Robby the Robot & GUNTER Robot B9 double bill + surprise (maybe)

[marty_hopkirk]

I like you you are doing a double bill - started a couple of years ago - but stalled at the moment. The resin correction parts are really worth the money, the etch less so as you say. I have got the ladies too!

Marty...

[hendie]

I spent most of today down in the basement. I was certain I had taken a lot more photo's than I appear to have.... must be one of those days.

Carrying on with the neck/brain sections - I started by removing the two small bracket thingies from the kit part - a quick slice with the razor saw and it was done.

I then drilled the back end of the bracket as I will be using wire to help obtain a good join to the shoulder/neck disc.

Quick few turns with the drill and we have this...

And a quick dry fit reveals this - looking a bit more like the real thing

For the stacked/layered disc part, I glued three styrene discs together to get the right thickness

Once dry, a few minutes with the file and the edges were cleaned up. I then marked the center (as best I could) and drilled a pilot hole.

This part was then glued onto the shoulder disc (is everyone following all these disc thingies?), opened out with a drill then opened some more using my old fall back method of a piece of rolled up sandpaper which I simultaneously rotate and push in and out of the hole. It seems to work quite nicely giving me a nice opening.

.

After having cut off the ridiculously tapered neck section I had to search around to find something more akin to the actual taper which is used on the neck section.

I came up with the following idea....

I used the tapered handle section of an old paintbrush - Once again, double sided tape came to the rescue and held the beading wire I used to wrap the handle quite securely.

I then trimmed the top section from the handle. Here you can see how I started the wrap - by drilling a small hole into the handle then popping the beading wire into the hole before bending it tightly against the handle. It worked very well.

Next on the task list was gluing some small sections of styrene up the sides of, and across the top of the stacked discs.

I then trimmed back the styrene, filed the top sections down to I had a thickness which appeared about right.

The assembly is going to take a lot of fine trimming to remove all the rags and burrs, but I think it is worth it - it looks way better than the crappy kit part.

A quick dry fit and this is looking way better, and more accurate than the base kit.

Actually, the more I look at it, I think I need to redo the neck again - the paint brush handle doesn't seem to have enough taper on it.

I'll ponder that one for a few days before I commit to anything though.

[Pete in Lincs]

Wrap rings of thicker wire around the original cone.

With a thick coat of matt black It might do the job.

[hendie]

It's been slow but things are progressing, albeit at a snail's pace.

Okay, did anyone spot my deliberate mistake on the last post??

Yup, I performed the cardinal sin of using the model as a reference instead of the real thing... I have fitted 6 little bracket things to hold the disc stack in place, and there should have been 8!

Oh well, c'est la vie I ain't gonna change it now.

I gave the collar a coat of nickel silver (the same as Periwinkle's skirt), then followed up by using a slightly silver in between The top and bottom disc.

Doesn't look too shabby.

I then concentrated on the internals of the head/brain assembly. You will remember I was using brass tubing to replace the rather ugly and useless kit part.

Three stubby parts fitted.

Followed by the three longer stems. I know in reality there are many more of these stems fitted, but at this scale, I think I am happy with 6.

That was followed by an application of Periwinkle's nickel silver spray (again).

Luckily, I had some little faceted gems kicking around from the DB5 build, in particular, some freebies which were the wrong size for the DB5, however, they came in handy for this.... I believe these are red lights on the real B9 but I think these look rather dapper here.

However, one thing I am not happy about is this....

On both halves of the dome, there is damage at the gate. The parts have somehow managed to flex while in the box, resulting in stress cracking of the area around the gate.

I've filed off as much as I can, but there's still damage there. Even with polishing, there will still be some damage remaining. I guess I'll just have to match up the damaged areas when gluing, and put them to the back of the dome.

Spot anything wrong in this photo?

Yup, B9's feet are tied together. The plates at the knee joint, and the plate at the tracks should be two individual plates.

I used a file to add a cosmetic separation of the right and left feet. Not great, but again, I think better than the as supplied kit.

Next up was the little spinning radar things on either side of B9's head. Once more, Polar Lights (or Aurora) got it wrong - they got the shape wrong - they supplied little circular discs, when the reality is they were kind of pointy (sorry - don't know the correct geometric term).

In order to replicate the correct shape, first of all I punched out a disc. Then I moved the punch slightly over a tad on the cut disc, and punched again....

resulting in two of these....

Out came the razor saw, and some thin styrene rod.... and sawing down the middle of the rod was surprisingly easy...

which then allowed me to fit the little radar plates/spinner thingies.

and that, is where I am currently at.

