Can R2 Have A Breadstick?

The local builders club and a few of the local 501st were asked to stop by Fazoli's and help out with their Kid's Night. According to the manager, it was a record night. All I know is that it was so packed it was hard to walk without stepping on a child.

Dash showed up in his stormtrooper costume representing the 501st and help by wrangling both droids and kids.

My buddy Andrea was doing a paper for one of her classes at UNO, so she stopped by to interview the group and take a couple of pictures.

The news spread so far that Kitt from Knight Rider stopped by for a visit.

Drawing The Dome Panels...Maybe

Clay, Jason, Moose, and I all met at Clay's house for a build night. Jason's and I were going to work on our 300 mm styrene domes by drawing the panels and cutting them out while Moose worked on his Jedi Logics. On a previous day, Jason did not exclusively use the plans that Clay and I were using; instead, he used Moose's 300 mm aluminum dome to make a template. Clay had already used the plans to draw and cut out his dome. Because Jason came later, Clay and I worked on drawing on my dome. All the drawn panels looked great and evenly spaced. Once Jason showed up, he compared his dome sketches to what I had drawn and what Clay had cut out and he said there was something wrong with what we had done. We then compared our domes to Moose's aluminum dome and concluded the plans were for the C&D dome and not the 300 mm dome we had purchased. My vertical dome lines were fine, but my horizontal lines will need to be redrawn using Jason's template. Poor Clay. Most of us consoled him, but Moose couldn't help but harass him a bit.

Creating Leg Templates

Without the use of a band saw, Moose and I were flying by the seats of our pants tonight when we were cutting out the leg templates. We used the edge of a ¼" board as a straight edge and a router bit with a bearing to cut the straight lines of the leg template. When it came to the curved edges we used Moose's shoulder and Dash's A&A ankle pieces they purchased online to make sure the template came out as planned. When the template was finished, we rough cut as many ¼" patterns we could using the remaining wood and used our new template to smooth the edges.

Leg Template

Before I ran out of energy for the day. After much debate, Moose and I started cutting out the full sized leg pattern that Dash printed and had laminated. We used a ruler for the straight edges and Moose’s shoulders (the ones he purchased online for R2-CM) for the curved areas.

After the template was cut out we traced it in a piece of ¼” plywood and cut around it with a jigsaw (leaving enough wood outside of the lines to cleanup with a router).

Gluing The Frame

Moose and I met today with the intention of having a very productive work day. We spent most of the day running errands, barbequing, and trying the new Force Unleashed demo. When we actually got around to working we glued our frames together.

R2's Dome Can Spin

I received the 17½” Rockler Bearing (Lazy Susan) that allows R2-NU's head to spin. I better get working on the dome so I can test this out.