Day 47 - Trimming the foam

Nothing much to go into detail on, just trimmed the foam today.  I think I went a little overkill!  I mainly used a hacksaw, but for some of the tighter spots where the saw wouldn't fit, I used a box cutter (at one point, I had to take the blade out and use it directly).

I'll need to sand it down further to get a nice recess to apply a good layer of Bondo, but I'll do that a little later in the week, I think.  This part will probably take me a few days, so I might not be reporting in much until it's done, but I promise, LOTS of pictures!  I think I'm up to almost 250 now in this build diary!

Day 46 - FOAM!

After I got home from work today, I spent most of my time cleaning up and re-arranging everything in the garage.  I was tired of breathing sawdust and tripping over tools and cables.  Now everything is much tidier, so I rewarded myself with some "bubbly":

THIS kind of bubbly!

My god, I've been wanting to do that part for so long!  Hahahahaaa!

Day 45 - Laser cutting gunbox details / Dalek mummification

Today (Sunday) was a light workday.  I had to go into my office to get a head start on some day-job stuff, and when I finished, I decided to go up to Metrix Create:Space again and have them laser cut the gunbox details onto some 3mm baltic birch stock that they carry.  I had decided to settle on the dimensions that the 2005 plans called for, which was 13.8cm, rather than 14cm on another blueprint .pdf.  Here's a movie of them being cut!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTBCNncQJUA

When I got home, I took the clamps off the last cladding strips, drew some trim lines even with the front trapezoid piece, and dremeled them.  I then started to wrap the whole shoulder section in masking tape to prepare it for foaming.

As I reached certain sections, I started to get puzzled as to how I wanted to mask/shape everything when the time came.  Especially the area where the sides of the gun boxes meet the shoulders.  I've seen various different ways people have handled it in their own builds, and I'm wondering if it really matters since that area will be mostly hidden with a shoulder slat anyhow.  Anyway, I took a picture so that you can see what I'm talking about.

I also temporarily taped the gunbox details to the gunboxes because I wanted to see a "preview" of what they will look like when I eventually attach them.  They look so awesome!  I'll probably sand down the edges a bit, though, since the reference photos make them look a little rounded.

And, finally, the latest stack shot, showing how I've fully mummified the shoulders.  Now I just need to figure out what I'm going to sit that piece on so that I can go crazy with the foam this week.  I must say, I'm getting shivers as this beast gets closer and closer to completion!

Day 44 - Finished neck bolts and final shoulder cladding strips

After spending a bit of time making .eps files for the light cages, I swung by Metrix Create:Space here in Seattle to get them cut out onto acrylic sheets.  I got to watch as the laser cutter sliced out these beauties.  Such lovely work!  I think I'll return to them for the gunbox detailing, and see if they can cut HDF or something similar.

For the light cage bottom, my intent is to glue the 4.5mm and 6mm pieces together for a total height of 10.5mm.  Then, I will glue the thinner, wider 3mm thick part (Ring 1) on top of that, which is where the screw holes will also be drilled.

The struts are .35mm too thin, and the ring tops are .5mm too thin, but I pretty much don't care.  I'll also drill holes into each end of the struts, as well as the top rings.

The rest of the day was all about getting the shoulders (finally) ready for their expanding foam.  Because of the size of the gunbox hole, I needed to add one more spacer before I could make my card template.  So, I did that, then made a card template, used it to jigsaw out some final strips of HDF board, and soaked those in the bathroom sink for an hour.

I wanted them to dry with a bit more of a curve than what was called for, because I don't have any clamps that can reach midway down the shoulders.  You'll see what I mean at the end of this entry.  I decided to clamp them in reverse inside the top shoulder ring.  I applied a bit of heat from a hair dryer, and then set to work on the rest of the neck blocks while those where drying.

I don't have pics for this part, but I used the jigsaw to cut the small comb-like cuts I wrote about before for the remaining 23 blocks.  Boring, boring, boring.  Except this is where my first injury of this whole diary occurred—I sliced my thumb a bit when my box knife slipped.  I had been scoring the comb-like cuts to make them fall our easier.  Oops.  Washed, alcoholed, bandaged, back to work.

I hadn't unboxed my new drill yet, so I assembled it in fairly short order, then set to work making a jig to account for the 45° angle of the 1/2" hole I needed to drill.  I used the remaining uncut strut board, a few clamps here and there, and another piece of wood to keep the neck bolts from sliding.  Viola.

