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'...