Getting our color on, part 2

First coat of color getting sprayed on!  I ended up applying 3 coats of latex enamel.

NOW it looks like Bender!  I turned the shoulder donuts from some scrap wood.

Color my world...er, Bender

Time to start getting some paint on Mr. Bender.  I shot the first coats of white latex primer.  I used Kilz, a mildew-resistant primer in the hopes it would be a little tougher in the face of beer than most.

Starting to look like something now!  The eyes are just 4" PVC pipe couplers in there for placeholders.

I found some Velcro straps in my archive of junk and they're perfect for strapping the portable CO2 tank to the keg.

Here's what it looks like in his head - this shot is taken through his mouth.  A tight fit, but everything is safely inside.

And here he is posing with me so you can get a sense of scale.  He's almost life-sized!  He followed me to his first party shortly after this was taken.

In the head department

Time to get back to work on that Bender noggin!  I glued the concrete tube into holes cut in the base.  I cut a notch out of the back for the gauges to sit and hoses to come through.  The whole thing got wet out with polyester resin to waterproof it.

Starting to fiberglass his face.  The spray adhesive held the 'glass pieces in place, then they were wet out with resin.  The entire structure was covered in fiberglass for strength and waterproofing.  The face will make or break the look, so I was careful to double check everything as I went.

The beer is a necessary component of the process.

And here he is all 'glassed in.  He's sitting on top of a lazy Susan made into an impromptu turntable.

At the lathe I turned an antenna.  The top of the head also got a few extra layers of fiberglass, since I figure people will be yanking on the antenna any chance they get.

I've started adding the body filler here to help smooth out some of the lumps and bumps.  I'm not going for perfection, just to get it pretty smooth.

After much filling and sanding, Bender looks like a soldier with a bandaged head would.

The eyes have it!

Getting the eye pod in proportion and in the right part of the head was a challenge.  Technically the head is actually a little short, but when I proportioned it exactly from a picture it looked all wrong.  I guess cartoons don't always translate precisely to real life!

I'm just mocking everything up here, holding the eyes in place with some tape.  Once I had them there I could not stop giggling at it :)

Here is my portable paintball tank and regulator from Kegconnection.com.  This will provide the CO2 pressure to push the beer out of the keg and into your glass.

This is how I originally envisioned the tank and reg would hang.

After that it was time for a little fiberglass work!  I started with the bottom of the tub.

Here it is all wet out with polyester resin.  This should seal it up against water.

It is so tough to get a head in this world.

I chucked up the baseplate for Bender's head on the lathe to turn it precisely round.  MDF is the absolute worst to turn on the lathe.  The dust is a nightmare.

You can see here how the two discs will go together to index the head properly to the body.

I used a 10" concrete form for the head.  It turned out to be almost perfectly to scale with the body.  I drew on Bender's face to give myself a good giggle ;)

Pink foam went on next to block out the neck area and head dome.  I rough cut them into circles and stuck everything together with spray adhesive.

Back to the lathe to shape things out.  I used a coarse autobody rasp to shave the foam down.  I mounted the head dome on an MDF plate and turned that separately.

And here we are after coarse shaping.  Test fitting the keg to make sure it still fits!  It's really starting to look like something now...

Insulation Installation

Time to use the expanding foam to fill the space between the inner and outer liners.  I stuffed a garbage can in the top to keep it round and some foam blocks around the outside to keep things centered.

Next I had to get the spray foam to the bottom of the can somehow.  So I attached a long hose to the nozzle and used a dowel to poke it down to the bottom.  Worked great, and I was able to fill the gap pretty easily.

Here's what it looked like when I was done.  I stuck a keg in there so you can get an idea of the scale.  It's OK that the keg sticks out - the beer is drawn from the bottom, so as long as the lower 18" or so is kept ice cold, we'll get cold beer.

Time to break out the power tools

And so begins construction.  First order of business was to cut the mounting ring off the sump basin.  My trusty jigsaw made short work of that and the mounting lugs.

Next was rough cutting some MDF rings that would serve as the lid and base of Bender's head.  I cut these out with the bandsaw.

I decided that I wanted his body to be insulated, so the ice would last longer.  I needed an inner liner of some sort so I started wandering around my garage.

Ah HA!  A leaf bag funnel was a perfect fit inside.  Now to make it work...

The bottom has to be sealed up so water doesn't seep in there.  I had a disc lying around the shop that was a perfect fit.  I snapped that in place...

Followed by a ring of heavy pink foam insulation.  I used expanding foam to hold everything in place and put a big weight on top to hold it while the foam dried.