had been asked to produce a 3/4 scale version of the Drone Dewey from the film Silent Running as a commission, and agreed to take on the job as it is a subject I am comfortable with having previously produced three garage kits of the Drones (see Volume 16). I also felt the experience would be a worthwhile one as I would be using different materials and tools, which, as a result, would help me develop my skills further.


Pushing the envelope I


New challenges, new techniques are the order of the day for Brian Jones as he builds his biggest Drone replica ever…


The customer specifically requested a fibreglass body for strength and the aforementioned is a medium I was not very familiar with. The other technical request was that the Drone’s main lamp be functional. The first step was to upscale my drawings of the original garage kits. After this came the patterns, which were produced in the same way as I had created the moulds for the smaller models. This proved to be very time consuming work, from the beginning of cutting and assembling the MDF pieces to the inevitable filling, sanding and spraying. With this project I wanted to cast each of the components separately, so that all of the parts could be sprayed individually to give the final piece a much better finish, and make it easier to work on in the process.


I decided to cast some of the smaller parts, such as the feet, shins, top panels and front grill, in fast cast resin, as it is easy to work with and gives excellent results. With this stage completed I moved on to the fibreglass work, which, as mentioned, I had had very little experience of in the past. If I am honest this whole stage was quite difficult as a huge amount of waste was created and it was by far the least enjoyable part of the whole project (mainly because of the smell). I had by this point decided to build two additional Drones – in total producing two Deweys and one


Huey – so there was quite a lot of fibreglassing involved: three sets of shoulders, three front panels, and three central cores. I wanted to create the central core as a complete unit so I made my first fibreglass


24


Top: composite photo courtesy of Steve Olive.


Opposite (top six photos): fibreglass was the chosen material for the Drone bodies. Remaining shots: creating the manipulator arm.


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