2009 Star Wars Night At The Omaha Royals

Tonight was Star Wars Night at the Omaha Royals. Because R2-NU is still not done yet, I signed up to be a droid wrangler. Until you tried it, you will never know how hard it is to be nice and still keep several dozen excited children from touching their favorite Star Wars hero. By the end of the night I was exhausted.

Syrena taking a picture with her grand kids, and Brad and Moose drove their R2s around.

Jeff, in his rebel legion costume, stops for a picture with Casey.

Brad and Casey locked in a heated light saber duel. By the way, many thanks for letting me drive his R2 around part of the night while he mingled with the crowd and took pictures.

Members of the 501st leaving the stands after Darth Vader through out the first pitch.

R2-CM got cornered by the 501st.

Jeff and the attending R2s pose for a picture.

Skirt Sanding

The group got together for another build night. Everyone else worked on frames and legs, but I spent most of the night sanding my skirt. Just before it got too dark, I used a flush trimming router bit to make the hole in the bottom plate of the skirt match the inner hole walls.

Once one of our local builders saw what I was doing he ran inside and got both his and girlfriend's skirt and routed them. He couldn't find his mask, so he had to use his shirt. Do worry, I gave him a hard time about it.

Since we have a several new people, we decided to get a group photo before we went home for the night.

Hannah Hangin' With R2

Hannah wanted to look at my blog and the pictures of my R2. We noticed that we didn't have any pictures of her with R2-NU alone, so we ran down to the garage and took a picture.

More Skirt Puddy Work

I added wood putty to all the seems around the outside of the skirt. I tried to make a curved edge on the four inner corners of the skirt hole. Next...sanding.

An Attempt To Fill Skirt Gaps

After making blueberry pancakes for dinner, I attempted to fill the gaps and screw holes in my skirt with wood putty. It wasn't long before the kids wanted to help. We made a huge mess. I will probably have to redo a lot of this work again later, but the kids had fun helping.

Skirt Assembled

Moose helped me put together my skirt tonight. I cut out two styrene arcs at the last build night in preparation for tonight. Moose helped me glue the styrene to the front and back of the skirt with his Tech-Bond glue. I love this stuff, so I went home and bought a bottle. The arcs were a little big, so a little trimming was required. This glue works great! I think the wood will break before the glue will let loose.

The crew made a mold for the skirt ribs, so I mixed up a couple batches of resin and poured enough for one skirt.

While we waited for the skirt ribs to harden, we cut out another rib pattern to tell us where the place the ribs on the skirt. Moose was the first to try it, and he glued ribs to Patches’ skirt.

The vertical boards that surround the skirt hole needed to be glued in place, so Moose and I clamped the wood and applied the Tech-Bond. Another tight fit that won’t be broken anytime soon.

With the skirt ribs hardened, I sanded them to the size I needed. I had help gluing the ribs in the corners. The corner ribs completely cover the edges of the styrene and line up with the edge of the wood. With the corner ribs in place, the rib locations were marked and glued to the skirt.

The bottom of the skirt needs to be smooth, so I took out the screws holding the vertical boards around the skirt hole one by one and countersunk them. Jeff supervised giving both advice and words of encouragement.

After the skirt was complete I couldn't’t help but start messing around. What better way to test out R2’s skirt then to try it on.

Gluing Skirt Sides

I finished gluing the angled board to the skirt base plate. Once the glue set, I glued the angled support pieces to the angled side board and then reinforced all the boards with more glue.