Sorvan's TARDIS

[davidpk212]

I live far away from any earthquake zone - pretty close to the center of North America actually.  We sometimes get severe weather, but nothing like the hurricanes or tornados that pass through other areas.  Our region does deal with flooding occasionally, but the city I live in has a floodway which makes this a non-issue for my house.

There are issues for police boxes pretty much all over the world - Earthquakes, tornadoes, and British winters...

[purpleblancmange]

Colin, that roof has really taken shape and the matting is nifty, so I guess it's a different approaching to felting it.  When you come to applying the finer grade matting, will you be draping it over the sides of the slope's step too?  I get the impression that this may help hide the join.

Great work as usual!

Edit:  Something that I've found invaluable for matting large areas is a metal roller, a bit like a sponge roller, but obviously metal instead and with "fins" - this works a treat and it's designed for just such a job... They're commonly used for glassing ships / boat hulls or in my case, casting full sized space crafts for kids' telly. 

[Sorvan]

Purple,

Fiberglass matting is made for use with polyester resin, but I'm using epoxy resin which isn't compatible (I understand that the binders in the mat that hold the glass fibers is dissolved by the polyester resin, but the epoxy resin doesn't do it).  I suppose I could get finer grades of fiberglass cloth to do the corners with, but I'm thinking that's getting to more overkill than I'm even interested in!   From what I've been reading about boat builders who use epoxy resin, when they want to have sharp corners, they actually round the corners down and then build them back up with just epoxy.  Maybe I'll do something like that.

I've seen the type of metal roller you're talking about - if I'm understanding correctly, they're very useful for getting rid of air bubbles.  This isn't really a problem with the cloth.  Using cloth, it's a matter of laying the cloth where you want it, pouring on some resin over the cloth and then spreading the resin around.  I haven't seen any trapped air bubbles yet.

In the pictures I show that the weave of the glass cloth is visible after it's been laminated to the wood, and that I could use more epoxy to fill it in.  The more I think about it though, I'm not sure if I need to do this.  I'd like to texture the box, but don't think I'll be using epoxy to do this (too expensive) and if I'm going to be covering the entire box, there's not much point to filling in the weave on the glass cloth with epoxy before doing so.

Colin

[Sorvan]

My fiancee gave me the "Season 1" of Dr. Who as an early birthday present so today I did more fiberglassing, and watched Dr. Who as I waited for things to set.

With the top done, I wanted to do the inside corners of each of the steps.  I tried several different methods to keep the cloth in place while spreading the epoxy around, but eventually decided on just stapling it down.  Since I had planned on rounding the inner corners, the staples would be covered.



Next it's a matter of dumping the epoxy onto the fiberglass cloth.  You can see what they mean by the fiberglass "wetting".



After spreading the epoxy around (it's about the consistancy of syrup), I took what was left and mixed in some filler.  I then used a tongue depresser to round out the corner and cover the staples.



I think it worked pretty well.  Tomorrow I think I'll do a little bit of patching, and then think about painting it.  I want to texture my box, but I don't think I'm going to be doing that to the roof right away, and since epoxy isn't UV stable, I don't want to leave it sitting outside uncovered for an extended period of time.

Of course, my other thought is to mix some sand into epoxy and coat the roof with that - as a base texture which I'd build up later.  My thought is that this might give whatever texturing compound I use later something to grip onto.  What do you people think?

Colin

[TG]

Looking great Sorvan!

But forgive me, I don't understand why you need the cloth.
It can't be to add strength? (As it survived you standing on it!)
Why can't you just paint it with the epoxy for weatherproofing?

And what's going to be first - Birthday or Wedding?

TG

[Sorvan]

Hello,

Why did I put on the cloth?  Some mild form of insanity I think.   At this point, I don't think I need it.  It will increase the strength (which I don't need), and also make it easier to have a thicker layer of epoxy to make it absolutely waterproof (which I probably don't need either as the design will shed water on it's own).  I believe that when I started I didn't think it would be as strong as it turned out to be, and so I bought the cloth and did research on how to apply it.  By the time I got to the stage I was going to apply it, I figured I may as well go ahead.  It does give an extra feeling of security that the whole thing isn't going to fall apart (and so I might just put fiberglass on the top sides of the sign boxes).  Were I doing this over, I might still use the fiberglass, but make a less substantial (lighter) roof.  According to my bathroom scale, it weighs 103 lbs (47kg).

Just spreading on some epoxy would have been good enough to make it waterproof I'm sure.

