four layers.

The outer legs are a bit more work. As shown in the picture below from my previous posting, there are several layers to the legs. Well, I've got the inner two layers glued together, with the shoulder hubs and the flange plates for the pipe that supports the droid. The pipe isn't in the other picture, but it is in the garage, and the two pipes fit together.

There is one important detail that was required... making sure that the inside layer of each leg had a channel cut into it to route wires down to the feet. Why? Because without these wires, you can't power the wheels in the feet and make the astromech move. So, the glued up inner and middle layers end up looking like the picture below. It doesn't show up here, but I also drilled a hole for the wires, so that they can go from the battery, through the hub, down the leg, to the feet...

Here is a mock-up of where the "under-shoulder details" will go. The guys at LucasFilm (in the early days) must have had all kinds of time on their hands, to think of cutting these little recesses into the shoulders and adding in little things to make the shoulders look cool. For me, it meant some really slow, free-hand routing of the recesses where the under-shoulder details will fit. The tolerances here were in the tenths-of-inches, so I was sweating out these details, for sure. I have since cleaned them up with a chisel... yup, more pictures are coming!

Now, to fully glue up the legs, and attach the skins to the frame. Hopefully, a major update next time!

Bob
August 25, 2007