I have to say sculpting a head of an animal out of steel is a lot more work than I originally anticipated .... but ... enormously gratifying at the same time. It takes more patience than I'm normally used to doling out but so far I have to say the giraffe head is coming out according to plan. I'm about half way done with the hard stuff behind me. The face, eyes, lids, brows, mouth, lips, inner mouth and lower jaw area are in good shape.
The hard part was making sure everything was in correct proportions and both sides of the face matched. As I know nothing about how normal people make metal sculptures, I'm using my own technique and seat of the pants type flying I usually employ. As in building the robots, listening to other people too much will taint your creativity. Of course there's a lot to be said for the voice of experience and listening to it can sometimes save you from a lot of painful mistakes. You gotta balance it out.
Still no pictures but in a couple weeks the bust will be hopefully presentable. Then onto the neck, body and legs. It will be a long term project for sure.
On the battle droid project, not much getting done but I did design the adjustable knees and started working on them. One thing that is crazy working with steel is how hard it is. I tried drilling a hole in 1/4" steel with the drill press and it just wasn't going to happen until I started the hole by blasting a starter hole with the plasma cutter. Without that, it would have taken 3 days to drill a hole with the bits I had. Even with cutting oil. I guess I'm just used to working with aluminum from R2D2 which was a cinch to drill or cut. Steel is a whole different medium. Or maybe I need new drill bits ...
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