R4-D4 Dome work progress 3.1 - RED

Last week, I stripped down the dome of it's fitted components & started to spray up the dome, white.

Still have the lower ring to sort out etc. Plus colour scheme, which is actually my biggest issue lol.

Weekend, I lightly sanded the dome and then Monday in work, I gave it a second coat of white.

I drew up some colour ideas, but wasn't happy with them. Then I settled on a design that follows a standard'ish style. So, I started the masking off...

One thing I had forgotten was there are grooved panels above the Radar Eye's location. With everything going on, I'd completely forgotten to add these.....

So a quick operational procedure later and......

Two new grooves were in, PVA washed and edges sanded, ready for the morning.
I was working on the grooving and the masking off of the dome for about 3hrs! It was gone 1am when I finished up and went to bed.

Tuesday 12th.
This morning I set up in the works spray booth and got to spraying up the dome.
They only sell the metallic red in small tins.....good job I bought two!

Started spraying up.

Dome and lid sprayed, just waiting for it to dry,

I also sprayed up the two electronics panels in silver. I got them wet with spray which has helped with the blending of the 3D printed ridges.

Once dried these will get dirtied up with black etc.

So lunchtime I peeled off all the masking. Two spots I'd missed with covering, and one slight mist bleed. But am not to bothered at the moment as I can re-do this bit later.

 Radar Eye fitted back on.

'Electronics panel' fitted back on. View also of the lid.

I left one panel be red & included some random split pin strips, for R5 reference :)

Next up is silver groove details.

Metal for the neck ring arrived today from 'Metals4U', here in the UK. You can order strips cut to length, width & thickness etc.

R0-D4 dome upgrade 2017 - 1.2

Finished off attaching the location blocks.

Glued and then screwed from the underside.

Once these were all done, I re-attached this new base ring to the Dome.

One thing I didn't get round to doing on R0's dome was his two side rear quarter panels. I wanted them to be blue, but didn't have time to do this before going to Celebration Europe 2016. Whilst there R5 was in much demand that I didn't get around to swapping over the domes and driving R0-D4 around. Then once home, he was put back on the shelf (dome) and I forgot about the panels.

So I decided to spray them up. Using a strong clear bag, I masked off the two sections.

Next up was spraying them with metallic blue.

And whilst I had time, I did some light weathering to the dome to better match-up with R5's body. Didn't want to go mad as this dome may not of seen sand lol, but still needed to be grubbed up a bit.

 The top has had the weathering toned back a bit since this photo.

I may put on my list of things to do, a set of correct dome rods.

~~~~~

Went and ordered the new metal strip that will be used to make up the new skin ring, which will replace the original wood one.

Ordered on Monday 26th from:

Metals4U (here in the UK),

they supply cut to length/thickness/width from a range of materials.
It arrived the next day!! WOW!!