Lesson of the day

First, Bender is making great progress still and the final problem areas have been conquered. But they are going to take some more bondo and drying time as I used construction adhesive to attach the new layer of styrene. All the little "flaw" areas have been sanded and resanded with new layers of spot putty. The picture looks bad but it will look good once the final coat of hammered silver is applied.

The gap between the door and body was filled with a piece of leftover pipe insulation that I had from my B9's legs. I cut it to fit, primed and then painted it silver and then slid it into the crack. Looks much better than a big old gap.

My wife came up with how we're going to give Bender a removable cigar. We're going to put metal behind his mouth and make a cigar with a magnet in his base. That will be a piece of cake. Now I need a plastic or ?? safe beer bottle. One that won't break if his removable hand is bumped and falls off. Those are the fun things for later.

Now onto the lesson of the day. I have a rather expensive resin C3PO head that I had in my garage resting on a metal stick that was in my vice. The forehead of C3PO rested on the tip of the metal stick. Kept it from falling and it looked cool.

Well today I cut the eyes out of the C3PO head and then noticed a very large flaw on C3PO's forehead. A large bump on the top of his head. I do mean large. At first I thought I purchased a flawed head and just didn't notice it. But as I felt inside the head, I noticed the indentation on the inside also. Coincidentally it was in the same area that the metal stick was pressing against the top of the head. It seemed illogical that a piece of 1/2" resin would slowly deform by just it's own weight pressing on a small pressure point. But that's what happened.

I reasoned that if the resin was that soft then I may be able to reverse the damage with a heat gun and a pair of gloves. I doubted it would work but had absolutely nothing to lose. So I pulled out the old heat gun and evenly heated the forehead and top of the head. Gently I pressed the indentation and in a matter of minutes, C3PO's head was back to a nice consistent smoothness. I learned another lesson today when cutting the eyes .... but enough confession for one day. I may be able to hide that scre....

Also added a coat of liquid rubber over a set of ancient B9 legs that I'm going to make into an end table. I had extra rubber and even though I know it won't hide the cracks in the legs, it will smooth them out a little.