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Scratch Build 1/6 scale Mk III Dalek: Complete after 3 months


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On the brass tube; could you solder some appropriate chunky metal on at the ends and give it a twist? It might be another of my bonkers ideas though. I think your idea of cutting and inserting a sleeve is probably better. It certainly needs sorting out though - those radiator rods are quite critical in needing to be square and parallel.

I don't know about you but I hate scrapping parts and try to avoid at all costs.

Edited by Nigel Heath
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there are two small rivet heads (or some kind of sensor?) on each slat

Could be but I think they are just fasteners. I think the slats and much of the external decoration is just that. Its a Dalek way of showing off with exterior ornimentation that they think makes them look hard and cool.

I don't envy you with those perspex gun spacers, makes painting a bit of a nightmare but I think they do look very attractive. I did not know my "radiator rods" are actually plasma directors / generators - makes sense though - I will have to scrap my homespun terminology.

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I did not know my "radiator rods" are actually plasma directors / generators - makes sense though - I will have to scrap my homespun terminology.

Maybe you're right and I'm wrong - I just made that up as it sounded a bit more outer space'ish

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I don't know about you but I hate scrapping parts and try to avoid at all costs.

I am the same.

I'm going to try one more time to see if I can get a good part - at least this time I shall be aware of the issue and watching out for it

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Not trying to cut or twist the gun barrel? At least give one of them a try. You put a lot of work into it and with your idea I'm sure it will be fine, may need a little Mr Surfacer or similar to hide the joint but after paint could be made completely invisible.

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As I mentioned before, I thought I would give the gun another try... and here's the result - much better!

This still needs trimmed to the final length but it's not too far off. One or two holes just ever so slightly out of position, but hopefully this won't draw too much attention when the plasma generators are fitted

S5004908.JPG

and here's how it goes together... insert a smaller tube diameter into the ball socket like so...

S5004909.JPG

and slip the gun over the insert and here we have a Dalek gun ('scuse the out of focus shot but you get the idea)

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And then follow the same process for the plunger arm... starting with this lot

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Fit the inserts...

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and then just slip it all together. Like this...

S5004914.JPG

These are just dry fitted at the moment. I'll get them cleaned up a bit more before paint.

I have some etch primer sitting ready to go.

I think the rest of my weekend will be taken up with more boring stuff that I've been putting off - sanding the base, the hemispheres, the skirt etc

and I just realized that I haven't really given any thought to the eye stalk or the actual plunger itself... must mull that over

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Gun and plunger arm look really neat. Sad that the first gun could not be salvaged - I think I would have. What or where are the balls from?

Edited by Nigel Heath
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Gun and plunger arm look really neat. Sad that the first gun could not be salvaged - I think I would have. What or where are the balls from?

The hemispheres were buttons that I got from ebay and the ball sockets are beads, also from ebay...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Free-shipping-17mm-New-6pcs-yellow-LUSTER-resin-round-beads-M533-/380735669757?pt=Craft_Beads&hash=item58a59d45fd

The first gun shall not be discarded - I have a much more ambitious project lined up, well several projects, but one really ambitious scratch build where I am sure I will be able to use it in some form or other.

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Again, some progress - not as much as I would have liked, but as I said over in Nigel's thread... a little Dalek is better than no Dalek at all!

I managed to get some painting done this weekend, unfortunately, not the good kind. I thought the back panels in my work area were bit too overpowering, so I decided to paint them white - it cleans up the area and also helps reflect the light around. At the moment I have 2 x 100W daylight bulbs in there but I think I shall be adding some additional work lights.

S5004921.JPGS5004920.JPG

Progress was a bit mixed this weekend. Some steps forward and a few backwards.

As I have been working on the neck recently, I thought I would continue in an effort to get something substantial completed (and something I can actually assemble). So I continued with the neck rings.

I still have a little sanding to do around the chamfers but the other item that needs attention is the rebate for the trefoil section. As you know, there are eight vertical trefoils around the neck bin, therefore, I need to provide a rebate in each of the neck rings to allow these sections to run from the waist section up to the dome.

So, after marking out I started attacking the rings with a triangular file.

S5004922.JPG

Now, there's eight rebates on each neck ring. If any of those rebates are out of alignment, then the vertical sections won't be vertical any more! They will either be off the vertical, or bent!

