The infamous hub

Hi everyone! As many of you know, a few of us are following Dave Everett's droid plans and one of the few drawbacks is that it requires the above special motor-to-wheel hub. My question is, do any of you work with machining aluminium, or know where I can get this inexpensively fabricated? Maybe those of us building the Davedroid should get a part run going? It's supposed to be made out of 2011 Aluminium.
I think it would be more cost effective to make a handful of those, but I'm open to suggestions.
Thanks!

Ankle time

My legs are actually complete but I forgot to take a photo. This one was near completion. I tend to keep some of the paper templates stuck on until near the end, for drilling guides etc....

Okay, so these pieces of .125" (3mm for those of you without freedom of speech) styrene will become a legitimate ankle.

By the way, I have got a few jabs for my dislike of that communist metric system, but I have to say I am protecting the best interests of America here. After all, the commies also tried to get americans to embrace the Decabet. This was a metric system version of the alphabet. In the Decabet, the first four letters, A, B, C, and D remain the same. The letters E and F are combined into one character, Г. For example, the word "eagle" would be spelled "ГaglГ" and would be pronounced, "Ee-fag-lef" The letters G, H, and I would become one letter, "GHI" and the letters L, M, N, and O would become "LMNO", pronounced "Elemenoh", as in, "Please lmnopen the door."
Lastly, the so-called "trash letters" (P through Z) would be combined into a single letter, so an ordinary "stop" sign would look like an incomprehensible mess of letters all squashed together. For example, the word 'alphabet' would be spelled A-LMNO-PQRSTUVWXYZ-GHI-A-B-EF-PQRSTUVWXYZ. We don't want that in these United States.

Dave labeled the four pieces I'm gluing together in the next picture "MAO", which PROVES the aussie commitment to Maoism. The ankle axis hole is not yet drilled but the cable access hole was drilled to 3/4" with a Freud forstner bit. I mean, I say Freud forstner but it is easier to remember it as Fred Flintstone. In the original soviet plans, the hole was supposed to be 20mm.

I did drill a 3mm hole (with an actual liberated 3mm drill bit) on the axis so I could align all pieces with a nail.

The whole thing got glued to the MALS parts and a nail is used in the 3mm hole for alignment. I was a bit surprised to find out that the diametre of my nails is indeed 3mm.

Now I glued the parts marked MAS. These parts had to be chamfered. I suggest looking to Bjoern Giesler's blog for a good way to practice chamfering. Chamfering will be the most annoying thing you'll do in this build and there is a lot of it. It never ends up the way you want, but it gets close enough that you can fix things where needed.

Next, the part labeled MALB goes up against the MALS block. Be sure you drilled a 5/8" hole so the copper pipe (or if you are extremely lucky, a towel rail as in the plans) can go through. Observe the chamfers on the MAP1 uprights and add those. Add MAB and the 2 MAP2 pieces.

When I checked the top edge, some edges were not the right height. I got them flat with the bastard file. When cutting thick styrene, sometimes the edges have a bit of diagonal flashing. I try to always file those before gluing.

I'm missing a few photos but here's the end product. I skinned the sides with .020 styrene (0.5mm for those of you learning Russian as a second language).

I haven't blogged in a few days mostly because I wanted to have photos to go with what I write. But so far I have the skinned body, two shoulder hubs, the legs and the ankle. I might have a bit more going on but I'll do another update this weekend. It's hard to do anything when the baby needs attention, though. ;-)

Hubs and Legs on the way!

I didn't get any building done in the weekend. As I mentioned on a previous post, I stupided my applicator bottle and couldn't glue anything. So I ordered a new bottle online from this link
and it arrived on the following day!

I've decided I'm pretty much done with Gavrieli Plastics in North Hollywood because it's just a lot cheaper to order styrene online from http://www.indplastic.com/ and I can get the applicator bottle from the previous link.

So what did I do this weekend? Well, I just cut out some print-outs and pasted them onto styrene for cutting day.

I love cutting day. I get to use my router setup and cut circular shapes from Dave's plans. Cutting day occurs when wife is away long enough for me to set up router table, cut pieces, dismantle setup, and clean clean clean until there's no trace that cutting took place.

Now, I know that it looks like there's a lot of flashing on my styrene parts, but that's just what the router does to the paper templates. It's not the actual plastic. So with this in mind, check out my hub pieces, all cut out.


