Countdown: Nine Days to Maker Faire

It always seems awful once it gets down to single digits.  All the time I used to spend thinking "I've got this," is suddenly swept away and replaced with "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFgaaaaaaahdammit, why didn't I start sooner!?!"

That said, today was a very productive day.

For starters, I did some fiberglass work.  Specifically, I glassed the plywood parts into the shins where the stilts will connect to the T-60 shins to the internal stilts:


Each one was held in place with a bead of Bondo Glass:


Then I laid down fiberglass over the seam to bond the wood permanently in place.

I did the same thing for the Grey Knight:




Once that was done I got a few minutes of fresh air and then took a break by finishing the paintjob on some grenades:


That's about the same time as my assistant Chuck and her sister Agatha showed up.  So I set Chuck to work sanding down the new display panels:


She did okay:


Meanwhile, I showed Agatha how to mix casting resin and she got to casting a bunch of legs and feet for the Mousers:


I was finishing up some rubber parts.  At this stage, the first batch are ready to have fabric reinforcement added in.  So I coated each of the parts with another layer of latex, then pressed a piece of fabric into place on top of it:


Here I am pouring black latex on top of a layer of fabric embedded in one of the rubber knee gaskets:


Then draining the excess back into the bucket:


To avoid the temptation to remove the rubber parts from the molds too early, I decided to take a break and make some more grenades:


Because when life hands you lemons, you make lemon-nades:


We also decided to have Agatha try on the old, miscast pair of rubber shorts for the T-60:


Then I put her in the stilts and strapped on the shins:


I'm starting to feel a lot better about that build.

With the fiberglass cured, I put the basecoat on the calves for the Grey Knight:


After hanging those up to dry, I powdered the rubber parts and de-molded them:


Here's the knee piece for the T-60:


Here's the rubber elbow gasket roughly fitted into the arm parts:




It's going to need a bit of padding to stay in place properly, but I think it'll work:




The last thing I did for the night was smooth over the silicone rubber jackets for the Mousers' head and body molds:


Tomorrow I'll have to knock out the rest of the detail work on this guy:


Stay tuned...