Now, you can work as slowly and as carefully as you like but with 24 rebates to cut, and doing it manually... one or two of them are going to be a bit askew.

A quick test run showed that I had a few rebates out of whack. (sorry... forgot to take more photo's).

The problem was how to ensure that all the rebates on each ring matched both the other rings, and they were all true?

After some cogitation I came up with this whacky idea....

I managed to locate some cable ties that were just slightly narrower than the width of the rebate at it's widest point. (At this point, I had only taken the rebate about half as deep as I needed to).

Starting at one rebate, I applied the cable tie as best I could, then worked on the rebates on the opposite side. Once they were in alignment, I applied another cable tie, and went across to another set.... kind of like torquing down a cylinder head. Gradually, I tightened up the cable ties as I went around the perimeter.

This photo highlights the issue. You can see that the two sets of rebates left are close but not quite there - just enough to create a problem when fitting the trefoil sections.

S5004923.JPG

Thankfully, as mentioned above, I hadn't taken the rebates down to their full depth, so this allowed me to bring those rebates back into alignment. After which, I ended up with this spidery contraption...

S5004925.JPG

Those cable ties were perfect for the job! They helped the rings align, and held everything together while I filed away.

After that success I thought I should try and get some parts primed. (not very interesting so only a couple of small shots here). I got the hemisphere's re-primed, and managed to keep the dust away this time. I got a few other parts primed as well. The plunger arm, the gun etc) They are drying as I write.

S5004930.JPGS5004931.JPG

In the middle of all this, my daughter needed me to run her and her friend somewhere, and of course, as I was rushing to get the priming done, I knocked the base (thankfully, not the skirt) over onto the ground. Thankfully there's no damage, but there's all kinds of crap sticking to the paint. Once it dries, it should be easy to sand back... it's just a pain that I should have paid more attention and not rushed things!

If you've been following this thread, you'll know that the dome has been one of those issues that I was thinking about.. tried, screwed up, thought about some more, thought about some more, and then thought about some more etc.

My first effort many weeks ago was this calamity...

S5004839.JPG

I then thought I had it sussed when I found these things on the interwebby... and went ahead and ordered a couple. They are aluminium soap molds - just the right diameter.

I thought I could cut one down to make the "dome" section of the dome. The Dalek "dome" is actually part hemisphere, part cone frustum.

S5004919.JPG

However, when they arrived, I discovered that some bright forward thinking individual had gone and stamper the diameter right at the top of the dome !

Of course, this had deformed the curvature just enough to make it useless!!!

I spent a week or two thinking about how to deal with this...

Do I try and sand the aluminium back to the right curvature?

Do I take a resin cast from it and sand the resin? Should be easier to sand than aluminium?

Do I use them as is and be damned?

I just couldn't make my mind up on how to proceed.... and then....

I happened to be at my usual coffee drive through on my way to work one morning when I espied these promising looking items... can you see where I'm going with this?

S5004917.JPG

Guess what? They are just the right diameter (or within a gnat's **** hair!) - Of course, the eagle eyed among you will have noticed that there's a great big circley bit missing right at the top.

However, being true hemisphere's, you can cut a section out of one...

S5004918.JPG

trim it into a disc shape, and place it right over the missing section. (I had actually taken a photo to show this, but it was waaayyyy out of focus.)

Anyway... on with the show...

In order to keep the integrity of the hemisphere -they are quite flimsy on their own, but fit them to the cup and they really stiffen up - I fitted the aforementioned top to the drinking vessel.

S5004927.JPG

I then applied tamiya plastic filler to the recessed rim around the opening on the top, placed the small disc on top of the filler and then covered that with yet another (larger) section of the top, which I then taped down... and left alone to set.

S5004929.JPG

My hope is that the last piece I placed on the top will force the disc down into the recessed area so that it's in alignment with the rest of the hemisphere, and that once set, a little filler and minimal sanding will give me the dome section that I need.

