I finally got around to fitting my newly painted skirt and skins to the frame. Overall I’m happy how they came out and can’t wait to get the panels fitted.

For some strange reason there’s now a gap where the skirt meets the bottom of the frame which wasn’t there before. I’m not sure if it’s something I can fix easily or if I’ll even notice once I get him back on 3 legs.

I still need to glue on the small panels with silicon, but that should be relatively easy. For the larger panels I’ll probably use silicon too, but I’m hoping to hinge some of the front one’s.

Now that the skins are on I could mark the holes on the frame rings for adjustable brackets that hold things like the octagon ports and power couplers in place.

It’s been a slow Artoo week. In the last few days we’ve had big storms come through, loosing power for almost a day, 100mph winds and 8 inches of rain. There’s a break in the rain right now so I jumped at the chance to get some painting done this afternoon.

I’ve included some photos, but they”re all starting to look the same to me.

I went back and sanded down the rear skins to clean up the big run I made last time and gave them another coat.

I added an extra coat of white to the skirt and lower frame ring – but they’ll need several more, plus I goofed and put a run on the skirt 🙁

I rubbed down the long doors and the smaller panels and gave them another coat while I was at it. They would have probably been okay, but another coat of paint is always good.

I’ve also been busy work on the new astromech.net website with Wayne and PixelFiend. Stay tuned for some great new features.

This is another post I should have written up last week and almost forgot. Better late than never I guess 🙂

I still needed to adjust the ribs on the skirt a bit. When I received the kit the angles on the rib pieces were perfect. But then when I came to attach them to the skirt they need cutting down or filing due to being too long – loosing the nice angle on some of them.

I flipped over my frame and with everything at eye level it was a lot easier to see which one’s needed adjusting.

I just filed the ribs with the skirt resting on top of the frame and my eye dead level with the hand file.

The skirt itself isn’t perfectly flat/level and I think I may end up with a few gaps in spot, but I don’t think you’ll notice once the frame is the correct way up.

I decided to get over how cold it’s been and just start re-painting the skins. Temperature in the garage was around 59 degrees by mid day and the recommended temperature on the Rustoleum Satin White is 70, but there was a little caveat at the end that said “lower temperatures may increase dry time.”, which to me means go ahead and use at any temperature 🙂

Things started off really good and the horseshoes came out great, in fact so good once they’d dried they’re putting everything else to shame. I have no idea what I different to get them this way. They really do have a satin finish with little to no blemishes. What’s funny is when I started to paint them they almost orange pealed on me, or it looked at way on the first pass.

Not so good news on the skins though that prompted this whole repaint job. As soon as I started I got a big run on the back skin. My heart sank but I continued on with the other pieces, residing myself to having wait for it to dry, then sand and repaint tomorrow or the next day.

I think I’ve also figured out my dusty/rough paint problem I tried to describe a few days ago. I’m pretty sure it’s because I tried to paint everything together and got over-spray onto pieces – i.e. Dust. This time I took each piece in turn set it outside, painted then brought it back inside to dry. Makes sense right? At the time I thought I was saving time – big mistake. Do yourself a favor and paint everything separate.

The skirt and lower frame ring also turned out well, but will require several more coats. I’d forgotten to prime the ring last night, but quickly did it this morning.

Here’s the skirt. The paint is okay, but I’m not crazy about the ribs/strips and how they meet the base (I guess top in this photo) of the skirt.

By tonight they’d dried and I could see how they looked together – not bad and I’m sure once it’s the other way up I’ll forget all about the ribs.

Coming back to the big paint run I got on the skins. I decided late in the afternoon to try and fix it. It had been a few hours and things had dried a lot. But the run was so thick that it would have taken days to dry, so I took a soft paper towel with some acetone on it and lightly rubbed the run away. This is almost certainly a big no-no, but I really didn’t want to wait. I then sprayed over the area again thinking I may get lucky with the finish. I’m almost certainly going to sand it down, but at least I can do this tomorrow instead of waiting days for the run to dry through.

Now after seeing how well the horseshoes came out and figuring out the dusty-paint problem. I may go back and redo the skin panels.

Another busy evening working on R2, but not a lot to show for it. Started off with prepping some stuff for painting tomorrow.

Remember about a month ago I’d posted pictures of my skins all done. Well I decided that I wasn’t happy with the result. The problem was the paint’s thin in places and felt rough to the touch. It could have been what I’ve dubbed ‘dusty paint’, or maybe it was simply that the paint thinned/settled while drying and the aluminum was coming through. What I mean by ‘dusty paint’ is that sometimes I find that the Satin Rustoleum sprays out almost like a fine powder or dust with very little solvent and dries rough. It looks okay from a distance, but to the touch it’s not good and picks up marks really easy. I’d agonized for almost month if I was going to repaint. I knew I need to, but kept on telling myself it wasn’t that bad.

I lightly sanded down the problem areas and then had to re-mask all the bits I didn’t want paint on. Luckily I hadn’t removed all the mask-tape on the back skin.

I’m going to start tomorrow with a fresh can of paint and hopefully I’ll not have the ‘dusty paint’ problem or worse the dread orange peal.

The bad news is the weather is cold, well cold for Northern California. Its 45-50 overnight and not gets much over 60 during the day. The Rusoleum primer is good from 50 degrees, but I’m not sure how well the Satin White will dry overnight. The good news is the forecast is rain which means the temperature should be a little higher due to cloud coverage 🙂

I also tried to get the skirt ready tonight for the top coat as well. Finally finished up the Bondo work

The problem with Bondo, or for me at least, is that I end up putting on way to much while trying to fill the gaps, resulting in a lot of cleanup – and I’m tired of sanding the inside corners of all those strips, so I think it’s as good as it’s going to get for now.

