Man the things I've learned in the past two weeks, but mostly what an a-hole I was on day 1...
Day 15 : T-minus 8 days
I'm still sour about declaring how much free time I was going to have. Can you tell?
I poured another arc ring and made it slightly less blue (which I wish I could say was intentional but it will give me some options). I tried a vacuum thing, but only for about 10 minutes. I needed to make this one so I can use one to mold if I need and not use this ridiculous duncan hines container anymore (which as the only one that turned out I'm not bashing).
I went and got a bunch of supplies yesterday. for faceplate: bondo spot putty ($6.42), primer sealer ($5.79), 400 grit sandpaper* ($4.49). for arc reactor: 18-gauge copper wire to wire the leds ($4.98), screen patches or the little mesh interior circle (3x for $2.36), 60/40 .6mm flux solder ($6.50), flush snips ($9.70), tweezerman ingrown hair tweezers ($11.99) -- it was decided that I shouldn't be using my girlfriend's good tweezers for electric soldering. Also picked up a set of test leads ($5.98), and a pair of anti-fog safety glasses ($8.44) so I don't have to use my sunglasses at night or have my other's getting super foggy (it's been weirdly foggy where I live in la the last couple nights). My led's are supposed to arrive tomorrow, so hopefully I'll do a basic light ring tomorrow if they arrive on time.
I sprayed the bad boy and it looked pretty good. Obviously there are some scratches and pin holes, and there are the two or three sections I need to finish sculpting with bondo.
I think this (e)rondo coat was the biggest misstep I've made. I'm going to cast (eventually but probably not this one) it anyway and put padding on the inside so I'm not sure why I did it. It smells to high heaven, and makes the fiberglass matt inaccessible so last minute shaping with the hair dryer is all but impossible. Alas.
I was giving it a once over and working on the eye parts, building up the frame. I am going to have to do a lot of sanding work here.
The outer edges are a lot thinner than I have them, as is the layer before the build up inside the eye socket (here I actually just got that from sanding the right shape for the bottom lines). But it still wasn't looking right to me. Then I looked at a bunch of reference pictures and notices that the bottom (uni) brown line is nearly flush with the top edge of the nose and not angled indented like I have it. I then realized I was super exhausted, came back inside, had a very minor melt down, decided I would write this post today, and went to sleep dreaming of sanding bondo (I kid you not).
Now I feel refreshed, had a nice coffee, and I'm back to the grind.
Quick update, the smell of chemical peanut butter is just not at a tolerable level where I think I can work on it inside while my girlfriend is working.
Thanks for reading,
Cory
* I've corrected it, but in the past I referred to using 120 grit sandpaper. It was 150, 220, and now 400.
One last thing, on a whim I tried out my new dremel to see how it worked and clean up some things (eye line geometry). Was only going to test it out so I didn't but on my ventilator or eyes protection and then I got carried away. I think i breathed in some bondo dust and got a couple flecks in my eye. It was not bad. I just took a shower, but it was unpleasant for a few hours. Don't be an idiot like me. Wear a dust mask (at the very least) when sanding and eye protection.
