And then there was one...

So, how was Halloween, you ask? Well, given we spent six months building a Dalek, and then I found that work had an exercise scheduled over the top of said Halloween, the answer was 'not so hot'... Visions of Tegan trundling down the street had, admittedly, faded at the beginning of October, when she announced she was going to make a dress for the event. [And that dress turned out awesome by the way, all 8 linear yards of it. But this is not the blog for that!]

So, as I was going to be at work for the event, our sad little Dalek had to make do as a static prop...

Firstly, the Dalek surveyed his domain. Slowly and carefully, as even with an inch of ground clearance, he's not really very good on uneven ground!

Hmmm...Do I exterminate the left of the street, or the right? It's downhill to the right, but the pavement is smoother to the left...

 

Guess I should go an lurk in the shadows. Eat your heart out Dracula! By this stage the cobblestones had shaken up several of the quick-fix fixtures, so it was certainly time for a rest.

We left the Dalek out overnight - he didn't do an awful lot of scaring, but while the kiddies were looking at him, Kristal managed to jump out a few impressionable youths, who will never set foot in Casa Harrison again...

Its the Final Countdown...

So, Halloween is fast approaching (OK, as I write this, it is Halloween), and the last couple of weeks have been busy. Busy with the 101 'little' things that needed to be done to wrap things up...

Obviously I needed some limbs for my mutant, so off to Home Depot once more. I was intending to use metal wardrobe rails, but time was of the essence, so wooden dowel was the order of the day. Next, the pivots. For the arms I had thought this would be the biggest hurdle, but I simply glued a couple of my Christmas decorations together, drilled them out, and voila, a pivot...once I beveled out the frame, and spent an annoying hour seating the brackets inside the shoulders to keep pressure on them, so they wouldn't just rotate down when left unattended - there is nothing worse than a limp dalek!

The eye piece also came together pretty smoothly, although I will need a friction brake or something to stop Mr Dalek constantly looking at his feet. A spot of black and silver paint, and it started to look the deal. Slap on a lot of metallic copper paint, and the below was the result.

 

Yes, I know, they are supposed to be Bronze - but I guess I was working from an internet photo that was darkly lit. Also I could pick up Copper at Home Depot in a tin, and not Bronze.

 

And then a musical interlude... I would like to have shown you pictures of the build for the slats, and how I built the internal mesh for the neck bin. But a) I ran out of time to take pictures, and b) there are some things one should leave to the imagination.. So fast-forward last weekend, and you have...

 

A side by side comparison with the file footage goes a little like this...

So, not bad if I do say so myself. All set for its first adventure on Halloween. Which I now find I will be working throughout, so it will just have to remain a decoration on the front lawn... oh well, next year I guess... That should give me enough time to go back and fix all the shortcuts I had to make, and the little details that have been missed the first time around. Perhaps some lights...motors...hell, why not robotize it???

 



The temple of dome...

So, the crowning achievement. More or less. My plans spoke of building an internal neck bin to support the dome. In hopefully the only smart thing I did with this build, I talked to Mr Ebay and found a lazy susan bearing that was the diameter of the top of the neck, that will serve as the base for the dome. Plus, with a bearing of that diameter, the dome should be able to support 1000 lbs! Pity the plywood will probably fail after 10lbs!

So with the bearing underneath, and using a 1/2" circle as the base (which I had conveniently cut our during my previous attempts on the rings), I built up the shape of the dome in 1/8” ply. Why use such a thin piece of wood, do you ask? Well, because I had 4' x 8' worth of the stuff for cladding the shoulders. The stuff that didn't bend enough. Good move? Time will tell...But as you can see from the picture below, it generally held its shape, with a little help from Mr Construction Adhesive.

Should I have used the 32 or 16 braces other people have used - probably. But hey, it's October, and this mutant needs to get rolling for Halloween. As Plan A was to clad in the same bathroom plastic as the shoulders, I built up supports for the dome lights, and the pivot for the eyestalk.

That same Plan A was to roll the dome (inverted) across the sheet of plastic, and trace out the required arcs. In the picture above you can see that didn't quite work (perhaps with 32 braces, but not 8!). So back to Mr Internet, and the helpful apps that allow you to calculate conic sections... Once I had those calculations, it was a (relatively) simple afternoon's work to scribe out the arcs using the rotary cutter. Interesting fact - rotary cutter against plywood - instant lightsaber-ish cutting. Against an eighth of an inch of plastic, less impressive. I guess if the Empire had clad their clones in plastic armour, they'd be a lot more alive now...

