Paintjob

I hurried putting my dome for BB-8 together for the Sci Fi convention in mid September. This included doing a quick (and not nearly good enough) paint job to just get the dome to some sort of colour.

The paint was too thick in places, and I had not had enough time to do a proper job concealing the joints. You can really see the joint on the left hand side of the picture quite clearly.

I also had no time to really let the paint dry before I hit it with the clear coat, so it all sort of blended together. Not to mention the ugly skirt..

To fix the skirt and the dome ring, I needed to print new parts, something I have done and are still in the process of assembling.

Paint job being botched (and no orange) aside, it still looked pretty cool!

Not to mention the extreme close-up .. 2001 warning ahead:

This got me through the Sci Fi convention, even though it was just a base.

Being back home, I sanded the clear coat and most of the paint off, worked over some of the problem areas with some putty filler, sanded again, and then applied 3 coats of spray filler, before sanding it down AGAIN with 400 grit sand paper to a very smooth finish, before I applied the white paint again. No more problem areas, and no more visible joints!

Once the dome was white (again) and the paint had cured, I taped over the entire dome, and cut out the portions that was going to be orange, and then hit the dome with the brand new orange paint I had custom ordered.

Once cured, the dome looks GREAT!

After the paint had cured properly, it was time to hit it with the clear coat.

The dome feels incredibly smooth.

Time to buy a can of dark grey and tint the Radar Surrounds and the Holo Projector (and the Holo Projector ring) in the proper colour and mount them.

The only annoying thing is that I had made a really good PSI that should sit in the smaller hole on this picture, however, when cleaning out my workshop the other day, I suspect that small PSI that I wrote a nice blog post about, accidentally found its way out in the trash…

Ah well, you gain some, you lose some. I have updated the 3D model for this, so next time it should be a lot easier for me to get what I need to get done!

Next up is putting some more focus on the dome ring and dome skirt so I can paint and mount them for a finalized dome structure. Can’t wait to get this part of the build done so I can start weathering the dome, I’m really looking forward to that!