[georgeusa]

You are showing quite manly manual dexterity in all of this. I am impressed. Keep up with the good fight. I am enjoying this immensely.

[hendie]

it is a fight sometimes... I am going back and forth with whether to spray the legs grey before the silver, or spray the silver before I spray the grey... just trying to figure out which is going to be the most difficult to deal with when masking. Both are equally as daunting.

And Robby has been neglected for a little while so I really should pay him more attention - this is supposed to be a double feature after all.

[Kallisti]

A science fiction double feature indeed, but will Doctor X build a creature? Will we see androids fighting Brad and Janet? Does Anne Frances still star in The Forbidden Planet?

[hendie]

You are showing quite manly manual dexterity in all of this. I am impressed. Keep up with the good fight. I am enjoying this immensely.

manual dexterity my *** up a gum tree! Sheer bl**dy mindedness and utter stupidity more like.

I just can't leave well alone can I ? I promised myself this would be a nice relaxing build, almost out of the box, with just a touch of scratch building here and there. But No! I go and do it every time don't I ?

For my next venture into nonsense land I decided to punch out a load of discs, and then to compound my idiocy, I proceeded to drill 3 holes in each of the discs. That was followed by the gentlest of deburring (which still gouges the styrene). yes, I should have waited to prime them until after I had drilled the holes - planning was never a strong skill set of mine.

Can anyone tell what I am planning here ? If so, can you please let me know....

then I plant them in a wacking great dod of plasticine.

and here they are hand painted some murky steel color. My hand painting is pretty awful, but I wasn't going to dirty the airbrush for this little lot.... maybe I should have!

and sorry for the out of focus shot

Why all this I hear you ask ?

Well, apart from my own obtuseness and obstinacy, no real reason apart from the fact that I hated the kit parts as they came.

You have probably guessed by now that I am making some attempt at replacing the wheels that drive the tracks on B9, and your supposition would be correct.

Here's one I made earlier (will George get that reference?) and although it was a bit simpler... I didn't like it. I BMF'd one of the wheels and then offered it up to the base. It just looked too plastic and too chrome for my liking.

Therefore, I decided to opt for some painted wheels.

I was looking at the Robby kit parts earlier, and I have a sneaking suspicion that things are going to go from bad to worse here....

[hendie]

not really a lot of progress, but I have been working on Robby who has been a bit neglected over the last few weeks.

Just take a look at the kit part here, and in particular, at the quality of the molding.

The more I looked at it, the more I hated it. The molding was bad, the surface finish was bad, and I didn't see any way I could really make it any better... the kit part that is.

I had a search, and this was the best detail I could find of Robby's head section - I had never noticed the white portions on the sax valves before.

I also very much like the satin finish on this example. I have seen many in various gloss finishes, but the satin finish here has a really nice quality to it. It also looks like the triangly shaped portion of the sax valve is polished aluminum.

Most builds I have seen have everything the same color as the rest of Robby. Another issue is that a lot of builds seem to paint those little round bits at the top of the sax valve as if they are lights - from this photo, I do not thank that is the case. I think the rounded parts at the top of the sax valve are just the hinge mechanism.

And I just noticed that Robby has 2 sets of 4 slots at the top of his head, and not 3 slots as the kit provides. I guess I can live with that at this scale.

So, starting with some everyday scrap and some odds and ends....

I am once more stepping into the gaping chasm of scratch build that seems to call me every time I pick up a piece of plastic.

Of course, I had ran out of the appropriate thickness of styrene, but two sheets bonded together gave me this, which seems to fit the bill...

And like an eejit, I forgot to take more photos.... so starting with razor sawing some aluminum tube....

we jump right to a finished sax valve.

As you can probably see from the photo, I took a bit of circular runner, filed down to half the thickness, then stuck some bits of styrene, and a piece of aluminum tube onto it in a vague attempt to make it look like a sax valve.

Okay, it has a bit more definition than the kit part but it doesn't look that great...

and when compared to it's kit counterparts it's too small anyway. So I am now off to make another, hopefully better, version.

To be honest I really do not know what I am doing here. Making one sax valve was hard enough - making six of them will be a nightmare... and that's if it even looks half decent. Do I make 6 of them like this?, or get one decent one and cast the remainder in resin? or even 3D print?

It may all be a complete disaster, and I'll revert to using the kit part at some point in the future,

[Kallisti]

To be honest with you I'd stick with the kit part - the detail isn't perfect but with a good bit of painting it will look fine. Personally I think its too damn small to worry about

[hendie]

I'll give it the rest of today and I'll see where I am after that

[hendie]

well, so far it's been a bit of a pig of a day.