 Anyhow, with arcs cut, the rest of the afternoon was spend fixing them down with the last of the adhesive. For those of you who know how this story goes, obviously at this point I wished I had used 1/4" braces, to give the glue more surface area to stick to... But eventually it was all in place and generally indicated a sort of dome-like profile. Once again 'conceptually simple' came to the fore - no sooner had the thought 'I'll just fill in all the gaps and inconsistently with spackle' formed, that the shape below lay before me, looking like a first attempt at an igloo cake by a pre-schooler. As much as I sanded, it refused to come into shape. To make matters worse, spackle isn't the world's more flexible substance (and I don't think even Bondo would have hacked the flexing of the cladding).

  

 But never fear - at least spackle is water soluble. After stripping it back, I bit the bullet and fiberglassed the whole thing. I know I had discarded this material at the very beginning, but as my 'burn the dalek counter' was incrementing towards 1000, it was make or break time. Below is the first coat (which for the moment is the only one, now 1 week to Halloween), prior to filling and painting...

Sloped shoulders...

OK, the dome is shaping up, now its time to bite the bullet and get the shoulders done. I guess looking back I spent an awfully long time trying to work out how to cut all the cladding in graceful and accurate curves. When all I needed to do is think 'spackle was fix it!' Below are two shots of the rough work I did on the base cladding, with the help of two bags of clamps and another tube of adhesive.

 

 

Tegan then came to the rescue, as to how to bridge the gap between the sheets (for the now-infamous 45 degree rebates. Inside the shoulders I laid drywall tape, and fixed each edge of it down with duct tape. Then I spackled to my heart's content...

OK - sort of. If in doubt, paint it, and hope that hides the bad bits...

Sticking your neck out...

As a concept the neck is one of the most simplest of concepts – like riding a bike. Three rings, supported by 8 uprights. Throw in some screen down mesh and you're done - unfortunately, also like riding a bike, the neck involves smooth circles, that if they get a bit bumpy and rough, bring the entire concept to its knees. With a cry of 'I'll be done with this by tea-time' I whipped out my sheet of ply (3/4”, to match the plans) and proceeded to jigsaw a shape that was almost, but not entirely, unlike a circle. Oh God, another scifi reference... Anyhoo, between the dips, the high points and the out-and-out gouges, it looked like the Dalek had been in a demolition derby. Not to be outwitted, I proceeded to attempt to bevel the edge at 45 degrees with the jigsaw (the general thought being two cuts make a right). Now the Dalek was looking unsatisfactory in three dimensions! I set it aside and came back to it the next morning - guess what, now the dalek was unsatisfactory in four dimensions!


And so began a journey that led me to becoming a jedi – or at least the hardware equivalent of one. I know I'm mixing SF metaphors here ('Gandalf says use the force, Harry'), but stay with me. I have often wondered when I would get to wield a true lightsaber. Two words. Rotary cutter. 24000 RPM of pure evil, directed onto a single point on earth. Or a 4x8' sheet of MDF. Thank you Mr Ryobi... An afternoon with my new toy and a circle guide produced my three rings, and a 45 degree bevelled router bit rounded out the day.

Of course, energy density being what it is in 2013, you can almost hear your light saber spooling down as it sucks all the power from your 18v batteries. Oh – and if you drain your batteries too quickly, they get so hot that the charger won't charge them! So next time you see Liam Neeson melting a bulkhead wall with his trusty 'saber, spare a thought for the battery!

So, with the basic building blocks in place, and with Tegan's expert eyesight, we mocked up the right height on the levels of the neck, and started pinning and gluing. Now all the neck needs it a lick of paint, those detail blocks at each upright join, and some rubber matting to obscure the operator. The interweb tells me the show used 'Heronrib' pool matting, which is easy to procure – at $1700 a 50 foot roll! Hmm... sounds like I need to get to know my 99c store a bit better, and see whether they have some rubber bath mats that will do the job...

Oh, so I guess you want an update... below is Tegan inside the Dalek, with the initial topcoat of paint on the skirt. Yes, it is poo brown...soon to be replaced by something more 'dominant lifeform of the galaxy'...

Big Balls...