Oh, I don't think I mentioned this: I found a wood store right next to a new tool shop I discovered (the one where I bought my drill), and that wood shop happened to have two packs of 12 1/2" wooden balls in stock!  Exactly 24 remaining in their whole store.  Kismet!

I attached a 1/2" round router bit to the drill and tested it out, setting the drill limit as I did so that I could make uniform holes in all 24 neck bolts.  I tested each of them out before proceeding to the next, and they all wound up with a really nice fit.

I decided that I wanted to again take a page out of AdamSt's diary and countersink these blocks so that I could attach them to the neck struts with wood screws.  I replaced the 1/2" router bit with one of my countersink bits that I got waaay back when I was making the skirt, and drilled away.

In the plans, I also noticed that the blocks are slightly rounded on some edges.  I don't have a bench sander, so I clamped my orbital sander to my table and did it that way, mostly with it turned off, actually!  But sometimes I would rev it up to make quicker work of this very tedious task.

Finally, I attached all the bolts to the struts with screws, first taking my hand drill and making an angled hole in the strut through the neck block hole.  I didn't want the strut to split while I was screwing in a wood screw, after all.

And, ta-da, the completed (yet unsanded) neck bin!  This piece is now VERY sturdy.

By this time, I had burned a lot of hours with all the repetitive work this entailed.  The cladding I had set out to dry was very dry, indeed, and ready for gluing.  As I stated earlier in this entry, I didn't have clamps large enough to apply direct pressure to the strips, so I wanted a more severe curve in the HDF that would require less pressure.  Clamping the pieces to the inside of the top shoulder ring accomplished this nicely, and I was able to rig together a loose clamping solution that should take care of this final part.

Once it's dry, I can start FOAMING!  I. Cannot. Wait.

Day 43 - Gun boss front

Total departure from plywood, MDF, and HDF for today's entry!

I went to a co-worker's house yesterday who had volunteered to break out his metal lathing machine (which he hadn't used in a year, I found out), and brought along the aluminum I had previously purchased.  But, on the way, I first had to CAF-FEI-NATE!, so I stopped at a familiar Seattle site.  As usual, when someone asks how my day is going, I will give them a literal answer rather than a "Oh, I'm gooooood, thaaaaanks." So, I told them I'm on my way to build a part for my Dalek.  Then, when my coffee order was ready, I saw this.

So that started the day off in a lovely way!  Anyway, on to the more interesting stuff.  I'm not going to describe all of this in too much detail, for my friend did most of the work, and I was essentially in a quality assurance role.

First, we needed to mount the aluminum and center it, since the piece wasn't too much bigger than what the width of the finished piece would be.  Oh, by the way, we worked on this thing converting from metric to imperial all the while, to the 1,000th decimal point!  For this piece, we needed the OD to be 54mm, or rather, 1.692 inches.  He had an interesting gadget that measured the surface of the mounted piece, and he would hand-spin it to see the variations as it turned, making minuscule tweaks to the mounting posts as he did so.

Once is was securely centered, he then began boring out the middle hole.  We decided to be just shy of an inch (<25.4mm) so that when I got the pipe I need (still wondering about stainless steel vs aluminum on that), we would further bore it out accordingly.  I took some videos of this part; the clang at the end of the second one was one of my gun rods being vibrated off the work table, hehe!

(Side note: I had swung by Lowe's on the previous day and found a scrap of corrugated pipe that looked like 1" in OD, but turned out to be wider.  It's a pity, since I liked the thick walls of this pipe.  However, it was too wide ultimately, and that sucker was *heavy*.  Good weapon to thwart burglars, though.)

He then trimmed the stock to the proper width, within about a thousandth of an inch tolerance.

Then, we had some fun geometry errors when lining up his angled cutter mount, accidentally using the reciprocal angle of the one we should have been using (which, if you're keeping score, is 38.66°).  But, the good thing about a mistake like that is you can correct it.  We changed to the correct angle, and shaved off the incorrect one!


Wash, rinse, repeat, until all angles and interior diameters were cut, then we sanded and cut off the piece from the remainder of the stock.

He then proceeded to lathe down a piece of wood, mark eight lines on another, and bolted the two together with the gun boss tip mounted on.  This then got clamped onto his drill press table, and the decorative holes were then marked and drilled.  This was when we both noticed that the center band where the holes are drilled wasn't as wide as the plans (5mm), so our decorative holes were a little big for it.  I don't really mind, though.  What bothered me a tiny bit more was that the spacing between all eight wasn't exactly uniform due to drill bit drift, along with the unclamping and reclamping of the jig.  But, you'd have to be really close to the Dalek to see that.