For no good reason I stupided R3 twice. Oh well. Start with R1 or L1. Place plate 1 on the table and glue plate 2 on top, using a couple nails for alignment. The reason I'm using nails is because I found out that the nails I had lying around the house are exactly 3mm in diameter (around 1/8" for those who don't believe Stalin was a hero. Dave's instructions had told me to buy a 3mm drill bit. I felt like I was betraying democracy but bought one).

One thing that I want to point out right now is that Dave's instructions were smuggled into the free world from some People's Republic that uses that archaic communist metric system. That's why the plans say such insane things such as "you will need 16 x M6 x 55mm countersunk screws". It's all in code! Can't let the government of the People's Republic know he secretly loves freedom. So, ignore that insane soviet M6 blah blah blahtskovitch talk and observe the translation: You will need 16 1/4" x 2-1/2" flat head machine screws.




Glue in those rectangular upright thingies in the alignment marks, making sure the outer edge is flush with the edge on the plates. Don't let the uprights protude beyond the edge!


Now glue on plates 3 and 4, once again using the nail holes for alignment.
Now you're going to need a drill press. There is NO way around this, you need a drill press and a 1/4" drill bit (or 6mm drill bit for those who hate us because of our freedom). I hear Harbor Freight has a very cheap drill press. If you live near one, get it. If not, do what I did. I needed a drill press very badly. Wife said no. I begged. She still said no. She finally said yes under one condition. Buy it at Walmart (those anti-american globalists sell stuff made in china) and keep the receipt. Build your droid and return the tool for a refund. You have to finish your droid within 90 days.
Now that you borrowed a drill press from that Illuminati-owned global elitist corporation, drill through ALL holes with the 1/4" drill bit (or 6mm if your mother used to read "Das Kapital" to you as a bedtime story). You can't do that with the step drill bit, you really do need a regular drill bit. Then use your countersink bit to countersink the outer holes on face 4 and the inner holes on face 1 as shown in Dave's plans. Mount the screws into the hubs, but make sure you do the inner ones first! It's a LOT easier if you do them first. Otherwise you'll feel like you're stuck in a chinese finger trap.


The semi-finished hub. All it needs now is the skin and I need to drill the cables/connector hole in the centre. Dave's plans are forced to say that it should be 30mm in diameter but we have men and women fighting in the middle east right NOW to defend our right to drill a 1-1/8" hole!!

Figuring I had time before my wife figured out I must be secretly building a droid in the apartment, I decided to work on the leg. I started with the lower leg blank. Dave says to drill the holes to 6mm for now. This, of course, is code for 1/4", which Dave must not say in fear he might get sent to Siberia. When you get to the part about drilling out the centres, you must use the drill press. And Dave says to use a 16mm towel rod or pvc pipe. That doesn't really exist. 16mm is of course code for 5/8". I don't know how many people died so we could have that information but honour them and get a 5/8" Freud forstner bit. I got one in the router aisle of Home Depot. It works great on the drill press. Then I got a piece of 1/2" I.D. copper pipe. You can cut it with a hacksaw. The towel rod would work better and I suggest it. I aligned everything, glued it and placed weight on top for an hour.



More leg construction. I had all the small leg pieces in that coffee can. And I was drinking coffee.

These clamps on the next photo are holding reinforcements that glue to the EDGE 2 faces.

And weight on top for another hour.

I will write more later. For now you can take a look at the styrene R2 dome that arrived via UPS.

Wife was not happy...

The Frame Goes Up

Now that I had the frame pieces all cut up, I needed to get some Weld-on 3. Like I said before, I bought Weld-on 16 by mistake. 16 is thicker and Dave said to get 3 instead. So I drove 15 miles to buy it at Gavrieli. Turns out they don't carry 3 anymore, only Weld-on 4 which seems to have replaced it. I learned later that there is also a Weld-on 4807 specifically for styrene, but since Dave never mentioned it I'm gluing my styrene with Weld-on 4. 3, 4 and 16 are all for acrylic. But they seem to work fine on styrene.

Reading the label for Weld-on 4 made me think I inadvertedly purchased radioactive materials. I kept expecting to read "Not for use by humans. Do not look directly at liquid. Not intended for sale in inhabited planets". The lid cap also refused to twist open. The Hulk would have turned purple trying to open it. When that finally opened, there was yet another cap inside with the words "Cut open" on it. Might as well have been a smiley face with it's tongue sticking out. I pryed it open and poured it into the overpriced applicator bottle.