Provided this works (and I have high hopes), I can smear body filler inside the dome to provide some much needed strength to the part, and then I can slice off as much as I need to make the final dome.

btw - my daughter is the Starbucks fan - I'm a Fox Hollow regular. It just happened that the only cup lying around was the SB type

to be continued... (but not today)

Edited by hendie
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In the middle of all this, my daughter needed me to run her and her friend somewhere, and of course, as I was rushing to get the priming done, I knocked the base (thankfully, not the skirt) over onto the ground. Thankfully there's no damage, but there's all kinds of crap sticking to the paint. Once it dries, it should be easy to sand back... it's just a pain that I should have paid more attention and not rushed things!

Bad luck there, as you say sandable - offable but a nuisance to have to do in the first place.

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It should be fairly straightforward

I have a feeling I still have some way to go on this. Some more materials arrived today, for the Dalek and for the workbench, but it's probably going to be the weekend before I can get back to this in any substantial way

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The ongoing saga continues...

As mentioned previously, in my blissful ignorance and usual lack of aforethought, I opted to go for a MkIII Dalek, which as we are all very well aware has 3 perspex octagons inside the plasma generators of the gun arm.

I took a shot at it tonight (no pun intended!)

So, starting with this piece of clear packing... yes - it's clear, not blue

S5004932.JPG

I cut off a slice and punched some holes in it. Of course, the largest hole punch I have is just slightly smaller in diameter than the tube I am using for the gun... never mind... onwards into the breach...

S5004933.JPG

Once the holes were punched, I tried the highly technical method of rolling up a piece of sandpaper into a tight roll, like so...

S5004935.JPG

and inserting it into the hole I had just punched.

S5004936.JPG

With the sandpaper in place, I pushed the sandpaper backwards and forwards into the hole while at the same time rotating the roll clockwise and anti-clockwise. Unfortunately I don't have three hands so couldn't take a photo of that particular action, but I trust you all understand.

I stopped when I could just insert the unpainted brass tube that I used for the gun.

S5004937.JPG

I then proceeded to cut out three separate squares of the clear stuff. You can see in the photo above that I have some octagonal shapes printed - if you look very closely you will see that I have marked the apex's (what's the plural of apex?) with a small circle, the same diameter as the plasma generators.

I cut these octagonal prints for the sheet and taped it to a scrap block of wood.

I then, very carefully, aligned the hole in my clear sheet with the large circle (representing the gun tube) in the middle of my octagon. Proceeding with extreme caution, I then marked the center of each of the small circles with a pin - Yes I am well aware I need to get a center punch... one thing at a time!

S5004939.JPG

This gave me a positive location for my drill. One by one I drilled out the apex, or should that be vertex? until all eight were done. Sorry for the blurry photo.

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In this photo you can just about see the holes drilled. I was quite pleased with my accuracy... not too shabby at all.

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And of course I forgot to take some photo's at this stage but it's all pretty self explanatory... I then again, with caution, sliced around the outer edge of the octagon, taking great care to try and slice through the centers of the small holes I had previously drilled, until it (the octagon) was free from captivity.

Here be octagon below...

S5004942.JPG

and just to give you an idea of the scale of this beast...

S5004941.JPG

A little bit more sanding and frequent test fitting against the primed gun, and the octagon was ready to go.

Rinse and repeat three times...

Why go to all that bother of drilling tiny little baby holes in the clear stuff I hear you ask!

Well, I had a cunning plan!

Since the gun has eight plasma generators radiating around the gun tube, I thought if I could get the holes in the right place and cut through them successfully then the resulting recess would give me a positive location for those aforementioned plasma generators.

Like this...

S5004945.JPG

Obviously, they are only dry fitted at this point and I still have to paint the gun - and the wire shown above is just a "proof of concept" plasma generator. Hopefully the final ones shall be a bit tidier. (I shall copy Nigel's method)

And I have purchased some canopy glue just for this job - after all that, the last thing I want is for the clear stuff to fog up with superglue fumes

Edited by hendie
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Unfortunately I don't have three hands so couldn't take a photo of that particular action, but I trust you all understand.

Attitude Adjuster has at least three hands do you want me to send him over to provide assistance?

I love the way you have created the octagonal gun spacers, this design of Dalek gun is my favorite one.

Edited by Nigel Heath
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Earlier I mentioned that I had obtained some drinks covers to use as the dome. I cut a small section out of one and laid it on top of another with some filler to act as the adhesive. Well, it didn't turn out completely as planned but it was definitely not a complete loss. You can see that the infill section sunk down into the filler overnight so didn't act as I had desired.

