My First Prop Build (Or "How Not To Build A K9")

Started by davidp, Jun 04, 2014, 07:16 pm

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davidp

Jun 04, 2014, 07:16 pm Last Edit: Jun 04, 2014, 07:22 pm by davidp
Hi, i'm new here :)

My goal has always been to build a Special Weapons Dalek but with absolutely no prop-building experience that might be a stretch too far for the time being, so I'm starting off with a K9 - this is the diary.

I want it to be:
1:1 Scale (or as near as I can realistically get)
Be motorised (more on this nearer the time, I have something hopefully a bit different planned)
Be as accurate as possible in the little details, down to the wire mesh ears, rubber bellows from a Mini, coloured buttons all in the right order etc etc

I plan to make the inner frame from 3mm mdf/hardboard, then wrapped in a 1mm styrene skin. Once it's all smoothed out and filled and sanded I'd like to make a silicon rubber mould from it, and make my "final" fibreglass version from the mould.

Some pics to start...

I've never got my head round the measure twice, cut once philosophy, so I cheated and started off by building a CNC router with approx 1 sq.mtr cutting area (this took many weeks and much bloody/sweat/tears (mainly tears)), to cut out the pieces more accurately than I ever could by hand. (VCarve was used to create the G-Code from image files, Mach3 to do the actual cutting, for anyone interested in that side of things)
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LeVCgu8.jpg

Starting on the head...
79facnB.jpg

Head frame complete, next to an unimpressed real dog...
JM7BrwR.jpg

Starting to wrap the head in styrene, fixed to the hardboard with aruldite (later I swapped the aruldite for some Liquid Nails as it gripped almost immediately and I found it to be less brittle and prone to snapping away than the aruldite once dry...
VmKkVLH.jpg

Work starts on the body whilst still wrapping the head..
CDn9K2Z.jpg

More of the body...
M93rZMo.jpg

Once the body was done, the sanding/filling stage begins (i've already sprayed a lot of it in plastic primer by this point as nothing shows up cracks and imperfections like a coat of paint!)
lLlgNVi.jpg

That's where I'm up to so far :) -David

superrichi1a

Ah, so I come straight from commenting on my thread to seeing this is already up :D Wow! This is some seriously impressive stuff, the ingenuity behind that head construction is inspiring, and that CNC machinery looks suitably impressive, you've surpassed my bumbling approach quite nicely here, as is only right ;) Can't wait to see more, and I'm becoming ever more jealous of K.9s that have the curve on the top, which I was stupid enough to forgo haha!
In all a wonderful new build project, and a nice looking freestyle "organic" K.9 you've already built ;) my "organic" K.9 came out less well trained than I'd hoped but that's life!
Isn't it how ironic that we have to think of solutions out of the box, in order to build our boxes a lot of the time?

davidp

Ah thanks very much - i'm lucky enough to have you a few steps ahead of me so I can look to your thread for guidance.. as I did with the paint!

davidnagel

so much for 'how to not build a k9' ;) too modest obviously :D
Regards
David

davidp

Thanks @davidnagel, although it's not finished yet, there's still time for it to go pear-shaped  :)

I need to find somewhere I can source the control panel buttons from, if anyone can offer any suggestions!

davidp

Update #2

Just back from work and thought while it's nice outside I'd experiment a bit with trying to get the blue-grey "school reunion" style paint mixed right.. after a lot of attempts this is the closest I've got so far...

(please ignore the bumpy joins, i've not smoothed/filled the body properly yet! :) )
4fZfPGn.jpg

Here's the pic i'm trying to match against - taken with the same camera, in November at the 50th anniversary weekend, ...

PkLtbI3.jpg

Tonight i'll carry on smoothing out the head and maybe think about how I'm going to machine the raised ear-holder things, I shall update when there's something new to show..

DoctorWho8

That Dalek eye stalk is going into K-9's no-no territory. :D
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

davidp

Haha it is... I dread to think what it's looking for

davidp

Nothing really exciting to report... filling and sanding continues a-pace (about half-way done to making the body look like it's one piece), that's about it.

