Monday, January 27, 2014

Han In Carbonite Repairs and Upgrades

I recently sold my house in Irvine and moved to downtown Los Angeles, where I now have a crazy apartment with an amazing view. The moving company did some damage to my Han Solo in Carbonite, so I decided this would be a good opportunity not only to repair the damage, but also make some changes to the thing, and get it finished once and for all.

These first two pictures show how the project stands as of earlier today. You'll notice that the side panels are of course missing, and the edges are square, not rounded

Here's a couple examples of the type of damage that the moving company did. My guess is they just handled it pretty roughly, and probably dropped it. The seams around the edges popped out in a few places. Not unexpected, just a bummer.

Worst of all, a couple of his fingers were snapped off. Thank goodness the moving company was wise enough to save the fingers.

I started off with my trusty router, which I originally purchased with this project in mind. It has since proven super valuable in the Tardis build, and even on the MattMobile.

I ran around the upper edges a couple of times, and things were going really well.

Sadly, somewhere along the way, the router bit depth dropped a bit, and the cuts became too deep. Now I will need to go back along every inch of the thing and sand down the lip. No big deal, just more work than anticipated.

Here's a pic of neighboring FIDM, and a fountain.

And my view from the balcony.

I then routered the vertical corners. Due to some warping on the box, it didn't come out super even, but that's nothing a sanding block can't fix.

A couple of the nails that held the fiberglass casting of Han to the box I built had popped out. I hammered them back in, but they still need to be puttied again, and then painted.

Last item for the day was gluing the fingers back in place. I found out upon attempting this that a big chunk of the ring finger is missing, which will need to be reconstructed using putty. No big deal really.

That's it for today. My goal is to get all of the body work done by tomorrow, and then I can start reshaping the openings on the side to fit my screen-accurate control panels.

1 comment:

Martin said...

Ouch! I'm just about to start making a mold of my original sidepanel as well, and thought I'd check in here as I'm following your approach to making a mold. Super frustrating with the moving-guys damaging your HIC. On the other hand: excellent view from the balcony!