The Original You Might Say

[dalethetimelord]

Awwwww, don't cry Mark... you'll make your wood warp...

[Mark]

Oooooh, Matron! 

I'd be more impressed if it vwoorped!

[dalethetimelord]

Oh, very clever, lol.

[Mark]

Why thank you Dale!

Anybody going to be visiting Crich in the not to distant fututre?

If so I have requests.......

[Sorvan]

When you treat the wood, should you do all sides of it?

What I mean is, for eg., if I was builing a corner post, would I be as well treating every single face of each component before assembly of the corner post or is one allover coat on the final constructed piece fine?

Hi Mark,

I wouldn't bother treating the wood before assembly.  If you wanted to glue the pieces together, you'd have to sand off whatever coating you used so the wood would stick together.

In my case, I'm using glue and screws to assemble my box.  I'll smear on a generous coating of glue onto one board, clamp and screw the other board to it, and then wipe off all the excess glue that's squeezed from the joints (some people put a less generous amount onto both pieces, but this way works for me).  I hadn't really thought about it this way, but I'm basically using glue to seal the two pieces of wood where they join.  If you want to take this approach, just make sure that you use a exterior glue.  I use an outdoor wood glue for the most part - it's good and not terribly expensive.  I've used a bit of epoxy which is harder to work with and quite expensive.  In the past I've also used polyurethane adhesives which are also nice to work with but more expensive than wood glue.  One advantage to them is that they have a bit of foaming action which will fill small gaps.

Colin

[Mark]

Cheers Colin,

I'm guessing from your discription that the glue not only sticks the two parts together, but effectively makes them "one" bit of wood as long as enough is used to completely cover the join?

I think I will take this route as it make sense to my novice carpentry mind!

Also, I remember hearing and reading about "knotting compound" or something similar, it may have been Purple that was talking about it.

What does this do, and why is it needed?

I'm off to re-read Purples thread, but if you (or anybody else!) can pop the answer quicker....

[Mark]

Oooo, while I remember,

A few posts ago, I mentioned I was going to start making the distribution board and that I had a 250V 15 amp splitter box for the power side of things that could be fixed on.

Well, I dug it (the one on the right) out and it's a little rusty, although I think it's only surface stuff and should just brush off with a wire brush. The other one looks a little too new for the job.



The fact is, just like the wood I found while dismantling the table, another happy little coincidence occured.

I was trying to find out an age for the box to make sure it "could" have been installed in a police box. It matched the description in the plans shared by UK Archivist, and looked a little similar too.

It was when I was "Googling" the make of "Memette" and "MEM" that is on the front, that I realised I'd seen that before somewhere, and low and behold

Ok so the Crich one is a different style and obviously a lot more modern, but who's to say it wasn't a direct replacement for an older MEM model of power switch?

I'm awaiting an email from MEM seeing if they can give me a rough year of manufacture for this style of switch box, but to be honest - I'm pretty happy with it

[Mark]

Here's a quick quiz for you guys-

on the photo of the Crich police box's distribution board, you can just about make out some words (they are blocked out by the relay box, the part worded "Danger 250 v.a.c. GPO") running along the top.

I don't have the correct answer (yet.... ), but I make it out so far to read "F.M.?.??T? DEPT" or similar.

Any guesses as to what this may actually say?

No prizes, but It'll make me happy if you have a good feasible answer

It'll also make me laugh if your answer is amusing

[dalethetimelord]

It reads I.M.FOREMAN - BBC EFFECTS DEPT

[Mark]

  That was quick!!!!

But really funny!

[Sorvan]

Also, I remember hearing and reading about "knotting compound" or something similar, it may have been Purple that was talking about it.

What does this do, and why is it needed?

Here's an explanation I pulled off [url-http://www.studentworks.ca/content/about_us/wood_knots.asp]another web site[/url]:
Much like rusty nails, unsightly stains often occur after a wood knot has been painted. This is the result of sap from the wood bleeding, and their natural resins staining the top coat of paint. Simply painting over the affected area will yield the same result, and an apparently good paint job will be spotted again within a few months.

I'm guessing that the knotting compound is designed to seal the knot so that the resin can't penetrate into the top coat of paint.  I've never heard anyone in Canada talk about a "knotting compound" (Google it and you'll just find lots of UK sites).  I don't know what it's like out there, but in North America, it seems that the major companies each has a dozen different types of primer depending on what you want to do - and some of them explicitly state that they're good for sealing knots (Zinsser B-I-N for example).

Colin

[Mark]

Thanks again Colin.

Woodwork expert and Google king!

[Mark]

Finally got the power switch thing refurbished, and wasn't that a hastle

First I spent 1 1/2 hours hunting for grey Hammerite. Wilkinsons had lots of greens, blues, reds and an abundance of white and black tins but no grey.

I thought Hammerite because it's a rust treatment as well as an actual paint. As for the colour, well the box used to be a battleship grey colour.

A short drive to Wikes revealed that they didn't even stock Hammerite, instead having their own brand which was even more limited than Wilkinsons!

Of accross town to B&Q, which did have a grey. It wasn't quite as light as I wanted but was close enough.

After carefully dismantling the box and removing the inards, amed with some wire brushes (rougly toothbrush sized), I set to work removing the rust.

The rust removal and actual painting of the thing really didn't take all that long, about 2 hours in total.

Now what really bugs me about painting with gloss type paints is where it says (in the case of Hammerite), touch dry within 1-2 hours and re-paintable within 4-8 hours.

I painted the last part at 9pm while watching Heros and certain parts of the thing were still tacky at 2pm the following day >.

Well the paint finnaly dried and all the inside were reinstalled and I'm pretty impressed with how the whole thing turned out.

;



The last thing I need to do is recreate the small metalllic "MEM" sticker that was far to fragile to survive intact when I tried to remove it prior to rust-removal.

[Mark]

Just so you folks don't think I've given up on my build again for another 12 month, thought I'd let you know different!

I haven't cut my wood yet for the fuse board thingy, but as I said earlier it will only really take one cut for it to be right. Maybe a little saning and a new coat of varnish too.

Bought a new computer store area thing which took about six hours to put together, which really ate into my days off.

The instructions were actually pretty clear for a flat pack item (well three flat packs actually!), it was just there were lots of parts to it.

Hopefully this time Wednesday I should have some pictures of my first official police box part!!!

[TG]

I'm definitely looking forward to the pictures!

If only TARDIS builds had flat pack instructions with them!

good luck
TG