the tardis main doors

[tony farrell]

And also to add a picture - again from Claws - of Mr Pertwee stood directly in the doorway......

[Scarfwearer]

The attached photo is from Claws of Axos and shows the Knossos Throne next to the doors. Does anyone know how high the back of this chair is? If we do, we ought, once and for all, be able to work out the diameter of the roundels from this.
Warm Regards
Tony

We have a topic for that: http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=1036.0

The original stone one was apparently 54½", though I don't think we know if the wooden copy in the series was the same size or not.

Crispin

[Scarfwearer]

I was just looking at: http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=3212.0 and am reminded that the doors were originally raised up a few inches for the opening mechanism, and were dropped to floor level when the mechanism was moved to the top.
The wainscoting is maybe 3". This would explain why the same doors managed to be taller in the earlier stories.

Crispin

[tony farrell]

Hi,
I've been thinking about this and freely admit that I'm in danger of becoming a "rivet counter"! Nevertheless, I think it is important to distinguish between which set of doors and which measurements we are discussing.
I'm going to confine myself to the first set of doors which survived up to the introduction of the secondary control room. When the doors re-appeared after Graham Williams took over, I don't think they were the originals (but that's a separate discussion). Okay, Tardis doors from the Pilot Episode up to Planet of Evil.
It's also helpful not to confuse the height of the doors and the height of the opening: The doors themselves can still be 6'6" (78 inches) even if the opening is 3 to 4 inches taller. Thus, Jonathan (Markofrani) need not feel that his considerable and beautiful efforts in basing his measurements on a roundel of 24" in diameter are in some way wasted.
To explain: We need to allow for the casters/wainscoting. At first I thought we needed to add two inches to the height because of this. This would take the height of the door opening to 80". However, in all honesty, I now think that I've under-estimated this. Even assuming a wheel diameter of two inches, an allowance needs to be made for the metal 'frame' of the caster - say another 1". Straightaway then, we are already up to an opening height of 81".
At this point another thought occurred to me: The doors are nine inches in depth and must, therefore, weigh a considerable amount. We already have photos of the back of the door walls showing them being counter-balanced by weights to stop them falling 'forwards' when the doors are opened. (In all likelihood, they would also need to be some form of securing wires attached to the tops of the walls holding them to the studio ceiling scaffolding.) I doubt that a wooden door frame would be strong enough to support all that weight - metal 'bracing' would be needed as well. So, would two inch casters be strong enough to support a metal-framed wall built out of plywood and plastic? Hmm...
This forces me to conclude that the casters must be heavy duty ones and, therefore, must be more than two inches in diameter - more like three to three and a half inches in fact. Again, the casters must be in a metal 'frame'. Allowing an inch for this, the gap under the wall becomes slightly more than four inches. This means the height of the door opening is now at least 82 inches, if not more. Slightly over 82 inches is 'perilously' close to the 'magic' seven feet which the photos seem to show.
Lastly, we need to look closely at the bottoms of the doors: If the depth of the doors is 9", then the wainscoting appears to hang very close to three inches below the bottoms of the doors. Yet even with the wainscoting, there is a distinct gap between the wainscoting and the studio floor. To me, this gap looks to be just over an inch.
One last point occurs - that of the ratio between the diameter of the roundel and the vertical space between them. Every picture I've looked at is a ratio of 1:12. If rob49152's source is correct and the roundels are 25.5", then the vertical distance between them is 2.125" and not the 3" he's quoted.
Taking all of the above into consideration, I arrive at a door opening height of pushing 83" - just fractionally shy of seven feet. In this context, 24" diameter roundels separated by a 2" gap still makes sense.
Have a look at the attached photos and see what you all think.
Regards
Tony        

[galacticprobe]

The original stone one was apparently 54½", though I don't think we know if the wooden copy in the series was the same size or not.

Crispin

The last photo in this thread (http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=1036.30 - page 3) shows the back of the wooden copy with Tom Baker sitting in it. The top of the back of the chair comes close to the top of Baker's head, so it about fits with the measurements of the stone original (on page 2 of the same thread).

Hopefully this info is helpful?

Dino.

[tony farrell]

Okay, let's take the height of the replica Knossos throne as 54.5. In the photo, it stands about 2" lower than the top of the second roundel. That puts the roundel top at 56.5". If we accept the roundels as 25.5", the gap between them still can't be 3" (25.5 + 25.5 + 3 + 1.5 (for the bottom of the doors) + 3.5 (for wainscoting/gap under the walls) = 59". Add in the third roundel and gap + the bit at the top of the doors and we arrive at 89" for the height of the door opening, which is clearly too tall.
If we take the roundels as 25.5 and the gap between them as 2.125 (a twelfth of 25.5) and half of 2.125 for the bit at the top and bottom of the doors and 3.5 for the wainscoting/gap, then we arrive at 86.375". This is closer but surely is still too much?
My head hurts! 
   

