Friends, Romans, Countrymen....

So, this post is mostly about ears work.

We start off with a picture of the jig I made to hold the tubes in place:

It holds the tubes pretty close to 10 degrees off center.  Credit for this idea, as well as several others goes to fellow K9 and astromech builder Doug Dixon.

On the bottom I used a washer and a nut that just happened to fit fairly well on the tube, and I JB Welded it in place.  I'd forgotten how messy that stuff can be, and how even after 2 or 3 hours it will still run, albeit very slowly:

for the top of the head I considered coming up with some sort of mold to hold the JB Weld in place, to keep it from settling, but decided against that.
What I ended up getting instead was JB Weld's PlasticWeld, an epoxy putty.  I'd intended to get the SteelStick, but had a brain fart and grabbed the first thing that sounded right.  Guess it's a good thing the head is made of plastic...

Anyway, the stuff looks like what the 'As Seen On TV' guys were selling a few years ago, one color outside and another color in the center.  You just start kneading it until it's all the same color, then you have 20-25 minutes to get it how you want it. It's kind of like thick Play-Doh.

Here's what I did with it:

It's supposed to be cured in 2-3 hours and be sandable and paintable.  We'll see.  The washer on top of the putty is for the pen tip to ride on, once that stuff is all built.

Now that this part is finished, I'll be able to go ahead with assembling the head.