more of the making

i cant remember exactly how long it was before i returned to the r2 project, probably a couple of months, i completely lost the thing in amongst the huge pile of junk/tools/tat/toys/Cd's/scooter bits etc that steadily grows around my computer.

when eventually i decided one day to have a tidy, the dome showed up so i stuck it in a box along with a load of other bits and pieces that i thought might be useful.

a few days later i raided one of those big coffee machines you get in the motorway services, those little wooden stirrers were perfect for the lagging planks on my boiler .


it just so happened i had a length of steel pipe out in the yard so i hacked a piece off with my angle grinder,and by pure fluke it fitted the dome perfectly, this was a good sign.

i then glued the planks onto the steel using cheap super glue, soldered together some tiny steam gauges and made the front panel.



thick copper wire was used for the pipework with thin copper sheet brackets i also cut tiny copper washers for where the pipes went into the body.

i also gave it a couple of coats of varnish, bad idea it was horrible i eventually stripped it all off and did it again.



then i turned my attention to the underside, beaten out from a copper blank similar to the brass one i used for the dome, it originally had a round base with sides at right angles , i just flared out the sides till it fitted the body.

some of this junk you can see on the bench is stuff Ive had lying about for years and years.



grilles and meshes were added along with a brass firebox door i also did a dry run with the legs just to get the proportions right.

a long drawn out period of messing about with leg strut configurations followed, it took about a week to get things right, i also discovered a prime piece of brass pipe out in the yard in the form of a blowlamp pump, this eventually became the topmost tube in the leg assembly.



my fingers were scorched and blackened by metal polish, but things were really beginning to take shape.

this is how the r2 dome was made

the illustration that started it all was made for the robots image challenge on b3ta.com.
a few days later i came across a pressed brass blank that i had picked up somewhere so i thought i might have a go at beating it out into a dome.



a slow process of heating and beating, i used an ordinary ball pein hammer and a wooden stump with a slight depression in it for an anvil.



at this stage i use a file to identify all the high spots, and carefully hammer them out.



the beating out process took quite a while it was a long time before i was happy with the profile, but finally i called it a day, the top by now was paper thin from all the beating and filing.
on to the next stage, marking out the panel lines, and drilling loads of little holes in lines to make bigger holes i then used needle files to neaten up the edges.




then i started adding some detail, the large lens body is a piece of brass light fitting the inlaid pieces are medium and fine wire mesh with copper and silver pipe detail behind them,other materials include brass boot eyelets and lead sheeting.



work then stopped for a while, a combination of work and domestic stuff meant i had to set the project aside.

my first foray into the blogging world

Friends of mine, quite a few of them in fact have said you must start a blog, well yes here i am and this is my blog, and here's what I'm up to this very minute


Click for bigger (104KB)

ive been working on this project off and on for quite a while now, regularly updating its progress on my deviant art pageshttp://amoebabloke.deviantart.com/, then quite suddenly things started getting strange.
a link was posted on boingboing and the thing went mental five and half thousand views in one day and still rising, and quite a few offers of hard cash.
i still haven't decided what to do with it, i haven't even finished it yet.