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. ;-)