Every great saga has a beginning. For my boys and I this is ours.
The three of us are avid Star Wars fans. I guess you could say that the Force runs strong in our family. My oldest son loves Legos and one day told me that he wanted to build an R2. I am not one to tell my boys that they can't do something so with a little help from the internet I found Astromech.net which is a club dedicated to building R2D2 and other Star Wars droids. After a little research I joined and was overwhelmed by both the vast information as well as the astromech community and their willingness to help. We decided to start our build by making R2's head (referred to as the "dome" in the builders world)
We recieved our 300mm Aluminum Dome that Darren makes. As you can see....the boys are thrilled. All three of us. I quickly realized that the kitchen table was not going to suffice as a work station (provided I wished to stay married) so the first step of our R2 build was to construct a tool bench in the garage. By the time I finished that with the help of my wife and boys it was a horse shoe shape giving us plenty of room.
Now take into consideration that I live outside of Houston,Texas and we are suffering in the second worst drought on record in Houston so some work has been completed thus far at the kitchen table while my fortunately forgiving wife was out of town. Way I see it is if I am dumb enough to post the pictures I might as well be honest on the front end. Anyways..... on with the build.
As mentioned before, we opted to build the dome using the 300mm aluminum dome. This is the "Cadillac" of domes and comes laser cut as the picture shows. Cole Horton has a great tutorial for the dome (Thanks Cole!) which I read, re-read and then read once more with the boys before we started.
While the dome is pre-cut, there are still small pieces of aluminum that need to be removed. To do this (and per Cole's tutorial recommendation) I used a small metal punch from Home Depot (seen below). I would start in the corners and just exert a little pressure by hand and pop it out. On the dome pie panels which are at the top of the dome even the small punch was too big so I used the nail cleaner tip of a small pair of fingernail clippers (also pictured below).
Having finished removing the extra aluminum from the cutting process it was time to call it a night.
The next night I started fresh with a little hack saw fun. Now this build is something that I am doing with my two boys but as they are 5 & 3 dad has to do the steps that require a steady hand or sharp object. I point this out as the main reason for this project was so that we could make memories while making R2 but the boys are involved even if holding my hand while I saw back and forth.
Prior to removing the panels I flipped the dome over and labeled the inside with a Sharpie marker so that when it came time to re-attach the panels I would know where they went.
Next we laid down newspapers on the kitchen table and sprayed the tabs with WD-40 so that the hacksaw blade would not slip. We would cut the tab loose on one side and then gently "wiggle" the panels back and forth until it popped loose from the opposite side.
Having removed all of the panels it was back to Home Depot where I purchased a wood & metal file set. Letting the boys take turn holding the panels I would file down the tab until everything was flush. The sun was still out so I ran to Walgreens and picked up some nail files (180grit) so that we could start smoothing the panels where there are little pieces of aluminum slag. For the larger areas that need to be de-burred using the metal files or 240 grit sand paper ole' dad will probably do that while the boys are jumping on the trampoline.
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| Emery Boards from Walgreens |
