R2: Leg Assembly, and General Unpacking.

September 30th, 2011. My first official day working (again) on R2 number 2. For reference, this will be a regular R2-D2, not one of the variant droids. I'm not looking to be an individual :)

I've also decided that I WILL resurrect the www.mattmunson.com R2 blog, though only as a duplicate of what I put here. I personally like the organization I came up with on that site, and want to maintain it for reference. I've also decided that I am not going to make the blog as detailed as the first R2 build. In general, it will focus on the days accomplishments, not so much how I got there. I fear that if I try to document it too well, I'll lose traction.

Here is the Henricks leg kit, as it came, straight out of the box.



I got the instructions sheet from Matt, and got to work on it. I ended up using some different dowel rods that were SLIGHTLY smaller, and a much better fit. I also had to pick up some new clamps, as the ones I had were not big enough. And there were not enough of them.

I used a micrometer to measure the lengths, a vice to hold the dowel, and a coping saw to cut.




Here's the center leg all glued together.



Here's how the outer leg looks all clamped together.



I went through my old R2 boxes and dug out all the left over or duplicate parts from my last build. I would say I have more than 50% of the parts covered.



The naked dome! I really hope all the heartache I endured on the last dome pays off on this one. I can feel that I'm already intimidated by it.



I did end up finishing all of the legs. Now comes the fun part of puttying, painting and sanding them until they are smooth.