A Watched Pot Never Boils. ~
Poor Richard (aka. Benjamin Franklin)
Sorry for the long delay with updating this thread. I wish I could find more time for this hobby......
The project is progressing though.....
The front half of the outer shell has been finalized with all its protrusions and recesses.
As I water-formed and assembled the shell without cutting out any holes where needed, these were cut out using one of the ball halves as a 'cutting mat', trying not to cut too deep into the plastic surface.
Cutting out the holes after shaping and assembly, maintains the uniform integrity of the surface of the water-formed half-sphere.
The recessed window section was rolled into shape on the back of a mouse-mat with a 5 mm wooden dowel, making sure that the dowel lined up parallel with the printed radial lines while shaping.
A bit of raised detail was added here and there too......
To make HAL's 'eye', I used a high intensity, red 5mm LED. I masked the wire legs and sprayed the LED with 4 coats of gloss black paint. Once dry, I used some 600 grit sandpaper and just 'tipped' the black paint off of the tip of the LED. The LED was then glued to the back of the front panel, with just the tip protruding. The effect is not perfect, but, close ...
The rear half of the sphere was finished off too. However, there were two issues here that bugged me and needed rectifying ........
There is one grab-handle recess that is not included in the template, but was only represented by two black printed blobs instead. This grab-handle is to left of the door, which you can see clearly in the studio shots below, including Dave using it, to aid getting into the pod.

I scratch-built this recess and also added various recessed and raised panels and parts to better detail the rear.
The louvred assembly above the door is a frustrating piece of work. I built it twice, and I am still not happy with it. When attaching the stupidly thin strip of the leading edge of the louvre assembly, (part 76), I found it was better to leave it attached to a larger piece of card, glue it to the leading edge and then cut the extra card away with curved scissors, once the glue had dried.
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