Next up was drilling the holes for the rods.  I had brought the rods with me to his house so that we could test the holes as we cut them.  And we got them nice and snug!  They are 3/16", by the way, or ~0.187".  I didn't want to use the decorative holes as a guide since, as I said, they were slightly non-equidistant from each other.  So we checked and rechecked and rechecked before committing to the plunge of the press.  We also wound up drilling all the way through the piece (instead of stopping just short of the barrel) so that the rods have the maximum amount of space to be set within.

Roughly 5 hours later, we were done.  It surprised both of us that it took that long!  The final piece isn't perfectly symmetrical, but I think it's going to be fine.  We learned a few lessons and will be applying those for when we next get together for the base of the gun.

Day 42 - Neck blocks

There wasn't a whole lot going on in Dalekland this weekend.  I did manage to trim and glue the gunboxes in place, after satisfying myself that they were square and level with each other.  I originally wanted to build it all as one piece, but changed my mind.  I'm glad I did, too; trying to cut out two symmetrical holes simultaneously would have been really tough, I think.

So, in the first photo, I have traced the interior line where I decided to place it.  The outer "dashed" line is where outside of the shoulder cladding is, where there are still spacers for the upper thin strip of HDF I have yet to place.  I then took and hand-drew the line where I wanted to cut, about ~10mm away from the inner line.  I used the woodcutting blade on the dremel tool yet again to make those cuts.  Using the subsequent cut-off piece, I traced the same line on the lower part of the gunbox and trimmed again.  I repeated this process for the other gunbox.

I don't have a photo of the next part, but the side wall of the gunbox was very long, sticking into the shoulder interior by about 3 inches.  I took the table saw and tilted the blade 45°, adjusted the miter guage to the angle cut on the gunbox (~20°), and trimmed a few inches off, to where the edge was about 10mm away from the top and bottom cuts I had just done.  Again, repeated for the other gunbox.

Next up, I glued them in (initially, just on the bottom, where the three layers of cladding and spacers are, then later inside on top), added a couple of blocks of scrap wood and a piece or two of HDF to hold them in place where everything lined up, and proceeded to let them dry.

After they were dry, I mixed up another batch of PVA water (this time in a squirt bottle instead of brushing it), propped up the sections away from the newspaper underneath, and let fly the gluey mist, onto the skirt, fender, neck rings, shoulders, everything.  Seattle gets moist (the fog we've been having!), and I want this sucker water-tight.

While that was drying, I decided that the next thing I wanted to tackle and get out of the way were the neck blocks.  I've seen a variety of ways that they've been made by various builders (resin castings, 3D printers, chamfered wood).  I knew I wanted them to be wooden, but I wanted to see if I could do it without using the router.  Too much dust!

I decided to use my 1/2" MDF that I got initially for the gunboxes.  I have quite a bit left over, so I cut a few 31mm lengths with the table saw, then set it to a 45° angle and gave it the chamfer (I used a test piece to ensure that I left a 4mm un-chamfered portion on the front).  I had to be VERY careful with that second 45° cut; use a push stick or lose fingers.

In the plans, I noticed that the blocks are 43mm in the back, and 40mm in the front.  I took a scrap of plywood and clamped it to the saw guide, 43mm away from the blade.  Then, I did some guesswork and set my miter saw table angle to 4°.  I flipped the MDF upside down (with the chamfer on the bottom and facing away from me), and made an initial cut on the very edge.  Then, flipping it back up (and this time with the chamfer facing me), I bumped up the MDF to the clamped block, and made the second cut.  I made sure to not pull the blade back up while it was spinning; otherwise, the block would fly out of the miter saw with a mangled edge on it.

I measured the resulting block, and sure enough, it was 43mm on the back end, and 40mm on the front!  I repeated the above process 23 more times, and made all my initial neck block pieces.

AdamWolf had an amazing post about creating an elaborate tablesaw jig for cutting the neck strut holes, but I became too impatient and came up with a weird alternative way.  Again, following AdamSt's lead, I decided to cut a "comb" pattern in the neck block.  However, I don't have a bandsaw, so I used my jigsaw.  To ensure that I accommodated the strut angle, I used the remnant of the chamfer I cut with the table saw and positioned it behind the blade, so that when I pushed the block against the saw, it automatically angled upward a bit.  This rested against a couple of clamped pieces of plywood to ensure that the cut didn't go too deep.

