The Original You Might Say

[spica]

Ironageman,
     that could be a lead re Tarmac. What variety of boxes are you referring to and any idea when they were built?

[mantamatt]

Mark, that's looking really good, esp. detailing on the  signs. Is this a clue to your final construction method ? It looks like you will be building  a signbox ringbeam thing to sit atop the posts similar to in spica's example G1a? But a bit different since you will be adding a bit of corner post on top of the signbox.

However you're doing it, it looks great and already nicely weathered!

Matt

[Mark]

To be honest, I was intending building all for signboxes as seperate elements. each of these boxes would have ended up making roughly the same shape as the version I made for the model. It just made sense to do the model version in one go!

If you look at close up pictures of the where the sign box and corner posts join on real boxes, it does look as though the signs are dropped onto a corner post and a little piece of the top corner post is slipped on after!

Thanks for the tip Scarfy, I think I shall give this method a try (nothing to loose!).

If I manage to blag my brothers lathe over the weekend, I'll let you know how it goes.

By the way, finally got around to watching "Scarfwearer Returns". LOL, really amused me, nice bit of filmwork.

[Sorvan]

If I were going to play around with trying to polish plastic, I'd try using toothpaste and see if that works.  It's got a very fine grit, and if it works, you don't need to spend extra money.  If you do end up using sand paper, I think that wet sanding provides a smoother surface.

One thing you need to be careful with when using power tools on plastic, is to not try to work it too quickly.  I know that some clear plastics develop internal cracks, and some melt if you try to work them too fast.  I suspect you'd want to spin your plastic relatively slowly in a very stable environment - which you probably won't get in a hand drill.

Personally, I think it would be easier to lathe something else and then cast it.  On the cheap, I think I'd try using wax to make my master (and then do lost-wax casting).

Colin

[cyberleader1991]

Do you think the 800-1200 sanding would re-produce the see-through-ability? If so this may well be the best option so far....

Automotive sandpaper goes all the way up to 2000 grit... T

[Teletran]

It would be interesting to find out the technique used to make the originals

[davidpk212]

Another 'modification' they made in the construction of this box was the corner posts
[noIMG]http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y194/Mark7081/th_584A0024.jpg[/img]
How odd! I personally think that using mouldings for the curved edging, like the rest of us, would have been a lot easier than whatever method they have used!

Having "hugged" this box, I can tell you that the rounding is a single pole, rather than a quarter round. You  can tell because once it has gone 90 degrees round, it caries on round the corner...

Hugged - touched and felt into bits.

The phone behind the phone panel is a steel plate with instructions "Press to Call" above a picture of a telephone, with a button beneath.

[Sorvan]

It would be interesting to find out the technique used to make the originals

Mine is cast glass made with a 4 piece mold, made by Corning.  I've got a dome on the top of mine, so I'd guess that regular ones would be 3 piece molds.


Colin

[ironageman]

Spica -
It was the Wolverhampton ones, circa 1934.

About that Earls Court box - weren't they planning to put one near the Tower of London too?

[Mark]

No new build news (nice weather means my days of are spent tidying the garden etc, afte worse than death if I don't!), but I did pick up some paint.

After all the paint discussion on TG's thread, I wondered down to B&Q and was suprsed to find a pretty poor selection of usable blues.

There are plenty of pastel colours, and even a 'mix and match' service, although nobody could be arsed to come and mix me some paint!

In the end I ended up with some Dulux Weathershield paint in 'Windosr Blue'. I would say it has a little more red in it than the Dinky police box colour, but I'm actually really happy with it.

It's suitable dark enough for a Met style box, but blue enough to be blue!

[Teletran]

Could anyone post a closeup picture of the pebbled glass so I can get an idea of what it's supposed to look like, it doesn't need to be from an original box or anything?

[Sorvan]

Could anyone post a closeup picture of the pebbled glass so I can get an idea of what it's supposed to look like

You should look at the Pebbled Glass topic on this board.  It's flat on one side with lots of bumps on the other side.

Colin

[Teletran]

Hi all I'm back working on my 3d-max police box and am just about to go on my other computer and burn a CD so I can show you what I've been working on...

Okay I'm back and I've got a nice cup of hot tea, I haven't done any work on my policebox for... um hang on

I Have been taking a little brake from building my box hopefully be back some time this week.

Yep famous last words, anyway in the intervening (mental arithmetic) 11 months I've learnt a lot of new skills and am now keen to apply them to my build besides I was getting board working on my console so I'll do this for a wile and so on and so on until their both done.

Anyway I started with the top signs, it was while watching TV and noticing that they still use this font and slight variations on it that inspired me go back and work on my box. I modelled the text in 3d max using photos for reference so that the final maps would be sharp I rendered this in black and white so that I could replace these with any colour I wanted. This was a major improvement on the previous texture maps but I may go back and tweak the lower case P to bring it more in line with the B.
[noIMG]http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/4640/metbox020rs.jpg[/img]
I also updated the texture itself having learnt a lot about raytraced materials since I first created them last year.

(Note the weathering is intentional)
My next port of call was the windows, the frames of which I completely rebuilt. I have never been able to satisfactorily reproduce pebbled glass using procedural maps, (try saying that ten times fast) so I decided to make some customised bump maps (show of hands; who thinks I should write a glossary for this post). I started by simply tessellating a circular gradient into a hexagonal pattern in Photoshop and then apply some distortion filters and adjust the contrast; some trial and error was involved.

I've always intended for my finished model to be able to go from being a police box to the tardis essentially at the flick of a switch, to that end the windows are set up so that I quickly can change the colour of the frames and the glass panels are set up in three groups so that any one of them can have a different kind of glass.

Note to self: refine frosted glass texture.
The pto sign was made in Photoshop using times new roman bold based on photos and using other peoples work for reference I was surprised when I came to model the glass that the image didn't fit, the original pto signs were much narrower than any used in the tardis to accommodate the hinge so I had to modify my image to match I'm not aware of anyone having made a phone cupboard door in this manner.

The sign glass is essentially the same as that on the top signs for the classic look I simply swap the colours.

[Teletran]

By the way mark what scale did you want that fresnel lens because i've been thinking about ways you could make them

[Mark]

Would be 1/4 scale Tele.

Nice looking signage mate. It truly is the little things that make the biggest difference.

Out of interest, which style are you going for Crich or barnet? Reason being I'm curious how you may have gone around making the roof (if you've gone for Barnet)?