No gaming for me this week as it was mum’s birthday on Tuesday which is normally game night, and we went out for a family mean instead. Which was a really nice night so not a bad thing to doing in place of a bit of gaming. That was on the back of having a very loved up weekend where I did no gaming and no hobby but did have a really nice time. Considering the bad weather, we had here in the North West of England it was actually really nice to stay indoors, with a nice drink or two and lots of box sets to watch. A good way to keep the batteries recharged.
That has meant I’ve only had a couple of evenings to work on the Grot Bots but I have put it to good use. With the delivery from Antenocities Workshop I was hoping to have all of the bits that I needed to crack on with some of the other parts. On looking through what I had ordered I had a bit of panic that I had got the wrong size box section for the feet. However, after actually measuring them and comparing them to the existing Bots everything was ok so I was able to make a start on the feet this week. I wanted to do this because there are quite a lot of steps involved in making them and ideally after each of the earlier steps you need to leave them for quite a while to allow the glue to cure properly. That and the fact that I need to actually make forty of the things so getting these built up would be a major step forward.
The basic construction of the feet involves cutting the box section to length and then cutting the angle section for the back of the foot. Not hard but when you have to do this forty times, and I will keep repeating that number, it surprising how it eats up time. With that done I then had to add some plasticard to the front and back of the foot to seal it all up. Then wait for the glue to cure properly before cutting out a section at the front of the foot so the it looks like the foot can actually walk.
That gives me the basic layout of the foot but I then needed to fit an ankle to it so that it can in turn be attached to the leg. On the mark I this was quite a basic connection so for the mark II I wanted to add a bit more detail. Nothing like adding pressure and complexity when you have a deadline looming. The basic concept for the ankles was to file a round section out of the foot which would then allow a section of round tubing to fit into it. This was all I did on the first version but for this I decided to make it look a bit more realistic, for a weird sci-fi robot creation. So what I’ve done is taken a round tube as before but then I’ve then cut it in half instead of creating a groove for it and then added couple of a strips to either side that make it look like it is actually secured to the rest of the foot. Then I’ve added some side plates to give it a bit more structure and detail. Add some bolts, along with a few jags at the front of the foot and I think the whole thing comes together nicely.
Whilst measuring out and cutting the forty pieces of tubing I needed for the ankles I steeled myself for a bit of extra work and doubled up the numbers to cut the pieces I needed for the knees at the same time. Again all very easy work just measure and cut. But even with a fine razor saw the pieces still need cleaning up, or I needed to clean them up, before they can be used. And I know I’m repeating myself but all this takes time that adds up very quickly when you take in the number of times you need to go through each step.
I’ve got the design for the lower leg worked out in my head and I don’t think I need to make any tweaks to these as they should work well with what I have already done on the other parts. The thighs on the other hand are something of worry for me. The original design doesn’t seem to fit it in with some of the changes I’ve made on the mark II so I may need to have a play with couple of ideas to get something that will work but that is still a few weeks away at the moment so I’m not worrying to much about it at the moment. But I do think that to stay on course I need to have the legs finished by #253 if I’m going to stand any chance of having things finished before I set off for Adepticon.
I also had a bit of scare this week and came very close to wrecking a lot of the work I had already done. My work desk currently has, or at least it did before this incident, lots of piles of pieces at various stages of completion. For a lot of these builds my plastic glue of choice is Slatters Mek Pack, which for those of you haven’t used it is a liquid glue you apply with a brush. I just like the control and coverage you can get with it. Well that’s all well and good until you decide to knock the bottle over. Luckily for me it was nearly empty and only ran over my pile of off cuts but the resultant carnage was a sight to behold. It very quickly turns these parts into a sticky mess and if it had covered the parts I had already worked on it would have been a disaster. So I’m now being extra cautious and bagging up the parts I’m not actually working on and moving them away from my work area. Once bitten, twice shy sort of approach.
That’s it for this week. I hope you have all had a good week, whatever you have been up to and that you have a good one ahead of you. Hope to catch you all again next week were I will hopefully have some more updates for you. Although to be fair they will probably all start to merge into blob of white on a green background. But I’m hoping it will come together in the end. So until next week have a good one whatever you are doing.