The order of things is as follows:
May 12 - my birthday
May 13 - our wedding
May 14 - our flight to Italy (honeymoon)
? ? ? - finish police box

Colin

[Sorvan]

Today I started the texturing of my roof.  I don't plan on finishing the texturing any time soon, but I'm thinking that this will be the last of the resin that goes on it.

I spread on a layer of resin and then started dumping dry sand on top.  I used a cheap paint brush to move the sand around, keeping the really large pieces from sticking, and hopefully getting the finer particles to really stick in.





I suppose it's no real surprise that I couldn't get the sand to stick to the vertical surfaces nearly as well, so I'll have to do the sides of the roof later.  Unfortunately I don't think these pictures do a very good job of showing the texture - which I'm quite happy with.  Once I've finished doing all the sides, I'll give it a few coats of primer so that everything will be protected until I can get back to it.  I think this will be a nice base for building up the texture as I try to emulate Purple's excellent work.

Colin

[purpleblancmange]

Hey Colin, that's looking rather fab!  Now I'd be interested to see quite how this turns out as I'd never considered adding sand to resin... if you had the quanity, I'd also suggest you could experiment on a bit of scrap with the sand mixed directly into the resin and scraped on with a spatula or something... you could even try mixing sand in with your paint.

I really like it.... go on, add a tester of blue to that roof, just to see how it may look when finished.

[cyberleader1991]

How long are you finding it takes the resin to cure Sorvan? I mean to the point of not being able to smell it anymore?

Tom

[Sorvan]

Tom, 
I can't say that I've ever seen 1" plywood.  I thought 3/4" was overdoing it!  I'm planning on doing the panels with 1/2".

Scarfwearer,
Yeah, I know this thing's going to be really heavy.  The place that I've been thinking about sticking the box has a tree growing over it, I would't be surprised if I end up buying a block and tackle and winching it up to the top.

Colin

[DoctorWho8]

... could that be American?  It looks so, but after doing a bit of poking around the web, I still can't find anything on these handles.

You mean these guys?
http://www.libertyhardware.com/
And maybe one of these online stores?
http://www.myknobs.com/libertyharware.html
http://shopping.msn.com/results/shp/?bCatId=6371,av=2-4500233,pagelink=bc
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

P.S. You'll have to copy-paste the bottom link.

[Sorvan]

Well, yes it is http://www.libertyhardware.com but they don't exactly have much information on their site (at least for consumers).  I've looked through many online stores (including these two) and haven't been able to spot these handles.  Honestly, I've spent hours looking for them and haven't been able to find cast handles that screw in from the front:

All the drawer handles I've seen screw in from the back, and the handles that screw in from the front are formed sheet metal (which I really don't like).

I'm guessing that knowing the model numbers and such, it might be possible to go to a store that stocks liberty hardware and getting them to special order it (though I don't need to do it at this point).

Colin

[Sorvan]

Today I finally managed to align my mitre saw after failing on several other occasions, and sawdust once again filled my basement.

When I assembled the top two "steps" of the roof, I thought this would make it easier to do, but had made the mistake of calculating how thick the piece of wood that could be cut based off a 90° cut instead of a 45° cut.  Consequently, I can't cut all the way through the piece as part of the saw bumps into the wood I'm cutting.


I finally decided today that I'd just saw through the remaining bit with a hand saw, and this went much better than I anticipated.  Now I've got to attach the four pieces of wood together, but would rather do this on a flat surface (of which I don't have a large enough one in the basement), so I think I'll buy some more plywood before I continue.  I guess the question would be if I would do this again knowing what I know now and to be honest, I'm not sure.  Maybe I'll have a better idea when I get around to attaching the bottom step.

In other news, my dad called to let me know that there's a box of yellow cedar that's currently on a plane heading to Winnipeg.  Someone he knew wasn't carrying their maximum allotment for luggage, so I'm getting this a bit earlier than I thought I would.  He didn't go as far as making the windows for me, but he did trim all the pieces to the right width and thickness so it shouldn't be too hard to produce my window frames.

Colin

[Scarfwearer]

If your saw is asymetrically shaped there may be more clearance on one side than the other. You may then be able to nibble the end off the work piece with multiple cuts... Or not.

Crispin

[Sorvan]

I actually did remove some of the wood to let me move the blade lower, but in the end there were still things on the other side which prevented me cutting all the way through.  The amount of wood that I did cut provided a nice guide when cutting through the rest with the hand saw.

Colin