Made Horseshoes Swappable on Droid #2

Today I fixed an issue with droid #2 that's been nagging me for quite a while. Droid #2 uses Matthew Henricks' horseshoes and wooden legs, with all dowel holes precisely CNC'd in place. The horseshoes on that droid have the hydraulics in the front and the buttons in the back, which is the opposite of droid #1. Why did I do that? Because most of the original trilogy movies - and I believe all of the prequel movies - have them this way, and I started building droid #2 not long after Revenge of the Sith was released. However, the sequel movies and the Disney+ streaming shows have the buttons in the front and hydraulics in the back, and I prefer this look. The easy solution is to simply swap the horseshoes on each side of the droid; but alas, I made this slightly harder than I should have.

I used three segments of dowel on each horseshoe, and used a little bit of blue painters tape to keep them snug in their corresponding holes in the legs.



I had left a segment of dowel in the legs to help keep the wooden layers aligned as I glued them. This inhibits the ability to swap horseshoes from one leg to the other, since the dowel now needs to go where there is already a segment of dowel in the legs. So I decided to drill this out, and I started by using a step bit to keep the hole centered as I drilled.



Eventually I switched to a 3/8" bit, and that actually helped loosen the dowel, and I was able to pull it out.



I repeated the process on the other leg, and soon I had both dowels removed.



I was able to place the horseshoes back on the droid, now with the buttons in the front, where I like them. I can swap them back again any time I want, but I don't plan to unless there is a good reason.



In the end, it doesn't look like those two dowels were actually glued in place. I think I could have probably pulled them out with a cork screw, although I'm not sure I even own one. Oh well, either way I got the result I wanted.