WonderCon 2014: Day 2

Today was the second day of WonderCon at the Anaheim Convention Center. We had a few less droids but still had fun. Tomorrow is Easter for some so the crowds may die down. I was joined again by Victor Franco, Dan Johnson, Roy Powers, Russell. Chris Romine, Will Miyamoto (and his family), Gene Arena, and many more builders.

Fighting for equality for short stormtroopers!

Game of Thrones meets Star Wars

Droids like Selfies too.

WonderCon 2014: DAY 1

Today was the first day of WonderCon where I had something close to a droid. I had the frame and dome out for display as the legs are needing work/replacing.
It was very crowded and lots of fun. I was joined by Victor Franco, Will Miyamoto, Chris Romine, Dan Johnson, Roy  Powers, Russell, Paul, and many more builders. I stayed from noon to 5:30 (not 7pm when the event ended) in the R2 Builders Club booth.

Almost all of the 12-14 droids we had today

My frame so far with skins

Mike Senna and Zoidberg

Roy Powers with his R2

Will Miyamoto's stroller droid with a minion

My styrene dome

Victor Franco (right) and Chris Romine (left) taking Victors R2 to the builders panel

Russell gets an interview!

JAWA!!!

Taking R2 Apart Again. Droid Coins Arrive

I needed to take R2 apart again to work on some part separately in the future. So I took the legs off and the foot shells and motor holders off.

 

I ordered droid coins way back in 2013 from Mike Kurtz. Because of a lost email and address, I never heard back or got my coins until now. I was able to contact him over Facebook and the coins arrived 3 days later. I've been scammed on multiple online purchases and was afraid he wasn't legitimate. Fortunately, he is legitimate and the coins are pretty cool.

 

A small update: Repairs, parts, and the new year

I haven't posted here in a long time mainly because of college. I have been buying parts here and there and planning out repairs for R2 when I have the time. Because of college, I may not do to many big things with R2 until the end of May but hope that I can at least get his leg fixed before April. I have some events coming up that will just require parts to be displayed or a static droid so R2 won't be sitting collecting dust.
If I do have any time during my week off in March  for spring break, R2 will definitely get some repairs on the right leg.

Battery boxes came from Jerry Martin and I got some more resin parts as a Secret Santa gift in December.

R2 fell in the car almost on the way to an event and now has a "broken" right leg I need to fix when I have time. I may need to make a new leg or buy a new set of them. You can see here, I think, that he is standing a bit crooked.

On a happier note, R2 enjoyed New Years and celebrated 2014 with a new glow in the dark white  tree of Gondor sweater.

R2 Now Has Feet Shells!! He will be standing once more by tomorrow before Halloween night

R2 FINALLY let me put him shoes (foot shells) on. Grey because Rico gave them to me and his droid is black, I'll paint them soon. Big thanks to Rico for letting have these, they were cracked and broken in places but I fixed them up.
Still need to put on the center ankle one but that's easy. Waiting for the glue to dry isn't . Now all I need to do is put the shoulder disks back on with the pipes already attached and R2 will stand again after I put the center ankle back in. Then its just a matter of dropping in the nuts and bolts. Hot glued the small weak spots, works really well actually. The frame is all ready to have resin parts put in, shouldn't take more than an hour or so. Need to drill about 6 more holes for the pipes and center ankle bracket bolts and R2 will be event ready. I got some spray paint and will paint my resin parts before mounting them into the frame. Then putting the skins on. I've done way more in a day than that, this should take a few hours spread over 2-3 days at most. Also the foot shells seem to have closed in the channel on the ankle so R2's ankles don't wobble anymore. I had to remove and place Victor Franco's ankle blocks a bit higher and to the side because the extra centimeter made the legs not go down to the holes for the ankle bolts. R2 will be 95% complete (on details, no sound r/c or dome rotation) by Saturday!

Frame Build Day with Victor Franco & Wiliam Miyamoto

I took R2's new frame, skins, and other things down to Victor Franco's place with Will Miyamoto (Darth Will) for some frame work. Will was going to glue up his 4th frame for The Million Dollar R2 Project and I was going to have more experienced builders help me glue up and test fit my frame. The old frame had some flaws that I didn't want popping up again so I let the experts teach me how to assemble a Senna wood frame perfectly.

Will began test fitting his frame once more before gluing his up. Meanwhile, Victor checked my center ankle measurements on the bottom ring and made a neater cut than I could do. He also got those nuts and bolts off the pipe and rails with the right sized sprocket wrench.

 Will came over to look at the cut and seemed to have found an amusing mistake. Since Victor had flipped over the bottom ring to mark his own measurements, the cut was facing the wrong way. The whole process had to be repeated. This won't negatively impact my frame, just look funny with a "t" shaped cut.

 

Will's frame seemed to fit together great, and after some sanding on tight slots, we helped him glue up the frame and put the skins on with straps. Will filmed this whole thing and may posy it on YouTube. I only did 2 pieces since Will was super fast and my old frame had really loose slots so putting in vertical ribs was easier. Will's was snug and looked great.

We did my frame next with a few dumps in the road. The slots were very tight and the vertical pieces too thick so I sanded them down with Victor and Will's help.

Next came the skins, my inner ones were in bad shape since I wasn't careful enough and tore some delicate edges. I had also made a huge crooked curved slice after the blade slipped and sliced me. I was too busy cleaning up blood and bandaging my finger to see how bad it was. Lesson learned. No cutting styrene at midnight when tired and unable to be careful.
 The outer skins are still good so we used them to test the frame's dry and glued up fit.

A successful build day!

R2 Takes on C3PO's "Empire" Position ( time for the new frame)

THIS IS WHAT KIDS DO TO YOUR R2 WHEN YOU DON'T LET THEM DRIVE HIM!!!!!
 (I'm joking)

Remember when they pulled C3PO apart in "The Empire Strikes Back"?  My R2 had a chance to experience that feeling. R2 has a new frame but needs the stuff pulled out of the old one first. I planned to take the center ankle off first then pull the electrical and gas pipes apart....this wouldn't happen. To get to the pipes and get the center ankle out I had to rip R2's old frame apart with my jigsaw. My poor friend became a pile again.

R2 had most of his frame removed except for the wood attached to the rails. Having an airplane mechanic (Roy Powers did almost too good of a job) tighten the nuts and bolts on your R2 can be a double edged sword, they will never fall off but will be hard to get off. They came off eventually with help from Victor but my dad's old wrench couldn't get them.

So this is what remained of R2 except for to whole jumble in the pic before this. His dome is ok too.

Here's the pile of stuff and the new wood frame ready to be worked on.