Sorry for not taking photos during the start of these two Scale builds... An Imperial Dalek and a Special Weapons Dalek, (The latter is more to scale of the commercially available Dalek figurines).Some pics of the Special Weapon dalek Build... The skirt and bumper done. The "Dalek Bumps" are 10mm wood hemispheres bought unpainted and made black using a Permanent Marker. The colour balance here is off the main body colour cis Silver Grey. The Bumper is a Metallic Pewter/Grey. View from front; note; The skirt is hollow and when the Shoulder and head section is removed... Can be used to store small items. Rear view. Took the liberty to customise with two black Lego Radiator tiles (1x2) to simulate cooling vents. Under the Bumper. levitators/rollers are 15mm wood domes with two "o" rings and two 10mm discs of 1.5mm ply centred on the flatsurface. Again coloured using Black Permanent marker. (Will have to add an overall Clear Varnish To finish the look to the Build) Shoulder section showing the interior and the electronics. Charging board Switch and Batteries; with the wires from the LED's. The batteries came from two "Crystal" disposable Vape units. Why waste perfectly good rechargeable batteries. The Charging board again comes from Temu (Cheaper buying a pack of 5) Also available on e-Bay and Ali Espress. Shoulder section with Head lid back on. Note the use of Metallic Silver Lego parts to give detailing of heavy plating and such. Radiator tile s two with center bar clipped out. More Tiles mounted showing the rear of the tiles (Light Grey) Also note the use of Round plates and tiles in the gun in Black, Dark Grey and light grey.  Side view showing Grey tiles nd Dark grey slope tiles mounted showing the rear of the slope pieces, Same others side Not shown is the rear with Transparent Red radiator tiles either side of the USB C charging port with the switch above. Tiny pieces of black coloured Cocktail sticks completes the look. (Photo corrupted) Video of the Red Flashing Led in the head interior and the Multi-colour Led in the Gun. Next I'll complete the Imperial Dalek in Cream and Copper Bronze (Looks more impressive than the usual Gold. Check out my other Builds to get a better idea of the process used. VID_20250104_230428[1].mp4  

The Card I tend to use is 2mm Grey crafters card stock I do use stiffer Birthday card stock layered for curved shapes. But most of the time these days I use 2mm ir 3mm Ply from Temu (Cheap enough). Paints vary from Car Spray paints and primers (The kind that fills in imperfections etc.) Metallic paints I've used recently I also get from Temu... gel type Nail paints and varnishes. (These can be rapid cured using UV like 3d Resin Prints) I have recently found a way of making to scale Domes using the Plaster impregnated bandage used to make plaster casts. has to be left to thoroughly dry out and harden before sanding smooth with fine Garnet paper and such. Slots for meye stalks and holes for Dome lights made using Dremel tools. I've even dabbled with gilding; check out my Gold Emperor Scale dalek Auric... I ended up looking like I'd been involved in an explosion at a Glitter Factory ( the Washing machine drainage water was pretty spectacular... Lord only knows what they thought at they tjought at the Sewerage works). Building scale can be harder than building Full Size. Detailing gets difficult; som,etimes almost impossible. And I have found uses for Off Brand LEGO parts too.

Couldn't resist cutting some holes in the card dome and popping in the eye stalk just to get really, thd first feel of how it will eventually look.  Im really pleased but also a bit sad that its coming to an end.

My calendar says it's exactly seven weeks until the FanExpo, and I must have been visibly panicking, because when I woke up this morning, my wife had brought me coffee and said I could have the morning to do whatever daleking I wanted, as long as I was ready for Pilates at noon. This is something of a rare event on a weekend, when we're usually catching up on the house maintenance and stuff. Anyway, today's post is here to reassure people who are just starting their build and are worried they won't be able to match the high standards set by the PDF: WORRY NO MORE!   This is the shoulders of my dalek with the slats removed. And the weird patches of camping mat foam haphazardly glued to the sides are me IMPROVING IT! Derek has been on a continuous upgrade since he was first bodged together in 2018. The dome and neck cage have been completely replaced (The neck cage TWICE, now!) and the current skirt is on the third covering. Even the bumpers have been upgraded from cardboard (Yes, really. I know, I know, but there was no budget in 2018.) to flooring foam! But the shoulders have only had one attempted improvement since I badly mangled that first construction, and that was only the very front section. Arguably, that's the most important, since it's where people are looking most of the time, but still - the rest of it bugged me. I missed out one entire line where the large slats should sit. The bottom collar was too long at the back and the sides, and it was unsupported, so it cracked and broke. On the gun side, the transition from front to side was just wrong, and the bottom collar flared outward.   The first thing to acknowledge, however, is that NO ONE EVER MENTIONED THESE THINGS. We've taken this Dalek to a bundle of places, some of them containing quite exceptionally dedicated Whovians, and no one pointed and laughed, no one said anything other than "Wow! It's a dalek! Did you make it yourself? Is there someone in there?" *. So these improvements are really only for me, for my peace of mind, and to silence my inner demons. Well, the ones that talk about daleks, anyway.   So today I have padded some of the areas that were too shallow, and built up parts that were missing altogether. I have sanded things down, and put on base layers of filler/primer. In a burst of idiocy, I tried using tape to smooth out a top layer, and ended up using something even stupider to smooth THAT out. If it works, I might mention it later, but I suspect it won't. I wouldn't have tried that if the brand new tube of spot putty hadn't gone missing from my workshop. I would be angry about that, but I'm the only one who uses it, so it was me who took and left it somewhere. Wish I knew where.   I've done a lot of work, and the extractor fan is running full-speed in the workshop to keep the paint smell out of the rest of the house, and I am secure in the knowledge that I probably haven't fixed anything in the long run. All I have done is changed the nature of the work I will have to do to fix today's mistakes somewhere down the line. But that's ok. If I wanted an ordinary hobby, I'd go back to stamp collecting.     *Obviously this is not the full story. Many people said "What is this?" and too many people mentioned R2D2. But you get the point.