Painting Bubby 11-15-10

Painting Bubbys head has entailed alot of work. The skin on the face had a lot of wear and tear. To prep the fact the first think I did was take out the eyes, which were all one peice. I cleaned the eyes and covered the eyes except the eyelids so they could be painted.

The skin had to be scrubbed with Simple Green and then gthe rough spots were sanded with fine grit 400 sand paper. The face was then cleaned again with Simple Green. To smooth out the tears in the skin I found a greate product from Loctite called Logtite Vinyl, Fabric and Plastic flexable Adhesive. It says it tried in 30 minutes, but it gets tacky in about 30 seconds or less!! So spreading the product over the skin is tricky, but it provide the right kind of coverage for the type of skin Bubby has. I ended up covering almost all the front of the face with the product. The rough spots had several layers applied with each layer being allowed to dry and cure for atleast 24 hours. The nice thing is the product is paintable, which a lot of them say they are not. If anyone is doing this type of repair for their robot the Loctite product is easy to find at most major hardware stores.

After the skin was smothed out, it was painted with a primer spray paint and 3 coats were applied with each coat drying 2-3 days or more. Spray paints will tell you they cure in 24 hours, but with flexable skin type material you want to give it at least 2-3 days before you touch it.

I liked the primer color but it proved to be a little too dark so a lighter tan color was picked and 2-3 coats were applied to the face and eyelids. Again 2-3 days were needed for the paint to totally cure and setup before the skin was touched or repainted. As long as you used a general primer you should be able to use almost any type of spray paint for your finished color.

The last step is to apply a matt finish clear coat with UV protection. I used a Krylon brand product for this, as the I did for the tan paint. You can find this type of paint at any major hardware store or Walmart. (Walmart proved to have a lower price!)

The next step is to replace the left eyelid servo motor as the gears inside at stripped and the eye does not move correctly. Then the eyes can be reinstalled.

I'm going to try out a new servo motor for the mouth controls.

I also had to patch the skull plate for Bubby as it was cracking in the front. I took an old credit card and cut it strips of it and glued it to the inside to span the length and width of the crack. This will help the crack from continuing to tear and stregthen the front part of the plastic where it tore. With a little touchup paint, it'll look good as new.

Hope to have some new pics of Bubbys head put back together soon.

Bubby updates 11-3-10

Bubbys face being latex and over 20 years old required a great deal of attention. His cheaks, forhead and nose were really scrapped up and the rest of the skin showed a lot of pealing and pitting. I found a wonderfull product commonly avaliable at the hardware store for sealing and mending latex and rubber. I used this as a compond to rub over Bubbys face and the results were great. I could not totally smooth out his cheaks, but it was a big improvement!

After much sanding to this face with fine git sand paper and scubbing with Simple Green cleaner his face was ready for a new cost of paint. Not all paints will stick to rubber and latex, but I found some that work pretty well. We wanted to go with a new skin tone for Bubby, but picking skin tone paints is never easy. I did find a primer color and a dark brown color that I liked and after putting a coat of primer paint on Bubbys face I really like how it turn out.



His eye lids were painted the same color and his eyes are now brown as well, instead of blue.


Bubbys originally hair did not fit his new look so I took his scalp plate and sanded all the old glue and stuck hair and gunk off of it and painted it with primer and a darker brown. I think leaving his head like this with no "hair" is going to look really good and will be a lot easier to maintain.


The rest of Bubby is in part and I still have several more coats of paint to put on Bubbys head and face.