I applied a coat of primer, sanded a little more followed by a final coat of primer (until I see what it looks like in the morning)

I also need to remember to hit the underside of the frame with primer/satin white too.

Lesson learned today – Don’t rush to remove masking tape until you’re 110% sure you’re happy with the finish.

I’m almost done with prepping the aluminum skirt.

With the olive paint and screws this pieces would looks more at home attached to the Nautilus or some Steampunk project don’t you think?

I’d bolted on the strips a few weeks ago and had given it a coat of primer, but I still needed to go back and file down down the  strips a bit.

I’ve also filled some of the seams with Bondo. All that’s left is to give it another shot of primer then it’ll be ready for the white top coat.

Another long night of working on R2.

Not sure what came over me today, could have been the paint fumes, but out of the blue I suddenly decided to do a green camo Endor R2 instead. Here’s the test coat on the alu skirt.

Just kidding. This is the self etching primer. I still need to fill some gaps but this should be white by this time tomorrow.

I also got the second half of the skins and the rear door glued together. I’m glad that I’ve gone with epoxy, but the long dry time is killing me. I had to buy some extra clamps so I could move forward while I waited on the first half to dry.

I’ll try and post some pictures and blog tomorrow.

I’ve had an incredible busy weekend working on R2. I’m getting close to re-assembling him with all the skins and parts bolted on and everything painted.

If you’re browsing the gallery for new photos you’ve probably spot a lot of new work over the weekend. I tend to upload photos quicker than I can blog them here 🙂

Throughout the 4 day holiday weekend I’ve been slowly prepping and painting everything that I could, including the legs, feet, ankles etc. Every time there was some downtime I’d turn around pick something up of my paint table, take it outside and give it another coat. I must have applied 3 or 4 coats of the white by now. The paint job isn’t perfect but it’ll do for now, plus I’ll probably be weathering him at some point soon.

I also finished painting all the remaining blue pieces, mostly body detail parts like the octagon ports, power couplers and vents . Once the skins are done and fixed to the frame I’ll be in good shape to start mounting the parts.

I started to use a self etching primer on some of the latest alu parts. I’d been looking for a self etching primer locally for a while and I finally found some in stock at Kragen’s. The problem with the small local auto places is that they seem to only carry one can of some paints, and refuse to special order – so each time I looked they were out. Anyway, it got lucky this time and I picked up the Duplicolor primer (olive green top.) You can see the olive colored parts in the first photo.

I guess my new hypo blue formula is

Duplicolor Self Etching Primer – wait 30
Rustoleum White Primer – wait 30 (maybe apply 2nd coat after 15 mins)
Rustoleum Purple – wait 30-45
Duplicolor – wait 30-45
Rustoleum Clear Coat (maybe two coats)

The biggest thing I probably worked on was gluing the skins together. I’d flip flopped a few times on how how I was going to do this. I really like how Victor has left the inner skins unpainted to show off the panel detail. But having an aluminum frame makes it a lot harder to mount the skins separately, so I’d probably need to paint them in one go. I’d considered using silicon to bond things together, but from some tests I’d done with some of the doors panels, it delaminates at the edges too easily. Cleanup is also hard and it’s difficult to remove all the excess silicon. If you’ve ever tried to paint over silicon you’ll know how bad that can be. The door panels I’d glued together had small fish-eye marks once I painted them. I think I can work around it, but all the other panels will be epoxied I think.

After a bunch of emails back and forth with friends, and a phone call or two – In the end I opted to use a cheap home-brand 60 minute epoxy from Ace Hardware. It’s supposed to setup in 60 minute, hard to the touch/movable in 4 hours and sets fully in 24, but even after 2 hours it was still very soft. Which was good news as it allowed me plenty of time to clean up the excess that squished out. I only had enough clamps for one half of the skins so I tackled the back set first. I’m hoping to get to the front set tonight then on to mounting them on the frame.

I think in the end there was over 60 clamps, paper snaps and clothes pegs stuck to the frame.

This morning the skins had definitely stiffened up, and I’m glad that I’d made sure they were sitting in the correct curved shape I marked on the workbench before going to bed.

Talking of mounting the skins I’ve flip flopped on how best to do this too. Like anything to do with R2 building there always more than one way to go, and there is never a right or wrong answer. I have skin mounting systems from Daniel and Darren, both are very different with pros and cons to each. Darren’s quick snap mounts are made from plastic and allow quick and easy removal, where as Daniel’s are aluminum and require screws to hold everything together. Having experimented with both I’m opting to go with Daniel’s mounting blocks for now.

I also worked on getting the skirt finished this weekend. I didn’t quite finish it ready for painting, but I did get the strips mounted. It probably took close to 4 hours to drill and tap all the small holes.

I started off by marking up where the strips would go and drilling a series of holes.

I then clamped each strip one by one into place, center punched through where the strip needed to be drilled, tapped the hole, reattached to the skirt, repeat for the second hole. That’s a total of 48 holes and 24 taps needed. I also had to cut down each screw as they were too long!

The holes in the strips do not go all the way through, so tapping them was hard and didn’t leave much for the 4-40 screws to hold onto.

Each strip had to be tweaked and filed to get it to fit, and due to the construction of the skirt, some strips are too long and need filing down in length. I’m also going to have to bondo/fill in the gaps before painting.

I’m sure there was more done this weekend, but that seems to cover most of it for now.