I was ready to start. I unfolded the folding table in the kitchen under my wife's angry eyes. I bribed my wife with a trip to the hair salon so I could work without vibes and once she left I lay the foundation.




I started with the Base Plate #1, alignments facing up. I drilled the centre holes in 3mm (for those of us who don't live in communist countries that's about 1/8") with my Skil cordless drill. Did not use a drill press because I'm actually pretty good at drilling at 90 degrees and because wife has not given the budget a greenlight. I purchased a drill press stand from Sears, which claimed to convert a standard drill into a press. BIG mistake. It only takes certain drills, mostly Craftsman drills and nearly ruined my Skil drill. It damaged the drill enough that I might need a new one in a couple months.

Anyway, I cut off the edges from the base plate and saved them. They go here:
That's the ANKLE INSET PLATE. You'll have two of those.

Now comes the real heart of frame building: gluing in those uprights! Every time I saw this done on other people's frames I thought "These people must be cheating" because whenever you cut an upright, there's an edge that isn't entirely flush. This is because to cut the styrene, you go over the line once very softly, cutting only the paper template, and then again several times only a tad harsher each time. In the end you pull the piece up towards the cut and fold it in the other direction causing it to snap. This is fine in the .040" styrene (1mm for the comrades behind the iron curtain), but in the .125" styrene (3mm for the happy workers of the People's Republics around the globe) this will often cause very mild flashing. Unnoticeable to the eye, but obvious when you try to make the piece stand on its side.
Thankfully, the Weld-on thing really works. Here is the first of the LOWEST UPRIGHTS going up in its alignment.


You'll notice the two set squares (triangles actually but I guess that it was broken in two after it was invented) are covered in Glad ClingWrap. This is because Dave mentioned having to occasionally pry his squares from his styrene due to the Weld-on actually melting the styrene. Well, the only thing that sticks to ClingWrap is ClingWrap, so I wrapped the squares. It worked for the most part, only by the end the melted styrene had accumulated into the side folds. But it's better than having to pry the squares from the frame. Especially when the bonds are still fresh and malleable.

The process was repeated for the other 7 LOWEST UPRIGHTS. The uprights were flush against the edges as they should be. The annoyance here was waiting for each piece to set before putting a new one. You see, I only have two squares. I would have bought more but they were $7 each. Wife said no. In the end it just meant taking a little longer than I wanted because it was about 1o minutes for each piece to set enough that I could remove the squares without disturbing the balancing act. But it worked. You can see this here:


In the above photo, the ANKLE INSETS are installed onto the cut edges. Nice! Dave's a genius in spite of his insistent usage of that communist metric system (I think he just got used to it from when he was kidnapped by the soviets and forced to draw droid plans for them).

Slowly the frame took shape. You'll notice I did not use any extra supports on the uprights like I've seen others do. They glue little triangles on the sides of each upright. I was afraid that if I did that it might hurt in the long run. I intend to make this droid an RC droid, but Dave's RC plans haven't been smuggled out into the free world yet, so I thought it would be best not to mess with his design. I didn't want the extra supports to get in the way of some gears, servos or whatever.


As seen above, I used blue masking tape to keep the pressure on the pieces being glued together. This allowed me to move a little faster and perhaps get it done and clean up before my wife got home with her new hair.

While I waited for the glue to set, I fiddled about with the FRONT VENT INTERNALS. There used to be a link to a tutorial on how to make those from styrene. Unfortunately I lost that link too. So I printed out the official club blueprints for the FVI and glued pieces to scrap .040" (1mm for those whom Lenin liberated from capitalism) styrene. I cut out the pieces and tried to make sense out of them.



By the way, I was able to get good round cuts using an 88 cent scissors. I think it came from Walmart a few months ago. I don't remember. I did finally make sense out of how to position the pieces and ordered front vent surrounds from our pal Keith Henry (of http://www.resinparts.com/) who's recently landed back on Earth.
The finished frame:




Another styreme frame is born! You can't see this in this photo but the SHOULDER SUPPORT PLATES are being held to the SHOULDER PLATES with #6 screws. Home Depot had no 3mm screws and the difference is minimal. Maybe if they ever switch the logo from orange to red. The tap in front of the frame is however 3mm (close to 1/8" for those who like money).