I then tore off the thin cuts with my fingernails, then took a bit of sandpaper to smooth out the cut-lines.  After a test fit, I am completely satisfied with this process, and will do the remainder of the neck blocks in similar fashion.

So, there's still some work to go on these guys, but I'm happy with the progress.  I don't yet have the wooden bearings, so I will wait until I have them in hand before I unpack and set up the drill press, drill the rounded holes, and test fit the bearings.

Day 41 - Cutting the gunbox holes, test fitting

I dremeled out the gunbox holes, which was a very nerve-wracking thing for me!  I had the basic outline of where I needed to cut, but I knew that there would have to be a lot of tweaking and adjustment to get things just right.  I trimmed and fitted, trimmed and fitted, trimmed and fitted for what seemed like hours (probably was).  Trimming was done using a variety of methods.  I dremeled at an extreme angle to make sure the sides of the gunbox were perpendicular to the front of and parallel to the sides of the shoulders, and then I evened it all down with the belt sander, at least, as much of the belt sander as I could fit into such a tight space.

Finally, I got it to where I wanted it to be.  There are a few largish gaps, so I'll need to figure out how I want to glue it all.  I might use some scrap, and then use the Liquid Nails on top of that.  But those gaps allowed me to tweak the position of the box to get the angle of it just right, which didn't require that much adjustment, really.  I'm really happy that the gunbox angle is correct!

Then, I tried my best to repeat what I did on one side to the other side, and eventually I got both gunboxes in there, ready to be glued!  Actually, I need to make sure that the boxes are in a good relative position to one another first, and then mark and trim away the excess bits from the inside of the shoulders to maximize elbow room.



Latest stack shot follows!

Day 40 - Mostly gunbox! (Though, shoulders, of course)

Some good progress on Rainier!  I finally took off all the clamps from the shoulders, and all the cladding is now on ... with the one exception being the small strips that will eventually go above the gunboxes when they are positioned.  I'll need some bigger, lower-reaching clamps for those, perhaps.  I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I then flipped it upside down so that I could jigsaw and belt-sand the excess cladding off the bottom.  In order to keep the shoulder section from moving all over the place while I was sanding, I attempted to clamp it to my table.  This is where I did a stupid thing.  I used the top ring as a place to put my blue clamps, and I snapped one of the seams off its spacers.  So I had to sand down the inside of that cladding and also the spacers underneath to get rid of the dried glue, and then re-glue and re-clamp it.  Bother.

I then set to work marking all the lines for where I needed to trim all the excess cladding away.  I drew these like I did all the shoulder lines so far—using a long, fat piece of plywood and a pencil clamped to it, dragging it perpendicular to the floor, scraping the jutting pencil along the HDF to mark the lines.  Then I took my wonder tool, the Dremel (and its fabulous cutting blade), and with as steady a hand as I could muster, trimmed off all the excess.  Except for the top ring; with the clamps and such in the way, I couldn't draw a line there to cut against.  A later task.

So, while my mistake was curing and drying, I decided to do something different, and finish up the gunboxes.  I unwrapped my new ickle trim router, whipped up a tiny jig to cut the 9.3cm diameter hole, and screwed it in place.  I cut these in similar fashion to the neck rings, going a little bit at a time.  Took about three passes to get both pieces' circles cut out.  Then I changed to a 45° bit with roller bearing, and made a few passes on that, too, for the inner chamfer.  Took out the gazing globes (nearly forgot I had them!) and test-fit them to check out the sizes of everything.  I liked what I saw!

Next up was getting the gunbox recesses cut out.  I decided to use the scroll saw for this job.  I haven't gotten to use this tool very often, so I was happy to get it set up.  It's such a friendly saw.  Until the blade snaps halfway through.  Which happened.  Good thing there were spared in its little drawer.

Once I cut those out, I sanded smooth the unevenness from the not-quite-yet-fairly-straight lines, and then traced out the hole shapes onto pieces of HDF for the recess inset pieces.  I left a little extra length for the straight end (not the edge with the rounded corner), so that I could keep sanding it down with the belt sander to get it to fit *just* right.  I also used the sander to give it a bit of a chamfered edge, too, to match the angle in which it sits in the recess.  Then I glued them in!

I let that dry for a few hours, and then proceeded to glue the front, side, and bottom pieces together.  The inclusion of the bottom piece was to make sure the top and side were square with each other.  And again, I let a few hours pass for that (while I rehearsed with my choir tonight).  Then, just about an hour ago, I added the top piece, flipping it over so that it's on the bottom now, and resting flat against something to keep it in place.

