To get the slightly inflated look of the primary strut I first glued some wrinkled strings of  aluminum foil to it to give it a curvy outline.  Then I wrapped aluminum foil over that. The lower part of the leg is wrapped with yellow  1/2 mil Aluminized Kapton.

For the real LM5 it seems they where out of Aluminized 5 mil Kapton for the coating of the inside of the leg and used some kind dull metal foil covered with clear 5mil kapton as substitute.

I have no clear 5 mil kapton So I had to substitute the substitute with five layers of 1 mil Kapton Tape. For the dull metal foil I scoured  the house for a source and ended up finding it on the inside of a metalized bag that contained “spongebob squarepants fantastic inflatable air guitar”. It came with a spongebob squarepants comic magazine.  🙂

I’m really happy with how the Pad is connected to the primary strut. I managed to get the balljoint to work.

The ball of the strut fits exactly into a tube of styrene. I noticed earlier that the styrene shrink when exposed to heat. I took the tube and carefully heated the end of it over a candle. That was enough to make it shrink and taper inward  just enough for it to let the ball pass by if i used some pressure but still enough to hold it in place. Yay, posable Pads!