I measured the central hole in the shoulder plates, it came to about 1-1/8 inches. I used a woodboring bit just the right size for it. You see, nothing "precise" goes into that hole, so it doesn't need to be perfect. Studying the plans showed me that this is just for wires and cables. The shoulder hub that unites the legs to the frame is dependent on screws, not the centre hole. This isn't Victor Franco's wood assembly where you stick a gas pipe through (Thankfully)! The styrene droid is a lot lighter.



What I didn't do: I did not cut out the opening doors in the front, nor did I cut spaces for servos or hinges for opening doors. I think if I were to do that, I'd have gone the long way to get the perfect shape. I'd have taken a mold from the curved closed door and cast a fiberglass door from it. I don't really need an opening door though.

Now I test fitted the skins. Looks prima! I didn't bother taking off the paper template yet. I'll do that soon. I need to untape the skin off the frame and start thinking of how to put it back on with the Weld-on.






I have found out Weld-on evaporates far too quickly to really work it very well. I also stupided my overpriced applicator bottle. Melted styrene clogged the tip of the needle and I decided to cut off the top with pliers. Stupid idea. It shut the opening closed forever. Today I need to drive 15 miles to NoHo to buy another bottle. I have a bigger one, with a wider tip, but it's hard to control the flow with that one. The gauge is different on the needle. I found that applicator bottle is made by Silgan, the company that makes the bottle for Listerine. They don't sell to the public. But the same bottle is used for applying henna temporary tattoos, so you can find them for sale online. You can also buy them off eBay for $3 for at least one seller. I just don't want to wait.

I really, REALLY want JAG's aluminium R5 dome.

Wife says no.

The Process So Far

I took some pictures during the process. This should help visualise the chaos of droid building in a confined space.

First some of the tools on the cutting table and mat.



The first circle being cut:





Notice the amount of styrene granules AFTER I swept the tabletop to make the disc visible. I have to sweep the table after each cut to ensure the sheet stays flat on the surface.





Look closer. The flashing on the edges is NOT plastic, it's the paper templates mauled into a mess. Plastic underneath is just fine, perfect flush 90 degree cuts all around.



I stupided this next one, but as described in the earlier post, solved the problem with crossbracing.



Yes the entire area is covered in 2mil plastic sheeting.





The circular pieces I have so far. This is as far as I got before my wife's anger meter hit the "Let The Eagle Soar" level.




The skins so far:





They're incomplete, and I'm going to redo the front inner skin. It turns out I don't really want opening arm doors. I don't really know how I would get the curve on them. Dave suggested this on the Astromech forum:

"Although I have not written up a tutorial for this I have tried out several methods and found a good one.

You will find amongst the drawings a heet with little profile pieces (chords) which would go at the top and bottom of each 3mm door piece. You then need a strip to glue into the midline of this door piece that will be just as high as the highest point of the chord.

Now the skin piece is first tack glued at the high points of the chord pieces. DO NOT PUT GLUE ON THE MIDLINE STRIP. If you do it will cause a fold line in the skin piece that will look ****house.

Finish up by gluing along the edges that touch the 3mm door piece and use masking tape to pull it down tight all the way along. Then after it's set you can put a little glue into the chords to finish them up." - Dave Everett, 05-26-2009

I'm not willing to try that just yet, maybe on the next droid.

Tonight I'm going to recut the front inner skin. One thing I'd like to mention is I bought the R5D4 Dome Detail resin parts from Vince (corellianexports). This link will take you to the details. I paid $37 with shipping included. He shipped on a friday and I got it saturday. Great shipping speed, parts look great! I have been reading up on the painting of resin parts, on how to make them look metallic, and came across this great info from Muttley. I might go that route for my resin details. He shows the test results of several types of paint being applied to plastic cups. I liked the Valspar and Rustoleum the best, however there are no Lowe's around here, so I'll probably get Rustoleum from Home Depot.

Another note on painting. I got this from Dave Everett regarding painting styrene:


Here what I know up to this point.

1. Lacquer based paints embed into the plastic so they are not going anywhere. For example, Tamiya [spray] paint is brilliant on styrene, but mega expensive.

2. Find a proper plastic primer, like is used to paint vehicle bumpers. I used this on my K9 and it's not going anywhere. It comes in grey and clear so using the clear for a white droid will mean less coats of white than a grey primer. These primers will shrink and crack if you spray too much, so I did lots of light coats, I think 9 in the end to build up the primer safely.

3. Krylon makes a paint called Fusion for plastics, it's good but as it's Krylon the quality is variable. For example, after only 2 months, the paint can no longer be sprayed from the can without itleaving chunks all over your work. If you can get it super fresh, you should be alright, but it is definitely second to Tamiya or other lacquer-based paints.