S5004948.JPG

I merely plastered more filler over the top of it to try and raise the profile of the dome... like so...

S5004946.JPG

... and left that to cure.

Once the filler had hardened overnight, I then applied body filler to the inside of the cup top to give it some rigidity

S5004949.JPG

and once I had applied an ample amount of body filler I stuck the top back on the cup as the cup helps hold the top in shape.

That was then left a day or so in order to fully cure.

S5004951.JPG

Once cured, it was out with the sandpaper, and some gentle sanding around and around gave this result.

S5004957.JPG

It looks not too bad at all. I'll give it a coat of primer later and see what it looks like.

Talking of primer, I just ran out of the stuff. I finally got around to priming some parts today. This weekend has been a bit of a disaster, running the family around everywhere, I never really got started until about 5pm on Saturday evening, and by then I just wanted to sit down and relax.

This week has mostly been taken up with prepping parts for priming. Such as the skirt...

S5004952.JPG

and then it was sprayed with a satin finish nickel color.

S5004953.JPG

It's kind of hard to see the color - I don't know if this one is any easier to see...

S5004960.JPG

I'm not certain on the satin finish. I have a can of gloss spray that I can overcoat with if I change my mind.

I also got a few more parts painted this weekend but forgot to take photo's of the progress. And as usual, had one small disaster... well more of a hiccup!

When painting the trefoil sections, just as I finished spraying, one of the trefoils fell to the floor and parted in three ways. However, I did get the remaining seven sections sprayed. - I'll just need to get back to the last one this week sometime.

As I mention up top, most of this week has been spent prepping for paint, so there's really not much in the way of visual progress.

I guess the best progress I can show is around the neck section. Here's a shot of the rings dry fitted in place with the trefoil sections. The neck rings are only primed at this point, but I think you can get the idea. - and I'm not 100% sure about the mesh. I may go for a smaller mesh size around the neck section... thoughts?

S5004959.JPG

It's definitely taking shape but is also taking time. I'm going to try and make a concerted effort to make some progress this week, as I'm off to Chicago the following week, so I won't get anything done then.

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Hi hendie,

The dome looks really good. I think I would stick with the satin finish on the skirt. The neck also looks excellent, I think a finer mesh could look better but what you have is also perfectly fine.

Edited by Nigel Heath
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well, it looks like it's just you and me inhabiting this thread Nigel - with the (very) occasional comment from a few others. At this rate it's nearly 250 views per comment.

I think I'm going to give the dome another was of filler and another sanding. I noticed a barely discernible ring around the top after priming yesterday

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AA and I can not understand the lack of interest from the general public, they do not know what they are missing.

I'm trying to watch quietly from behind the white painted back panels.

If you were to install a sofa to hide behind it might be safer.

Anyway, Nigel is a better cook! Or is he?- Food fight!

Pete

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Well, I managed to make some advance today. Particularly on the two jobs I've been studiously avoiding... the shoulder section, and the dome. Those of you following this thread will remember that after several false starts, I eventually chose to use the top of a fast food drinks cup... waste not, want not, and scratch builders can't be choosers!

My first attempt at filling in the suppy cup hole at the top resulted in this

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Not too bad for a first attempt. However, I decided to give it another fill and sand. It's now primed and drying down in the basement.

Unfortunately, that is only half the challenge. A Dalek's dome is actually part hemisphere, and part tapered section as shown below...

DalekEyeHolder.PNG

So, my plan for the rest of the dome is this... starting off with a disc the diameter of the bottom of the dome, and another disc the diameter of the section where it meets the hemisphere.

S5004964.JPG

I added some spacers to give me the half inch height needed for the 1/6 scale.

I planned to use some kind of filler/putty to fill between the discs to give me the slope. In order to save a bit of material, I started adding a fence around the edge of the disc.

S5004970.JPG

until I had this...

S5004971.JPG

I then had a ratch about the basement and found this interesting stuff I had forgotten about but which I had previously purchased for just such a task.

S5004972.JPG

Of course, now came the hard part... ensuring that both discs were concentric when glued together!

