Today I separated the mold halves for the upper leg and used epoxy putty to make hollow copies of the part. I also added a bit of missing detail to the sole of the foot.

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Today I poured the second half of the upper leg mold and made some headway on the top of the foot:

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My track record with the 100 day challenge has been rather poor lately. Tonight I got back into it and turned my attention to the leg parts.

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Since I’ve made good headway with the torso I think it might be a good time to get back to the arm, try to get it to a point where it can be integrated into the overall build. First up, the hand:

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I didn’t get a lot of time in tonight and I’m at one of those points in the project where I’m not super-sure how to proceed. But I was able to check the completed midriff joint now that the epoxy putty is cured, do a little refinement there, and start on a bit of work on the hip part.

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It’s been challenging to make headway this week, just a lot going on. As always, just got to keep at it as well as I can. Last time I reworked the polycap installation for the midriff joint, and lamented the fact that the connecting rods installed in the midriff were still so far out of whack. Today I used a guide to reinstall the rods with better alignment, and also made some adjustments to the chest block for better symmetry.

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Numerous times in the previous posts about the waist joint I said things like “I could have made this so much easier and better if I had the two polycaps stuck together with a styrene tube and built up the torso around it”… Sometimes it’s important to resist the urge to re-do work that’s already done, but I decided in this case it’d actually be worth it.

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Prior to the 100 day challenge my progress on this project was characterized by bursts of activity separated by years of non-engagement. The past couple days I haven’t managed to get any time in on the project. Missing two consecutive days of the challenge feels like that, like I’ve been making all this progress but it could just stop at any time and I wouldn’t get back to it until 2030 or something. A bit of an overreaction perhaps, but I do want to do better than that.
Today I continued work on the polycap joint connecting the chest block to the midriff. Honestly, it still needs work, it’s been a challenge trying to get the two polycaps properly aligned with each other, and to get the two rods that plug into them parallel with each other and properly situated in the midriff. But I think what I have now, I’ll be able to work with, without having to start over (again).

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I had struggled for a while to figure out how to add a polycap joint to allow the chest block to move relative to the midriff, but finally I found a solution: Have two polycaps, one on either side of the cockpit, so the joints wouldn’t prevent me from having a hatch-open cockpit part as an option, and put the joints at the bottom of the chest block, rather than the top of the midriff, so I wouldn’t see them poking out the front sides of the midriff. It was a slow process to add the polycap to the torso, and I’ve only done one side so far, but it looks promising.

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Today I spent a big chunk of time puzzling about how to attach the head and midriff to the torso. I’m not sure I’ve come up with a solution I’m happy with yet so for now I’ve altered the midriff part to fit around the canopy frame.

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