Big Balls

Once the skirt had bent to my will (quite literally in this case), it was time for the hemispheres (the bumpy bits that stick out of the skirt). Dalek Trivia – there are 56 of the blighters. Once I worked out what people on Ebay actually call 4" Christmas decorations, this turned out to be one of the simplest parts of the build. Adopting a production line method, a dab of epoxy managed to affix a 2 ½ inch bolt inside each half of the decoration. Until one half of the epoxy runs out, and after a week the glue hasn't set! Looks like one half of the 50/50 epoxy mixture ran out prematurely, and so I had slathered uncured glue on my bolts. Then Tegan ran them through the spray paint stage, primer and top-coat (champagne mist, to be precise). My interweb plans advised that the NSD hemispheres had a rubber seal at the base, a 4” oil seal apparently. As the cost of these looked to be rather prohibitive, I settled for using some high density automotive trim seals – while they don't quite have the same profile, it was quite good enough for government work! Then I re-glued the bolts that didn't set properly, or the ones that ended up an inch off center! I must have had a spot of 3:30-itis for that one!

 

 

The seat of power

One of the bits that don't rate a mention in the dimensional plans is the seat. Pretty useful if you want a person inside it. Or a mutant (but they are hard to find these days). Note to self, work out the dimensions of the seat before cutting out the base, even if it does provide you with the frame for the top of the skirt. What I found was that, between the hole and the sides of the skirt, there wasn't much room to fit a seat that was supported by anything more than hope and good wishes. After an afternoon trimming and grinding the seat sides away, I finally got it to fit – on the upside, the skirt isn't going anywhere once it is wrapped around that seat! Reports that I spent an hour sitting Davros-like on said seat beeping around the garage are completely unfounded. Disregard any worried reports from the citizens of Lompoc who may have watched me through the open garage door...

The cold shoulder

The shoulders (the section where the gun and sucker arm come out of) started out as a simple build – as one of the software engineers I worked with in Alice Springs once described just such a situation, it was 'conceptually simple' – code for 'great idea, as long as someone else does it for you'. So the shoulders are a transition between the 11 sided angular shape of the fender/skirt to a continually rounded shape. While the gun box provides some welcome symmetry and angles, the rest of the form are all sweeping bends and swooping transitional lines. I can now understand why the builders of the Sydney Opera House decided to short-cut Mr Utzon's original design for a constantly changing curve on the sails, and make it segmented. They didn't want to end up terminally insane!

At this point I also realized why the smart money was on moulding with fiberglass. At least with fiberglass you can build up a shape gradually, and merge the curves into the lines of the box out front. 'If not fiberglass, use bendy MDF' said the interweb. Riiight...1/8” ply didn't quite bend enough, and so I quickly ended up with two lengths of MDF, with a jagged edge separating them. So next came the sheet of bathroom waterproof cladding – a great find, bendy and easy to cut. But a bugger to keep in the right shape. As you can see below it gives the right basic shape. Although thanks to the redesign my bathroom plastic now has to mold into a crease through the middle of the shoulders. Now a constant curve in two dimensions I can handle. A constant curve in three dimensions - not so much.

 

After an afternoon wrestling with the material, and using up all my clamps, I resolved to set this task aside. Perhaps until the next millenium. I'll update in a later post how I solved the problem. Or I'll post some nice pics of a flaming dalek sitting in the middle of my street, a middle-aged man prancing around it in celebration...

In the meantime, I found some busy work in patching and painting the remainder of the creation. With the skirt just primed in white, it started to look like a 'Remembrance' Imperial dalek (OK, OK, the hemispheres were all flat and squished on them, but you get the general idea). If I don't get the top done for Halloween, I can maybe switch it into a Davros chair for the night!

You know...Short skirts are back

So now with an odd-shaped surfboard-on-wheels cluttering up the garage (it was at this point we realized that the fender was now too large to wheel through the side gate to the house, let along through a normal sized door), it was onto the skirt - that's the bit with the bubbles coming out of it! The design called for a 1” thick internal frame top and bottom to locate the skirt sides, with internal bracing to establish the right dimensions. I calculated that if I were careful (!), we could cut out the frame for the top of the skirt from the top sheet of the fender, and use off-cuts for the bracing. That just left the frame for the base of the skirt - rather than choosing the logical options of just going out and buying an entire fresh piece of ply for that, I chose to frame together individual lengths of wood in an effort that the Grand Duke of Mitre would be proud of (the picture below shows my final effort sitting on top of the fender base), before we cut out the top frame.