It will be a long time before I paint anything. I have access to the roof of my building, so any painting I do will be going on up there, far from my wife's beautiful perfect nose.

I also know there is a parts run for aluminium R5-D4 dome parts. I think aluminium would add a lot to the weight, but if it's just the dome details, it might not be that bad. I might get those for a future droid even though I have Vince's resin parts for this one. I lost the link to that parts run. Maybe my wife deleted the bookmark when I wasn't looking, metal parts are not cheap.

I did order inexpensive aluminium shoulder buttons from commandoeight (James Vansomethingorothereen) ;-) Thanks mate! Not in yet, but will probably get here this week. It will be my first aluminium part.

Oh yeah, KEITH HENRY sent me a message saying "Tell the world I have returned!" Well, he has returned. Find him at http://www.resinparts.com/ . I just ordered some resin booster covers from him.

Building the Dave Everett styrene droid

Alright, this is my first post on blogspot, I mean, I say it's the first but it probably won't be because I'll probably delete it and make another one...if I don't like it. Ok, why am I doing this? Well, right now is not a good time to be building a wood or metal droid in my apartment. I live in a small apartment with my wife and baby and can't install a full woodworking shop.
I have started from Dave Everett's plans. The first thing I did was to have the frame and skin plans printed at fullsize at Kinko's on Wilshire, near Staples. This was not cheap, at $4.50 a page. However, at one page from the end their printer ran out of paper and so they restarted the job. Kinkos let me keep the extra pages so I ended up with two sets each minus one page. Pure luck!
At that point my wife was already getting angry. I had spent money on printing the pages, so she wanted to make sure I wasn't going to waste any resources. The following morning I drove to Gavrieli Plastics in North Hollywood and purchased two sheets of 3mm (.125) styrene and one sheet of 1mm (.040) styrene. I can't quite remember how much I paid, I posted it on the R2 Builders club group but their search function isn't helpful right now. I do know I paid a bit more than if I had used http://www.indplastic.com/ which is what many folks recommend. Next time I build a droid I will buy directly from them because 1) they're cheaper and 2) shipping is free when you get to $125 in purchases. All I know is I damaged my 1mm sheet while loading the thing in the car and had to buy another one. I spent nearly $100 because I ended up getting 2 sheets 3mm, 2 sheets 1mm, one pint of Weld-On 16, and an applicator bottle ($5, overpriced, but it looks just like Dave's).

I found out soon that I bought the wrong Weld-On. I was supposed to have bought Weld-On 3, which is the most fluid. Apparently one of the other PDFs mentioned Weld-On 16 and I had that in my head. Argh!

The next expenses came entirely from tools. I went to Dick Blick on Beverly and Poinsettia and bought an Olfa L-1 Heavy Duty Cutter with Ratchet Wheel as recommended by Dave in the tutorial. I also bought a circle cutter tool from X-acto that turned out to be completely useless in the long run. It's a small thing called a "compass cutter". Do not buy, you won't get anything out of it. Blick had no P-cutter in stock, I don't think they regularly stock it. So I ordered from Amazon.com. The P-800 HD Plastic/Laminate Cutter came a few days later and I love it for cutting styrene sheeting. It won't cut circles but it is actually straighter/better than the L1. The problem is it creates a wide groove, so you cannot use it on parts that are drawn joined together on the paper, because it will eat a little of the next piece. The P-800 also hasn't come with extra blades, but so far I haven't needed any. I did however run through several blades on the L-1 already, so I am glad I bought extras.



Now here comes the big issue I have with Dave's otherwise impeccable plans: Dave uses that communist metric measuring system. His measurements are in millimetres. This makes getting certain tools and hardware much more expensive and annoying. We'll come back to this, right now let's look at the tools he recommends:

1) Trimmer router and plunge bit. Dave has the Ryobi TR50A, the A in the end is for "Australia", the British colony Dave hails from. ;-) I bought the Factory-Reconditioned Ryobi ZRTR45K Laminate Trimmer Kit. It was a lot cheaper than the Makita 3707FC Fixed Base Laminate Trimmer with LED Light that others have mentioned. One thing to consider is that Harbor Freight sells a much cheaper (in more ways than one) router, but the nearest HF store is too far for me. I purchased a 1/4" straight bit and a 3mm straight bit.

