Trimmed Skirt Box, Finished Drilling Gas Pipe Holes in Frame, Sanded Down Tape-Ease Ankle Curves, Evercoat for Skirt Base and Horseshoe Pockets

I finally had most of the day to myself today, so I was able to get a decent amount of work on droid #2 accomplished.

I started by trimming a little material from the outer corners of the box that comprises part of the skirt.



The box isn't glued to the base of the skirt yet, but once it is, there will be sufficient room for the curved piece of styrene that will be glued along the edge of the base. There probably would have been enough room anyway, but I wanted to be sure it wouldn't be a problem later.



With that out of the way, I returned to the frame, to fix the goof I made yesterday when drilling the hole for the gas pipe. Recall that I accidentally drilled a 1.00" hole on one side of the frame, when I should have drilled a 1.25" hole. After considering various options for fixing the problem, I decided to use a scrap piece of plywood and drill a 1.25" hole in it. Then, I carefully lined up the center of the 1.25" diameter hole in the scrap wood, with the center of the 1.00" hole in the frame.

Once I had the alignment where I wanted it, I screwed down the scrap wood in place.



Once again I used the 1.25" hole saw to finish the cut. The 1.25" hole in the scrap wood guided the hole saw to the proper location.



And once again I needed to widen the hole slightly with the Dremel drum sander, to accommodate the diameter of the pipe.



The larger pipe now passes through the frame. I will need to trim the pipe to the proper length, but that will have to wait for another day.



Next up, sanding down the sections of Tape-Ease cylinder that were trimmed when Mike and I were working on the foot shells, way back on December 3, 2006. The cylinder sections needed to be flattened and evened out on the ends.



I used the belt sander to remove the majority of material that needed smoothing over, and finished the job by laying some sandpaper flat on a table and sanding everything even.



It took quite a while to do all four ankles (two outer legs, plus two for the center leg), but the fit for each of these is pretty good. There is still much work to be done, such as cutting the 55 degree angle from the base, covering up the resulting hole, and then cutting the height down to size. Lots to look forward to.



As daylight was fading, I decided to apply Evercoat to the edge of the skirt base.



A short time later, the Evercoat had hardened, and I sanded the edge smooth. With this step out of the way, I can work on gluing down all those support pieces and the box this upcoming week.



Finally, I also applied Evercoat to the hydraulic and button pockets of the horseshoes. I only had time to sand down the set of pockets on one of the horseshoes. Hopefully I'll get to the other tomorrow, but time will be tight again.