I attempted to spray the bottom half of B9 and the airbrush was acting up - I discovered that paint had backed up all the way inside the airbrush and had actually clogged up the small air valve that the trigger operates, as well as dousing every moving part in a good dose of acrylic silver.The devil only knows how it all got in there.

I've been using W&N flow improver and thinning acrylics with IPA, and clean the airbrush out after every use.... and doing it thoroughly - or so I thought. So, it was a complete strip down and a very thorough cleaning.

I've also stepped up to the largest needle size. The airbrush came with three needle/nozzle combo's and up till now I have been using the middle one, basically because I didn't know what I was doing and that seemed as good a place as any to start with. I still have no idea what I am doing with the airbrush and my skills are somewhat lacking (okay... very lacking), but I figured the largest needle/nozzle was for wider area coverage, and that's really what I am doing withB9, Robby, and the Aston DB5.

On the up side - I am glad I caught this before attempting the DB5 - I would go crazy if I had to strip that back to plastic again.

[hendie]

what a day - I am beginning to think this modeling malarkey is not for me. The day just went from bad to worse.

I did manage to get a coat of silver on B9. I used Testors Model Master acrylics, and I am not sure if I like the color or not. Maybe it's because there's just so much silver there at the moment. Once I paint the legs, it might tone down a bit and look a bit better.

and a quick dry fit with the tracks in place... at least these kind of look like tracks.

I'm not looking forward to masking the silver so I can try and get some grey on B9's legs.

There were only a few other advances made on B9 today, as I was concentrating on Robby, and on the DB5 (urghhhh - more of that over in the vehicles forum...)

This is only a dry fit of the dome and the brain.... hence the dust. I hate the petal thingy on top, but there's no alternative. The only etch set I can find available for B9 is for the smaller 1/24 version.

I ended up painting the inside of the triangular brain section as the clear plastic has so much splay and flow lines, plus 3 ejector pin marks. It was ugly.

I used silver for the inside triangle top and bottom surfaces, and on the outside I mixed some pearl white and some gold. I think it needs another coat or two. The front of the brain is supposed to light up, so I don't know whether to apply a few white dots, which may not be seen, or just use some black dots to take away from the plain look of the assembly.

Then it was on to poor old forgotten Robby.

I got as far as this before deciding to call it a day, and use the kit part, as Kallisti had suggested earlier. The sax valves were just too much work, and this build was supposed to be relaxing and pretty much out of the box.

I have decided to build these two as "models" and am not overly concerned about trying to achieve realism... especially as I have now tried some dry fitting of parts of Robby

Okay Kallisti - you win... here's where I ended up...

I am now trying to figure out what to do about these parts...

They are just ridiculously awful. They must have had real trouble trying to fill these parts in the mold - each part had about 4 gates - and they still have sinks and shrinkage - so much so that the parts don't mate up with each other.

I had heard about the fit issues with this kit, but this was a surprise. I wasn't expecting it to be this bad.

So, while I take some time to figure out how to move forward with those, I stuck Robby's feet on.

I had originally glued the two halves of Robby's legs together without the feet - the legs are supposed to clamp over the top of the feet. I chose to leave the feet out as I thought they might get in the way when I was eliminating those darned seams around Robby's legs.

As it turned out, getting the feet to fit inside the legs wasn't too bad of a job. - And if you're thinking that Robby's legs look a little silvery - you are correct - I used Robby's legs as a test bed for my custom paint mix for the Aston.

[Kallisti]

I think you did the right thing, just remember the phrase: Kallisti is always right...

However I am slightly disappointed that nobody responded to my questions about Dr X and Brad and Janet from a few days ago... or maybe I'm just stuck doing a jump to the left...

[hendie]

^^^ y'know - I had to google that one - was never a fan and to be honest, I don't think I've ever seen more than 10 minutes of it.

[Kallisti]

(Kallisti leaves the thread never to come back again crossing hendie off the Xmas list while adjusting basque, stockings and high-heels)

...and I thought you were the candyman...

[georgeusa]

Kalllisti,

I have nothing but warm thoughts about the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Of course they are based upon taking a girl named Janet to the show and her being most impressed and excited about the entire audience calling her name that she rewarded me quite appropriately after the movie. Now where is my deck of cards and toast?

Hendie,

Hang in there, just keep a relaxing build in mind and sometimes with a kit, just surviving the build and getting things to line up is the best you can hope for. Besides, that accuracy thing is so overrated!

[Nigel Heath]

hendie, you are making good progress here even though you seem to be having even more problems than me on my build.

I had a chuckle when I saw your broken JLC razor saw. Just the same thing happened to mine. As a metallurgist I would say that there is no need for the blades to be that brittle. They really need to sort out their heat treatment processing.

they supplied little circular discs, when the reality is they were kind of pointy (sorry - don't know the correct geometric term).