 

While ecologically sound, (much of a new sheet would have ended up as scrap), this victory of economics over structural strength lasted as far as the first sides of the skirt were secured to it, before ripping apart under the torsional strain. As you can see from the pictures below, while the read and side panels of the skirt are relatively flat, the forward panels undergo a quite significant transition from bottom to top. The coffee mug is holding down our plans, as we try to see (once more) what seems to have gone wrong...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After threatening to set fire to the blasted thing (not the only time the thought has crossed my mind so far), I set to work with braces, tacks and more lashings of construction adhesive. Once we had reinforced our handiwork, next was the problem of the twist in the side panels, particularly the front two pieces. Particularly as I had chosen 1/4" ply, vice the 1/8" suggested in some of the build material. While this allowed the skirt to support its own weight (which is what I will tell people who don't read this when they ask why the sides are so thick), it really didn't want to bend! Hey – guess what, the torsional strain broke my reinforcing again! At this point of the build, though, it was make or break time. So clamps, tacks, glue and swearing were employed in equal measure to achieve the fit. Who cares that some of the sides didn't quite match up, and were at odd angles...that's what jigsaws and circular saws are for (by this stage the Harrison's relationship with Mr Ryobi had moved to Platinum status). The photo below shows the skirt framed and attached, and the exotic angles of some of the joins...

 

At this point Tegan became more that intimate with applying spackle (and large quantities of it, as you can see from the panel gaps). And the joys of sanding. And spackling. And sanding...

 

Scarily enough (for something that a Harrison is building), after about a month and a half, the Dalek was actually starting to resemble the picture in the plan. Which normally means we have left something vital out, or it is about to fall in a heap again. Anyhow, onwards and upwards.

In the beginning...

Dalek build report

So the Harrisons have been building a Dalek through 2013. You may wonder why, after relocating to the USA for work, packing away all my tools after a busy year working on our house in Queanbeyan, and generally looking forward to cruising around the US in a convertible Mustang, one would decide to commit to such a significant build project with equivalent of a screwdriver and a roll of duct tape (and when I say 'equivalent' I mean...I had a screwdriver and a roll of duct tape). Not to undermine the crucial role that duct tape plays in modern Western Civilization, but you haven't seen Mythbusters build a dalek out of it. Hmm... perhaps next year...

Anyhoo, back to the project. Partially the result of needing a father-daughter project to keep her off the couch, and partially the half-drunken ramblings of a middle-aged fool (who, if I remember rightly, was sunk into the samesuch couch at the time), the decision was made to embark on a new and exciting challenge.

First off, which version to build? An interesting question, one which I rapidly found ill-prepared for, even for someone who considers themselves addicted to the show. OK, I knew that the Daleks had changed colour over time, but really – did you know that the fenders gradually shrank during the 80's? Or that the domes changed curvature? Perhaps it is a male thing, and we really don't notice what shoes a girl is wearing, but a dalek is a dalek is a dalek, right? Apparently not. Then again, perhaps in my most attentive phase of life (the self-same 80's, as a pubescent male), I was paying more attention to the female cast, rather than the pepper-pots... … … sorry, back again, drifted off again... visions of Ace and a baseball bat kind of tuned me out for a moment...

Anyhoo, once again back on track. As said daughter is a child of the modern era (seasons 28 onwards – why haven't we won that fight yet???), it was logical to follow the New Series Dalek (of NSD for those in the building know). Many thanks to the denizens of the interweb (Specifically the contributors to Project Dalek), and their attention to detail in building the plans we used.

Next, what material to build with? OK, realism (!) would dictate fibreglass and vacuum-formed parts. However a) our permanent workspace would be approximately 6 x 15 feet in size (the space between the two cars already in our garage, and b) something about me bringing volatile chemicals into the house with an untrained assistant didn't capture the imagination of OC Home Command. So, wood it was to be. And so began our intimate and enduring relationship with the good people at the Home Depot!

Fender bender

Now before I started I didn't know Daleks had fenders – if pushed I would have called it the 'bit at the bottom'. But suddenly when something becomes the foundation for every other piece of your creation, you start to pay an awful lot of attention! So, with a sheet of 3/4” ply, we commenced at the base in late March, and by April had the fender base cut out, and the support braces for the fender sides cut out and glued into place. All things being equal, I would normally have used more screws and nails, but in the interests of time, and minimize my Home Depot bills, we found construction adhesive to be more than adequate, as the fender sides don't support any weight (aside from themselves). A set of eBay castors provided the support from the floor (we ended up with 5, to minimize the flex of the baseplate. One lesson leant, though (and this may be more of a lesson observed, because we re-learnt it throughout the build), is the law of unintended consequences from trying to minimize wastage of wood. In this case, I saw that I could cut two fender supports from the one square of wood, if I cut diagonally across them to create the angle profile. While economical with materials, this meant that each support only touched the ground at a single point, and the surface where you would normally nail or screw into was angled. This led to some irregularities with the alignment of the supports, requiring a little more filler between the joins as should have been necessary.