A few months ago I discovered the R2D2 Builders Club at astromech.net.  I couldn’t stop looking at these home built droids and all the cool things people were doing with them. And before the night was over I was hooked. I had to build one of these.

One of the things that excites me about it is the engineering challenges. These things are not kits. Far from it. There are parts that are sort of available every now and then. There are plans and blueprints for different parts. There’s the builder’s club forum and a yahoo group to ask questions and co-op on part runs.  And there are 100’s of other blogs to follow fellow builders, see how they solved problems and learn from their mistakes. But depending on what you want the droid to be able to do, there will be an array of problems to solve.

I’m actually not one of these people who gets in to costuming.  Last Halloween I considered getting a real Stormtrooper costume.  But at about $1200 I decided against. But at some point before that I really wanted life sized R2 and C3PO statues. I found some really good licensed ones for about 7 to 10 grand each, and they were all sold out. Well for just slightly more you can build your own and it’s not a statue.  It’s a fully operational metal droid.

But with a price tag in the neighborhood of 10 grand, how do you justify the new hobby to your wife? Well there are worse things a husband could be doing… much worse things. And I suppose you just have to bring in enough bacon that it doesn’t matter. And then there’s the fact that it can take years to complete and therefore years to pay for. Although I am a ‘want it now’ sort of person – so I’ll be trying to move things along as fast as I can.

So I’ll be sharing some of my journey in this blog, starting with the first part that I just got in today.  And as I get time I’ll add resources, etc.  Note that in general this will not be a how to blog.  Others have done that quite well, but I don’t have the patience to take all the necessary process photos and discuss each step.  This is an experience blog and a whatever-I-feel-like-typing-today blog.