[DoctorWho8]

Hasn't anyone thought to draw this out, like in Adobe Illustrator?  Guess it'll be me when I've got the gumption.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

[Scarfwearer]

The discussion is partly because Tony's working on plans for the first era.
I had a go a few years ago, but we have a better idea of the dims now.

Crispin

[tony farrell]

Hi guys,
As Crispin says, I'm working on a set of plans - not just of the walls, but other elements like the scanner 'scaffold', fault locator, computer towers/light boxes. These are based on photographic evidence with measurements extrapolated from these. In addition, anecdotal evidence is also used as well as 'eye witness' measurements (i.e., purpleblancmange). I know he's reliable from his 'work' on the Project Dalek Forum. I've also seen the original doors (well the doors used from the Graham Williams set) at Longleat and whilst I didn't measure them, I'm not conscious that they were as huge as is claimed.
I'm coming up to my 51st birthday and, being British, the real difficulty I have at the moment is that - and I don't mean any disrespect to rob49152 - I just cannot get my head round why anyone in the 1960s would come up with a figure of 25.5 inches. To me, it just doesn't 'sit right'. A standard internal door from that period would be 78" in height and, in large measure, my current plans are based taking this figure as the height of the doors to the living quarters. If they are six feet six inches, then it follows that the perspex screens seen in the attached photo are 9' 6" tall, which when compared to the height of the back of 'roundelled' wall (also in the same shot) makes this 'roundelled' wall 120" tall.
I've also added my first draft sketch of the main doors wall. You'll see I've come up with 117" as the height excluding the wainscoting (I allowed an extra 2" for the casters bringing it up to 119"). If you read further up this thread, I've stated that I now think this should be 3" to 4" which takes the finished height of the walls to 120". 120" still fits the photographic evidence. (The second photo shows the wall minus its casters - the drop in height appears to be 3 - 4".)
Rob49152 has also stated the width of the main door wall as 12' 4". In my drawing, and here I must give full credit to Crispin and Beeblebrox, assuming a roundel diameter of 24", the layout of the roundels makes the wall 153" wide - five inches wider than rob49152's figure. How can a width of 148" be compatible with a roundel of 25.5" in diameter? Wouldn't 25.5" make the wall even more than 153" wide?
As I say, I absolutely do not intend any disrespect to anyone here. Frankly, I'd just like to get it right.    

[galacticprobe]

Tony, I'm guessing you've seen the diagrams petertheta posted on the Hartnell doors/walls and his measurements a while back in this thread (http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=1035.30 - Page 3, about 3/4ths of the way down the page; click the photos to get a larger view). They look very close to what you've come up with, and I think he's got a few other measurements in there as well. And I agree that a measurement of 25.5 inches is an odd size to work with. (I think this also answers Bill's question about someone having drawn this out before; it was posted about 8 months ago and with all of the activity and topics on the Forum it's easy for something like this to slip the mind.)

Dino.

P. S. (And a bit off topic) But has anyone else noticed the Forum to be running a little sluggish today? Or is it just me? (The threads are hanging up while loading, and I have to Refresh the pages twice before they load.)

[tony farrell]

Thanks Dino - I had seen these, hence the thanks to Crispin and Beeblebrox. The main difference between his and mine is the fact that I don't think the half-roundels are fully semi-circular but have actually been 'lopped-off' by an inch at the bottom!
Best Wishes
Tony

[DoctorWho8]

Here's the kind of drawing I mean.  Now I decided to make a wall based on the dimensions both Rob and Tony have given.  I have placed a 6ft tall silhouette in front of it to see how a person looks standing in front of it. I'm thinking Rob's is more correct in appearance.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/65215981/TARDIS%20Console%20Room%20Walls.pdf
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

[tony farrell]

Thanks Bill Rudolf Doctor. I'm not quite sure how you've done this but very impressive. I've already said that I've under-estimated the wainscoting and that the overall height should be 120 - 121".
However, I'm slightly confused. Rob was quite explicit in his statement: There is a three inch ring around the edge and a three inch drop (between each roundel). How does this equate to the 1.5"/ 1.9375" shown on your drawing?
Regards
Tony

[Scarfwearer]

However, I'm slightly confused. Rob was quite explicit in his statement: There is a three inch ring around the edge and a three inch drop (between each roundel). How does this equate to the 1.5"/ 1.9375" shown on your drawing?

I think these were probably referring to the vac-formed plastic roundels themselves - not the flat. So the ring and the drop are the profile of the plastic.

Crispin

[tony farrell]

Thanks for the clarification Crispin.
To respond to Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff's excellent drawings:
These show two quite distinct measurements for the gaps between the roundels - 1.5" vertically and 1.9375" at 60 degrees. Firstly, neither of these conform to photographic evidence that the gap is a twelfth of the roundels' diameter. Secondly if Bill is correct, with the greatest respect, how do we account for the lack of a gap between the 'bowls' from the Time Monster?
From this, the roundels have to be evenly spaced and that spacing is (as near as damn it) a twelfth of the diameter of the roundel. This, in turn, must mean that the measurements given to rob49152 are incorrect.
Kind Regards
Tony