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Ah the dome. Well John Darley says you have
to use fibreglass to do this right. I think he's probably right. But I
don't like fibreglass, and I want to make my own, so I'm continuing some
experiments with other materials, to see if I can find something that's at
least acceptable, even if it's not perfect.
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A failed dome made from Fast Mache.
I pulled it too soon.
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Better looking Fast Mache dome,
with spackle over it for smoothing.
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A paper mache dome spackled and read for sanding. |
Finished temporary dome,
spackled and painted. Too lumpy!
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I found a better sanding technique for the lower edge
- keep the dome still and move the sand paper.
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A comparison shot of the three currently painted
domes.
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In the above shot you can see my moon city. Top right is
the dome plug. The inverted domes are the negative molds that I've been
working from. The dome at the bottom is my current best effort, but
1/2" too small, hence the new dome plug on the left.
I've tried several materials:
 | conventional paper mache with newspaper and diluted
woodglue |
| Fast Mache - a powdered wood pulp with glue to which
you just add water. |
| Woodglue and shop rags. I think this might have
worked, but I didn't get enough turtle wax and vaseline into the mold
and it stuck badly. |
| Water putty. This stuff sets hard and doesn't shrink
but is brittle. I'll report back when I know whether this is really
going to work. |
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| EYE |
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|
 The
stalk is made in the pretty much conventional way, with threaded rod and
short sections of PVC pipe to hold the acrylic disks in place. The back of
the stalk is a section of tapered chair leg. The pivot is MDF.
The first eyeball I made was cut from MDF layers glued
together and attached to a hemisphere. It was not very good, and would
have needed quite a bit of finish work.
The second eyeball was made using a votive candle holder
- essentially a small bubble blown glass bowl. I drilled a hole in the
base very slowly with a masonry bit and painted it black. So now the
dalek has a glass eye!
The eyestalk mounting is also fairly conventional:
The board behind the stalk above left is the former I
used for making the dome molds. |
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