And, a shot (upsidedown) with the gazing globes again, just to get a sense of what these will look like before I put the globes in bed again.  Shoulder section is getting closer!!

Day 39 - Final shoulder cladding, more gunbox stuffs

Finally attached the last of the bands after taking off the clamps from the front part I attached yesterday.  I was a bit ambitious this time, and attached both at the same time, hoping that I had enough clamps that were wide enough.  Looks like I did, but I had to steal from Peter to pay Paul, as it were.  I used all of them for the first side, then stole one at a time to clamp the second band.  While I was taking clamps off, I needed to rearrange things a bit so make sure everything was staying adhered to the spacers.  We'll see tomorrow if everything sticks.

Then I went back to the gunboxes and started marking things down.  Made a wee compass out of scrap HDF (again, ala AdamSt), making the space between the holes 4.65mm for a diameter of 9.3mm.  Then I marked the recesses in the side piece of the boxes, 14mm on the top and bottom, and I decided on 15mm for the angled line, since I didn't want to run into the rabbet on the other side (it's like 12mm, or something).  I used a US quarter (24mm diameter) to mark the rounded bottom corner.


But this is where I got confused. The plans show the side recess is 6.5cm wide, but the arrows don't actually extend that far on the page.  I've circled it for reference in my photo.  I measured that length and drew the corresponding line, but it looks narrower than what I've seen on other Dalek gun boxes, but maybe it's my imagination.  Or, maybe it's the angle that my gun boxes wound up being, and I should fudge the dimensions a bit.  Not sure.

Day 38 - Outer lower shoulder collar and gunboxes

Today, I got around to making templates for the outer bottom shoulder collar, and cut them out of HDF board like the rest.  After soaking these, I clamped them on to dry, helping them out this time with a hair dryer.

With my boost helping them to dry, I set to work on figuring out the angle of the front of my shoulders so that I could get to work on the gunboxes.  I'm hoping that the angles work out okay, since the plans seem to show that the front angle of the gunboxes matches the front center angle of the shoulders.  For me it turned out to be 20°, so I went with that.

Spent some quality time with the table saw (set to 0° and, frequently, 20°) and router, cutting out pieces of 1/2" MDF and more of my ubiquitous HDF for the boxes.  With the router, I added the rabbet grooves to the side pieces per AdamSt's diary, since I really like how sturdy those look.  Where he used 6mm MDF for the top and 4mm MDF for the bottom, I just used the same thickness of HDF, and cut the rabbets accordingly.


By the time I was done with that, I checked to see that the drying collars were indeed dry, and then set to gluing and clamping them.


Tomorrow, I'll mark the recess detailing on the gunbox sides, and figure out how to route the chamfered holes in the front.  And, or course, hopefully attach the rest of the outer shoulder collar.

Day 35 through 37 - Shoulder collars

Wash, rinse, and repeat of day 34, this time with the rest of the lower collar area.  Due to all the soaking, clamping, drying, gluing and re-clamping of one section at a time, this process took a couple of days (which is why I haven't written anything in a bit).  Also, because my clamps don't reach very high, I used slats of scrap wood to secure the tall collars, clamping them above and below.

I had picked up a tiny router at the store the other day for the express purpose of using it to trim the inner sides of the collars, but I thought I might actually try out a bit with the Dremel tool first.  I chose the trapezoid in the front to experiment on, drawing a line that wasn't the true line in case I messed up.  I liked the results, so I might just go this route for all the inner lines.  (Please note, the Dremel is unplugged and NOT running in that shot!)

Then, today, I started and finished attaching the outer band's spacers.  Call me weird, but I don't actually like how far it juts out on the actual prop, not to mention the fact that I think my Dalek's shoulders are slightly wider than what the plans call for.  So, I made these spacers only twice as wide (16mm) as the inner spacers (8mm).  This will shave off 3mm of space than what the plans say.

In this latest stack shot, I like the overall overhang, and can't wait for these to dry and to attach the final cladding.  I even picked up some Great Stuff expanding foam in anticipation.  I made sure to get the stuff that hardens completely (a misting of water also hastens the curing effect), as they also have one for windows that is meant to be squishy.

Also, I picked up some aluminum that I bought from onlinemetals.com, and was able to pick it up directly from the warehouse here in Seattle, saving on shipping.  I've got bits for both ends of the gun, the 8 rods, and .5" squares that will hopefully be shaped into the bottom part of the light cages.  I don't yet have metal for the rest of the light cages.  In addition, I took Avonlea22's tip for LED dome lights, and got those, too!