aluminium

Over the weekend, in addition to flying all over the country and performing, I’ve been busy trying to get as much of my droid painted as possible!

I’ve learned a great deal, a lot of do’s and don’ts, and fallen into a number of pitfalls along the way!

But let’s start from the beginning!

After finally realizing that I would need to paint the droid all myself, and most likely on my balcony, I trodded away to the store, got a cheap, foldable workbench and ordered some paint online!

This will do nicely to ge things off the floor and work comfortably!

Part of the paints used. Also note the breathing mask. Definitely a must when working spray paint, even if you are outside!

I started off by sanding off the body with a 400 grit sand paper to get it nice and smooth. Then time to prime with my grey primer, and set off to dry over night. Next step is to sand the primer down to get it nice and smooth, I noticed a few places where I needed to add a bit of bondo, added that, then sanded off some more.

Once I was happy with the surface job, it was time to bring out the white cans. Not being very experienced in spray painting, Obviously I made a lot of mistakes along the way.

I think one thing was that I wanted the results to be done, so I didn’t spray in thin layers enough. One lesson learned was that if I apply thicker layers than just fine mists, not only can it (and did in some places) cause the paint to run, and you need to wait for that to dry and sand and paint all over again, but thicker layers takes exponentially longer to dry than thin layers!

Once the first layer was put on, the body was put aside to dry and I started working on the doors. Same thing there. Prime first, then dry before applying the white paint.

After the white paint was applied, I put the entire sheet with the doors to the side for drying… Another mistake. I used thin papers as “trays” when painting, which was good in itself, but I forgot to think about things like wind.. which resulted in flapping the paper over on to my freshly painted door, and … well .. this:

*ouch* More work. I needed to strip almost all that paint off, then start over. That takes time!

Day two started with wet sanding the body. I removed a few places where the paint had run, and generally scrubbed that droid nice and smooth, ready for just one more layer…

Once dried, disaster struck!

I added one more layer, but it seems that was a bit premature! I got crinkly paint… the orange peel, or cracking paint or whatever you want to call it!

My guess is that the aint was not dry enough after being outside over night (where it was probably a bit moist), and that caused the paint to crack up and peel.

After the sun had been on the balcony for a while, I’ve sanded off most of it, but I’m keeping it inside for tonight and won’t touch it until tomorrow night (earliest) where I need to do a little bit more of sanding, and finally one thin coat of paint on top of this.

Time for a break, as I had to fly down to Malmö to do a gig on saturday evening!

Coming back, I took a few pictures out the window to the white engine, to get some reference photos of real life weathering..

Fueled with this, I’ve continued my paint job with these additional items:

One of my styrene foot shells has been painted.. as well as

The doors for the body and one of the battery boxes… I need to redo one of the doors though. There is a spot right in the middle of the big one where one of the other doors had been accidentally fel on top of, and chipped the paint.. More sanding and repainting tomorrow.. *yay*

I did also paint my utility arms..

.. did a crappy job of doing one of my booster covers, will most likely redo this one tomorrow as I’m not happy with it at all.

My new and improved LDP also happened to pass by under the can…

.. as well as my center vent holder…

… my octagon ports…

.. and my coin slots and arm boxes!

I had to test fit them, and I must say that it feels good seeing this. My R2 has been the colour of plastic for a long time now, and seeing it with the first coat of white on it, made the whole thing look so much more real! Now, I’ll just wait for the paint to dry properly before I do a little bit more sanding, touching up where it needs be, doing a gentle wet sand with 800 grit and finally adding some clear coat on the body!

I must say that I really like how the blue metallic colour that I’m using is looking when applied directly to the metal! Looks like I’ll be stripping away all paint on my aluminium panels before painting them with the current R2 blue of my choice!

I’ve gotten a lot done this weekend, and more to come! I’ve still got a little bit of styrene work to do on my other battery box, and I need to enlarge the leg hole for my power coupler on the right leg. I’ve got a few other small tweaks and ideas that I’m working on as well, but more on that later on!

Right now, it’s time to sleep! =)