I tried all sorts of tricks including this one here... in the end I measured very, very carefully and stuck a couple or three index markers to the bottom disc to help me center the top disc to the other.

S5004968.JPG

and of course I got so involved I forgot to take photo's of most of the operation, but here's what I ended up with.

According to the destructions for the "mighty putty," after mixing the two components for a recommended 2 minutes, you had about 10 minutes to work with it, and 40 minutes before it went off - yeah right!

My intent was to work the putty in to the gap nice and slowly and then use water to smooth it down so I had minimal sanding to do when it was complete.

The first batch started going off as I was mixing it (within two minutes!) so I had to jam it in quick before it went to waste.

I was prepared for the second batch but it still went off far too fast to be able to work with . However, I did get the part finished - I just have a lot more sanding than I originally intended.

S5004983.JPG

The next phases will include sanding this slanted section, cutting the top off my sippy cup (above) and mating the two together so accurately and so precisely that the seam will be completely invisible to the naked eye! Yeah - we'll see how I get on with that when the time comes!

If you are still bearing with me, you'll remember that I stated up top that I had made advances on two fronts: the dome and the shoulder section. Here followeth the shoulder section narrative...

After thinking about this for some time I realized that I had a problem. Way back at the beginning, in my eagerness to actually produce something, the way I had constructed the shoulders meant that I had to fit the gun and the plunger before assembling the shoulders, which meant that I had to mask them and be very careful while handling the section.

Well, I decided not to go down that route. I need a way that I could insert the gun and the plunger after the shoulder section was complete, painted etc. etc.

I stared at it for a while but eventually I had to cut into it - so after a bit if butchery I ended up here...

S5004973.JPG

It's not pretty, but it will not be seen, and it allows me to fit the gun and plunger after painting the shoulders - and also allows me access if I ever need to get to them again in the future.

I must apologize for not taking many photo's of this operation, but once I started, I got so involved, and it was so intricate (for my fat fingers), I completely forgot to pick up the camera.

I tried cutting and placing lots of little spacers, supports, braces etc all around the front. You can see my starting point here.

S5004974.JPG

I wanted to make the front of the shoulder section in one piece, or with a few joins as possible. I only had two small sheets of the styrene left that I had previously used for the rear of the shoulders... so I didn't want to mess this up.

Using scraps of anything I could lay my hands upon, I, piece by piece, began to construct a template for the front skin of the shoulders. Pretty, isn't it? ha!

S5004976.JPG

S5004977.JPG

I got it as close as I could using this scrap method. You can just barely see two pencilled in arrows on the front above - this is my note to myself that I needed to move the center section just a tad to the right. (I had already superglued the parts together so I couldn't reposition them)

I could kick myself for not taking more photo's... anyway, once I had my mosaic complete - all taped and glued and held together with spit and all sorts, I carefully removed my piecemeal template from the shoulder section.

I took my precious last sheet of styrene, laid my template down on top of it and started taping it down.

I got to my third piece of tape and realized that summat was rotten in the state of Denmark. It was all wrinkles and whatnot.

Then it dawned on me! When I made the template, it was wrapped around the shoulders, and it was not only curved but slanted too. So what appeared to be straight lines were actually slightly curved. I needed a different approach here. So, once again foraging in the basement, I came across this willing victim, the humble paint tin.

Once I taped my template around it, all the wrinkles disappeared - so did the whatnots.

S5004978.JPG

Now, armed with my surgeon like skills, and a sharp blade I proceeded very carefully to cut out the sections where the gun box and plunger box will poke through. At this point I am not concerned with matching up the top and bottom edges with the shoulders.

S5004979.JPG

At this point I am very nervous... how accurate was my template? how accurate was my cutting? If this doesn't work, I won't be able to do anything more for a while as I need to order more supplies.

You'll have to take my word for it as there are no photo's but it was a nightmare getting it all together. As it turned out, my template and my cutting was fairly accurate. It was positioning the skin while gluing on that shoulder section that was the issue. It's not as easy as I thought it was going to be. However, I did eventually manage it.

Here's the shoulder section fully skinned - but not fully trimmed or filled.

S5004980.JPG

I seem to have trouble posting the last two photo's so I am going to post this thread as it stands and add another post with the two remaining photo's

Edited by hendie
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