Everything we build in our shop gets at least three coats of paint, often more as needed. Our projects last a long time that way. The first coat of paint we apply is simply to help build up the thickness and so we often use paint that is left over from previous projects - especially the unusual colours which don't often get used otherwise. We've decided a teal robot would look very cool and so a light shade of that colour was applied to the robot to start. The colour of the base is to be a rusty metallic (at this point) but inevitably it will get splashed on and marked as we work above so it will wait until the end. In the meantime a first base coat needed to be applied. Becke went to the seldom used section on our colour wall and pulled down a beautiful shade of mauve. It would do nicely. The result is a little hard to look at for now. Sometimes things have to get worse before it gets better. This is definitely one of those times. :)
Sculpting done!
My original goal had been to get the sculpting on my Sign Invitational piece done before the end of 2017. I almost made it. Today, I put a little more time in the shop to finish the sculpting on the Ideamatic. I also added a few missing details including the whistle, two antique gauges, a couple of taps and lots more rivets. We are now ready for final paint and aging on our MARVELLOUS MACHINE. It's looking pretty much as I imagined it when the idea first popped into my head long ago.
Robot sculpt done
On this, the last day of 2017, I put in a little time playing in the shop. I put the finishing details on the Precision Board robot table. This included his face, arms and hands. This coming week Becke is going to do the paint job and in the process bring him to life. We'll do him in a cool retro colour scheme along with plenty of aging, grime and wear. Then he'll be ready to ship down to the show in Orlando along with my Marvellous Machine entry.