Also ordered the control panel buttons from RS Components, they should be delivered tomorrow. Order is as below in case anyone stumbles upon this diary one day in search of which buttons might be suitable.. :)

#              Qty   £               £Total       Desc.
198-703   15   £1.328   £19.92   Incandescent lamp for 12mm switch,12V
610-7107   12   £2.89           £34.68   Modular Switch Body -10°C +55°C
610-6996   5   £1.21           £6.05           Green Rectangular Push Button Lens For Use With A16 Series LED/Incandescent Lamp Push Button Switch
610-6968   5   £1.21           £6.05           Red Rectangular Push Button Lens For Use With A16 Series LED/Incandescent Lamp Push Button Switch
610-6980   5   £1.21           £6.05           Yellow Rectangular Push Button Lens For Use With A16 Series LED/Incandescent Lamp Push Button Switch
610-6974   5   £1.20           £6.00           Blue Rectangular Push Button Lens For Use With A16 Series LED/Incandescent Lamp Push Button Switch
340-8558   12   £3.61           £43.32   SPDT Push Button Contact Block

(don't be confused by the qtys ordered, some of the items can only be ordered in multiples of 5)


superrichi1a

I'm somewhat in awe of what you've managed to do given the material! All your lines and joins are exceptionally neat, and things like that removable panel I just gave up from the off under the impression that it would be to hard to achieve with hardboard (although, to be fair, when I started I expected it to be a 3-day rough build with major concessions to ease, the final result is actually just an example of me getting carried away). Well, I am again very impressed :)
How does it actually all fit together inside? The interior of mine is a mess of glue, join strips/strengtheners and the result of a midnight attempt to fibreglass - yours looks very, very neat :)
Isn't it how ironic that we have to think of solutions out of the box, in order to build our boxes a lot of the time?

davidp

Hi, and thanks! :)

The joins are just a case of filling, sanding, spraying with primer to highlight imperfections, then starting all over again, and again, and again - eventually it smooths out :)

The hardboard is glued together with Liquid Nails and a bit of duct-tape, no strengtheners etc - I was expecting to have to re-enforce some of the joints but it's managed to stay together pretty well. Before I make the silicone rubber cast of the body i'll make him a little wooden jig just to make sure the corners stays square.

With regards to the cut-out panel, I intend to cheat a bit... I'll make the panel to sit reasonably snugly in the gap, but when I do the fibreglass version I'm going to embed some 1mm think neodymium magnets into the fibreglass panel, and into the same positions on the fibreglass body, so the panel should just snap on and off. Same goes for the top of the head when I get round to it!

superrichi1a

In that case this is some very, very tidy and precision work :)
Never used liquid nails, tried it with a Dalek and I found it didn't stick :-/ is there some trick to it?
What caught my eye there though was your plan for the top of the head! I tried very hard to think of a way to make mine open, from screws to hinges etc, but none of them worked. In the end I just sealed it up meaning maintenance is difficult - but magnets would have worked! Ah well ::)
Isn't it how ironic that we have to think of solutions out of the box, in order to build our boxes a lot of the time?

davidp

Ah well what I intend to do with the head is have the front "nose" bit screwed down as I'd need to have screwheads in the nose anyway to keep it accurate, then have the back of the head held in place by 2 or 3 magnets. The magnets are only 5p each on ebay and they're only 1mm thick, so I'll try to embed the magnets either within the fibreglass itself, or stuck to the inside of the head if the magnets turn out to be strong enough.

There's no real trick with the Liquid Nails - in fact I found it to be a good alternative to the various epoxies and aruldites I tried, which I had real trouble with... but I'm sure others will swear by aruldite and that's fair enough, it was probably down to how I was mixing it or something. I think if you can find something that's reliable and it holds quickly and strongly, doesn't really matter what you use.

Thanks for your comments regarding tidiness - it all stems from a mispent youth about 20 years ago when I tried to assemble a Comet Miniatures dalek kit. It turned out a right bloody mess, I ended up giving it up as a bad job and binning it :D Fast forward 19yrs when I picked a comet kit up off of ebay last year and thought I'd have another stab at it. This time though I was determined it would be done right! It took about 4 months in the end, but every joint and every seam was smoothed out :) So when I decided on trying to do a full scale K9, I knew I'd have to do the same.


Incidentally, speaking of model kits - I also picked up a Sevans K9 1:5 scale model kit with the hope using it to scale up the measurements - it took forever to get hold of one, and although I love the kit (and will never make it, too rare!), I was a bit disappointed with the accuracy of it so didn't use it in the end

davidp

Control panel buttons arrived today, they're not EXACTLY like the actual prop, but I guess they're probably close enough. I'll see how they look once they're mounted onto the control panel and if I'm not happy with them I can always trim the black plastic off the sides to make a closer match...

8bFJjjm.jpg

The rest of tonight will be about sanding and filling the body (again). Although some more 3mm styrene also arrived today so I could make a start on the head top panel too...