Day of the Dalek Skirt Panels

The skirt panels are all painted now, and here they are leaning in place on the frame one more time before I attached the hemispheres.

Once I glue those hemi's into the holes, I can attach the panels to the frame, spackle in any gaps, and touch up the paint.

I still need make the bumper at the bottom a bit thicker, but I'll do that later.

Magic 8 Balls

I think these will do nicely for the ball joints on the gun and plunger arm.
And yes, I asked the 8 Balls what they thought of it, and neither had any objections.

If these work out, I'll probably get another one to use for the eye.

108 mm

Fixed the holes in the skirt today. Finally got my hands on a slightly larger than 4" hole saw.
A 108mm one did nicely.

They fit!!

 After that, I gave the panels a couple coats of grey primer, a quick sanding, and a coat of silver.

 Next I'll glue in the hemispheres and attach the panels to the skirt frame, and the bottom part om y my Dalek will pretty much be done!

The Blues Are Still (Dalek) Blue

I spent the last week painting the hemispheres for the skirt. They were clear plastic, so I thought I should start with a few coats of grey primer to get a solid, even surface for the final color. I ended up doing 3 coats with a foam brush to avoid bristle marks.

Next, the actual color. As I'm trying to recreate an original 60's Dalek, I decided to go with a light blue. I found a shade that looks pretty close to the color reference photos of the originals. I went with Behr's 550B-5 "Windjammer" blue from Home Depot. A 7.5oz sample size was plenty, with enough left over for the discs on the eye stalk.

I might give them a coat of clear gloss to shine them up a bit and make them look more metallic.

Shoulder Work

I'm taking a break from the skirt while I sort out the issue with the holes in the panels for the hemispheres, so I decided to move on to the shoulder section, and get some work done on that since I had the parts for it handy.

Here's the frame -

The top is a 22" diameter circle, about 2" wide. Should be enough to hold the neck rings and the inner neck bin (which I'll get to later). The bottom is the same pattern as the top of the skirt frame, but with the corners rounded off.

I cut the top and bottom out of 1/4" pressboard-like material. I forget exactly what it's called, but it seems pretty strong for its thickness. I had originally planned on using it for the skirt panels and the skin for the shoulder frame, but decided to go with the MDF instead for those. The struts are the same timber pieces I used for the skirt frame, just cut down in width to fit.

Here it is sitting on the skirt frame -

Next step will be to make the gun box, and then to put the "skin" around the frame.

Foiled by the Metric System!

It turns out the 4" hemispheres I got are not in fact 4" as advertised. They're a little bit over 4", and I'm assuming were measured in millimeters... So they are slightly too big for the holes I drilled... oops... Anyway, guess I've got some trimming to do.

56 4" disc cutouts.

Holes!

Just finished drilling the 56 4" holes in the skirt panels for the hemispheres.
I cheated a little bit and only measured the locations for each hole on one side of the skirt and the clamped the corresponding panel from the opposite side to each and drilled straight through - so I did 2 panels at a time. Except for the back panel obviously...

And here they are leaning in position against the skirt frame again.

Now on to those hemispheres!!