Who needs Yahtzee? Family Fun Night Is Building A Periscope

Over the weekend we recieved a nice suprise. The aluminum periscope Artoo uses in Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back arrived in the mail. This is a really cool piece and Mike Wheeler did an incredible job with the detail on it. The kit consisted of the following components:

The parts consist of the periscope itself, three lenses, black plastic O-rings, the aluminum riser base, the different shaft assemblies and finally all of the hardware (screws).

The boys and I started by assembling the riser shafts and inserting the rubber insert pieces and O-rings.

Having assembled the riser shaft pieces we then began attaching them to the periscope.

The periscope itself has tapped holes that are countersunk to run a screw through in order to attach the riser shafts as seen in the picture below:

We took our time attaching each riser piece by piece so that we could keep it straight. The boys would take turns tightening the screw while the other held the riser shaft in place.

We continued this process with all three of the riser shafts until we had them all securely attached to the periscope.



Finally we had only the base left to attach. The boys had the hang of it by then so they knocked it out with very little effort. The base is also pre-drilled and countersuck to allow easy attachment of the riser shafts. The center hole allows for us to run a wire through the base and into the periscope so we can add the lights in the periscope at a later date.

After only 15 minutes we had the periscope assembled.

This is an up close picture of it fully assembled.

The base will allow us to insert a pipe so that once installed in the dome and with the assistance of a riser mechanism we will be able to raise and lower it through the top of the dome. We will also have the ability to rotate it up to 360 degrees once it has cleared the dome. One of the pie panels from the top of Artoo's head that is currently in the sanding stage will be JB Welded to the top of the periscope and as mentioned before we will eventually wire up lights as well inside the periscope itself. We will also need to prime and paint it to make it screen accurate.

Now time to get back to sanding. We still have 4-5 differnt gritts of sandpaper to use on the dome and we also recieved all of our LED bulbs, bezels, circuit boards etc. so will be starting to solder the circuit boards for all of the main dome lights in the coming weeks as well. Between scouts and T-ball time is much more limited but we will continue to post our progress as we go.