Arm number 2

After creating the first arm, I was then hit by a stroke of good luck. I noticed that the second arm behind was very similar to the first arm that I created. So, I was able to clone the first arm and rotate it 180 degrees. This arm is quite a bit shorter than the first one, so I had to scale it down slightly. Although I thought that this would be easy to do at first, I soon found that it was not so. As the arm was at a slight angle, I had to re-position the arm so that it lay perfectly horizontal. I could then correctly scale the arm down without it altering shape. I then had to rotate the arm again to the necessary angle. Another hard part to this section was trying to select every object that is Incorporated within the arm. As the arm is made up of many objects, it was quite difficult to select every object. However, with lots of incorrect selections and frustration, I finally selected all objects and was able to work on it as required.

(2nd arm in place)

I am now coming very close to the completion of my modelling task, with only a few things left to do. Having started work on this model very early and putting in a lot of hours initially, I am pleased with the way that it looks and am also please with how quickly I was able to create what I have so far.

(Close-up of additional detail)

When I duplicated the arm, I added another metal cap object onto it, as the original source photo shows.
Using the clone tool, I made another copy of the end base plate and nuts/bolts that were attached to it. The scale tool then enabled me to make this a lot more smaller, and I rotated the object 180 degrees. As you can see above, I then placed this at the end of the 2nd arm, and attached the two together. This is now ready for when Tom has finished modeling his section, so that we can connect the two objects together (Tom's model and mine).