For the radar scanner things I would propose "lenticular" as an appropriate descriptor.

Keep up the good fight.

Nigel

[hendie]

For the radar scanner things I would propose "lenticular" as an appropriate descriptor.

good suggestion.... It was annoying me so I ended up searching for a while this morning and found that it's actually called a Vesica Piscis.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesica_piscis

I think I shall stick with little radar pointy spinny things for reasons of technical clarity

[S5 modeller]

That wouldn't be rocky horror would it kallisti?

Hendie, I think your tracks and wheels look the bussiness mate.

Matt.

[hendie]

thanks S5, hopefully they will look a bit better once the side wheels go on. I am tempted to glue them on now, but I know they will get broken or damaged as I try to mask and spray the legs

[hendie]

okay then... second attempt at posting an update - crashed the first time.

A little bit of progress was achieved today on both Robby and on B9. Let's start with Robby.... following Kallisti's advice and sticking with the kit parts, a little bit of filler was required, actually a lot of filler was required - this is about halfway through sanding. Unfortunately, the gaps only get worse from here on in.

Once I got tired of sanding, I decided to try and open out the vents in Robby's head a little using the narrowest file I could lay my hands on. The original vents as you can see in the photo above have very little definition, so, hopefully, this will help highlight them a bit when painted.

Then I turned my attention to Robby's belly box. For whatever reason, PL had decided to put 4 diamond shaped buttons on the lower panel. The real buttons are standard rectangular shaped, so I simply cut 4 little rectangles from styrene and stuck them over the original buttons.

The belly panel was then glued in place and showed up some horrible gaps all around the box....

So, a liberal application of filler was applied - this is going to be fun when it comes to clean up time... or not!

Then I took a look at fitting Robby arms - this showed up some not very nice features around the arm sockets. As you can see here, when viewed from the side, there is a large dip in the center... some more sanding was required...

I got as far as this and couldn't go any further as I had almost sanded off the outer rim around the arm socket. Well, at least it's better than it was.

I also de-seamed Robby's arms a bit more, so another application of primer was required.

That was enough of Robby for one day, so it was on to B9 next.

The photo below is the result of about 2 hours spent masking... painful job it was I might add.

Try as I might, I could not make a decent job of masking these little brackets in between B9's legs. I think I shall just touch these up by brush after the legs have been sprayed. It should never be noticed unless you are really looking for it.

I wasn't sure how well the grey paint would take being applied on top of silver gloss, so I decided to apply another light coating of primer, just in case...

That has now been set aside to cure before being given it's final color.

I then turned my attention to B9's body, and in particular, the two lift points on his shoulders. I had previously sanded off the mounting points as they looked a bit "blobby". The base of the mounting point was created using some of the ever useful styrene sheet. I then used some of the stainless steel wire that I had left over from the DB5 build, and created the two little lift eyes.

Which was then given a quick coat of primer. One thing to notice here is that, yet again PL have got it wrong - look closely and you will see two rows of seven buttons on B9's chest plate. Seven ? the real B9 only has two rows of six, yes, that's six buttons.

and the last thing on the agenda for today was to do some reshaping of B9's wrists. These are machined parts so should be nice and sharp, however, take a look at the one on the right below, and you will see that the wrists are a bit soft, and rounded. I have started the one on the left and you can see that the wrist joint is looking a bit sharper once it's had a little bit of filing completed.

and that is how I spent my Sunday, oops. almost forgot... had to fit a tray under the washing machine today as well. Fun!

[georgeusa]

Looks like you made good progress today. I know you will beat Robby into submission. Mechanical beasts need to know their place. As for the filler issues, have you considered putting the filler in, letting it set a minute or two and then removing most with either nail polish remover or acetone? Might save some sanding time and cleanup frustration.

[hendie]

I knew there was a method.... just couldn't think of it at the time. I'll try and remember that next time around - which shouldn't be too far off judging by the gaps I saw when dry fitting earlier.

It did feel like good progress - which is a strange feeling and one I am not used to! It seems I have spent months just fettling parts and repairing other parts without too much actual construction going on.

[georgeusa]

Just be careful using it arounded painted surfaces without some sort of protection. It will not be a pretty sight when the acetone meets fresh paint. Also, try not to leave the acetone on the paint for too long as it will eat the plastic given a long enough soak time.

It did feel like good progress - which is a strange feeling and one I am not used to! It seems I have spent months just fettling parts and repairing other parts without too much actual construction going on.

I believe the proper term for this is "Nigeling"!