Sanding and painting

Sanding was the worst part of it all. I had used plastic steel for filling all the joints, so that they were nice and smooth, but this caused a lot of dust. After 4-5 hours it was like I had gotten a bag of flour in my hair. I never was completely satisfied with my sanding/polishing work, but I was tired and had dust everywhere...

The painting went very well and very quickly.

Next there were the hands and legs. The hands themselves were made from 2 flower pots. The fingers were made from 6 aluminium tubes.

The fingers were attached with plastic steel and were sanded and painted.

Mounting Benders parts

Then we had to attach the arms, legs and hardware. After a lot of cutting of overlong arms and legs, I got a nice, fitting length. But there was one problem. Despite the legs being shorter than planned, he was very unsteady. Therefore I made a stand for him. I attached 2 pieces of wood to 8 x 90 degree angle braces to form a pair of cross braces. I then threaded the legs onto the pieces of wood and Bender became very steady. You can even push him without him falling over.

After the platform was made, everything went like a dream. The parts slotted right inside. I can thank myself for this due to careful planning and taking my time with the project. It actually took 3 months longer than planned.

Finished result

After everything was in place, it was finally time for Bender to pose for the cameras.

One button is for power, the other is Bender's voice button.

It says: "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"...

Why not visit Jan's original Bender page, sign his guestbook
and check out his video of the CD in action?

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