Painting the Center Foot

I'm getting the center foot ready for paint. I covered the screw holes with 2 small coats of JB Weld and sanded that. Then put glazing putty over it and sanded it until I was happy with it. The foot will be painted white and used on R5 until I can locate some steel feet. Then these feet will eventually be painted black and put on R2-Q5.

I was going to start in on the outer feet by attaching the U channel to the feet using the same method I did with the center foot. I think I'll wait until I have the JAG ankles to make sure everything fits together and is wide enough. My center foot isn't JAG and I needed to file some areas so the JAG ankle would fit in nice and tight. That will be my next major project on R5. When that's done he'll stand on 3 feet. I can't wait!

The center foot had its first coat of primer and I'm using the Sun to check for flaws you can't see under indoor and other lighting circumstances. While this foot dries I'll cut some foot strips with a jigsaw out of .125 x 1 inch flatbar. You can buy 5 foot of that from Ace Hardware and have enough for 2 droids worth of foot strips.

I'm also working on making the back door fit better. On the right side of the back door you can see I added a strip of aluminum along the side of the back door. I have a painted strip on the cement that I'll glue on the left side next. The reason for adding this is so the backdoor can't fall thru. There is a tiny lip on the back door that this will rest upon.

Here is a closeup of the small back plate I glued to make sure the backdoor don't fall in. I got the idea for making this from the image below from Astromech. Its of the ROTJ with a droid with a full back door open. You can see a silver lip that goes around the back door.

So there is about a 3mm lip that will rest on that guide. Here is a pic below showing what will rest against it.

A top down view of my backdoor. That 3 MM of the skin will rest against the silver bracket on both parts of the back door preventing it from going thru the skins. I can file down the back door skins or add to them using filler to adjust the final gap you'll see on the backdoor.

My first coat of white is drying. I'll wet sand it with 600 grit and take out anything that needs to make it look better next. I'll give it a second coat on Monday and let it dry for a couple of days. Then I can assemble the side plates and half moons, then the wheels and this part is ready to mount.