2) Olfa utility knife. Again, I got both the L-1 and t he P-800 HD.

3) Steel ruler. Dave's rulers use the communist metric system. He mentions his 1m, 30cm, 60cm and 150mm rulers, which make no sense in more advanced countries. So I got a 30 inch AlumiCutter ruler which is made specifically for cutting. The backing isn't cheap cork and doesn't slide while cutting. This I bought at Blick. While there I also bought the Alvin CUTTING MAT GRN/BLK 18x24 which has proven indispensable!


4) Set squares. Does it bother anyone else that set squares are triangles? Got two of them at Home Depot.

5) Styrene needle applicator bottle. That cost me $5 at Gavrieli. Way overpriced, but I didn't feel like looking around.

6) Drill bits. This part is annoying. Dave says to buy all these communist metric system bits. ;-)
They are:

3mm drill bit- I bought the Precision Twist 2ACO 3.00 Mm Metric Cobalt Drill 135 Deg NAS 907 33mm Flute 61mm Length

4-12mm Step drill bit - I bought the Irwin 11102 Unibit2M 4-Millimeter to 12-Millimeter by 1/4-Inch Shank Step Drill Bit

12-20mm Step drill bit - could not find
3mm countersink - could not find
8mm countersink - could not find
And later on a 17/64 drill bit. I got the Precision Twist NAS 907 Cobalt Steel 17/64" Drill 118 Degree 2 7/8" Flute 4 1/8" Overall Length

7) Digital Calipers - I bought this one:8" Digital Caliper Stainless Steel LCD Measuring Tool - with Fraction Display

There are other tools listed on the plans. They aren't "Immediate" tools but eventually you'll need them. One of those is a drill press. I tried one of those Craftsman Drill Press Stands that converts a regular drill into a drill press. BIG mistake. It was a dud, it didn't work well and nearly destroyed my $90 Skil cordless drill. I will buy a real drill press next month.

I got a 2x4 folding table from Staples for $30 on sale. This can be folded and stored out of wife's sight daily. I then sprayed my plans with Elmer's Craftbond 11-Ounce Spray Glue, allowed to dry for a minute and glued them to the styrene. I have had mixed results with this glue, but it does a good temporary bond. Only problem is if it pools up, then the bond is permanent and messy, so you need to spray lightly. The other alternative is some overpriced 3M repositionable thing which costs like $15.

It's important to note that at this point I had no router. The only thing I could possibly do was cut the straight cuts. So that first night I cut all the straight pieces in the frames plans out of 3mm styrene.

The second night I cut all the skins from the 1mm styrene, except for the round cuts.

A few days later the router arrived. I went to Home Depot and got a 3/4" thick 2'x4' sheet of MDF. I made a 1-1/2" hole in it with a holesaw bit and mounted the plastic underside of the router on it. I can clamp this onto my folding table with 4 C-clamps for stability.

Now here is the problem: this tool can make your wife extremely angry because it is the messiest part of the deal. In order to appease my wife's protests I promised to buy her a new vaccuum cleaner. But I also had to Dexterise my work area in our tiny apartment with lots of sheet plastic. Even with all this the styrene granules flew everywhere.

Anyway, Dave explains wisely that you should start with the outer cuts so as to not lose the centre of your piece. I thought I was smart enough and that I would keep that advice in mind. It seems I didn't. You see, I was doing rough cuts and final cuts, and didn't stop to think there are no rough cuts for the internal dimensions! I solved the problem by crossbracing the second ring which I had stupided earlier and centering the ring on the crossbrace. Lesson learned.

I cut most of the circular pieces, not all. Wife was getting too angry and I had to stop. It occurred to me that I should have bought a cordless router instead because then I could've done this outside on the street! Dang...

It's Saturday and I need to go buy the Weld-On 3 on Monday. So no work will be done this weekend. All the straight pieces are cut. Now I need to get the gluing going. I'll get around to it Monday.

I just realised I DO know how much I spent at Gavrieli Plastics. I checked my ever-shrinking bank balance and the record shows I spent $92.88 for 2 of the 3mm sheets and 1 of the 1mm sheets. I then stupided the 1mm sheet, walked back in and bought another one, plus the Weld-on 16 ($7) and applicator bottle ($5 overpriced thing) for $27.03. I can't solve for X in this equation but I can tell I spent far too much. I also realised I'm very afraid to check my bank balance, but I'm even more afraid of my wife checking it.