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This droid is fully articulated. Each arm has two joints that stay in a variety of positions. The entire center base is screwed on so it can swivel left, right or completely off. Also the head-eyesocket can turn left or right. If only the treads actually worked too but oh well.
This droid took a lot of planning. The inspiration came to me when I was cleaning out stuff from my closet and I saw an old broken umbrella. The silk part was kind of ripped off and it was half opened and suddenly while looking at it I thought "Hey, those look like WED droid arms. This idea came to me a couple of months before they released the Aunt Beru/Treadwell figure so I was a little stumped on what to use for the base of it. Once I got the treadwell figure I was still not sure if it was the right thing to use since it still looks pretty different, but I went for it.
First I pulled off the treadwell neck/head and sanded down all that stuff on the base. Now I used thin strips of plastic and glued them to all four sides of the base leaving the treads half way exposed. To complete the base I used A/B Epoxy Putty. I basically applied it a little at a time smoothing as I went. While it was still wet I stuck a large screw in the center that fits with the umbrella. I also stuck a figure tie wire on the back for the rear antennae. Once I got the basic shape of the base I used my grinder wheel on the dremel to even everything out. Once I got the shape of the white part of the base perfect I started working on the red parts of the base doing the same method with the A/B Epoxy adding a little at a time and then sanding it smooth. Got all the lines nice and sharp with a little filing and sanding. I was really worried that this part was going to look strange but I'm really happy with the way it turned out. I may make casts of this base and do some trading with it.
Now for the hard part, the utility arms. The center cylinder is the very top of the umbrella. I had to grind that down a little so it wasn't so big. I then cut off all the metal bars about a quarter of an inch above the cylinder leaving 8 joints with little metal nubs sticking out of each one. The metal bars I cut off had the "elbow" joint but the bars needed to be trimmed way down to size. Once I got the 8 bars to the right size I superglued them to each little nub that's connected to the cylinder. (This is very difficult to put into words)
To reinforce this I superglued a wire inside of each arm and you can see them sticking out of the bottom each arm, they're painted gold. The tools for the arms I got from Datalink R2 and from the treadwell. The other ones I made from paperclips and Epoxy Putty. They were all superglued to the ends of the arms. I also made those little brackets on each arm using paperclips. The center rod and the head/eye is made from the plastic skeleton pieces from a model. To make the head be able to turn I stuck a wire through the entire neck and head and right through the top for the upper antennae. All the little details here and there including the actual eyeballs are made from Epoxy putty. I originally painted him really clean and brand new looking. He just didn't look right so I thoroughly dirtied him up with many different washes of brown and gray. This was probably the most time consuming custom and one of my favorites.
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