Sorvan's TARDIS

[Sorvan]

Hi Colin, hope you are well.

Nice looking ringbeam!

Very similar build method as I intended to use. On the scale model I have (part)made. I made the actual base of it in one piece, purely for strength.

Hi Mark,

Well I've been sick at home for the last two days (hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow), but in general things are going pretty good for me.

The one really big problem if I wanted the ringbeam to be one piece would be the size of the thing.  Standard sheets of plywood are 4' wide while my ringbeam is 4' 8" from side to side.  Perhaps it's possible to get wider sheets, but I haven't seen them before.

I did spend quite a bit of time thinking about how to attach the pieces of wood together before settling on the wooden pegs and a bunch of screws.  One of the things I wondered about are the fasteners they use to combine counter top pieces - if they might be strong enough.

(image taken from leevalley.com)

While the counter top connectors weren't overly expensive, I didn't really like the idea of removing that much wood and decided that the wooden dowels would work (and they're cheaper to boot).  They actually aren't standard dowels to be honest, they're specially compressed pegs which expand when they come into contact with water based glue.  Now that those suckers are in there, they're not coming out.

Today was spectacularly uneventful.  I had next to no energy but managed to drag myself out of the house to buy some Battlestar Galactica on DVD so I'd have something new to watch (I previously only had the first season).  There was also a lumber yard I wanted to take a quick peak into - and found out that they sell lumber by the board foot!  What this translated into is that for the chunk of wood that the fresnel sits on, I didn't have to purchase an 8' length of a 2x12 - I just bought 1' of it.

[TG]

How's things Colin? we haven't heard from you for a bit.
A Happy New Year?
And how is that museum quality (Canadian winter proofed) TARDIS going?
Cheers
TG

[Sorvan]

How's things Colin? we haven't heard from you for a bit.

Hi Time Girl,

I haven't been working terribly much on my box these days.  I bought all the lumber for the corner posts, but found myself needing a second pair of hands to actually do anything with them.  I could probably enlist the help of my wife, but she's fairly busy with her studies (she's back in university) and these days I've mostly been in the mood to curl up on the couch when I get home from work (work's been a little crazy).  I finally got one of my friends to give me some help last week, so I have started milling them but I'm not done yet.

When Chris came over I started by showing him the sign boxes that I made, and he asked if it would fit up the stairs.  I pulled out the tape measure to show him...
"See, it's 58 inches across... and the clearance for the stairs is... oops"
"So I guess you'll take it apart then."
"Nope, it's all glued together..."

After a few minutes however, I realized that I could just disassemble the stairs, and then there'd be lots of room.  I put the stairs in, so it's not as if I don't know how to take them apart.

The roof is still sitting outside, but it's got a bit more snow on it - somewhere around 2 1/2 feet (.75 meters).  I'm pretty sure that there are rabbits living underneath it - I  just hope they're not making too much of a mess.  A week and a half ago the temperature got down to -37.6°C, -48°C with the wind chill (-35.7°F & -54°F respectively), so I'm willing to give the bunnies whatever shelter they can find.

Colin

[Sorvan]

Ok, so I've been really bad about getting back to work on my box.  I keep giving myself the excuse that it's too cold to pick up more lumber, but frankly there's still wood in my basement that I haven't started cutting into.  The big problem, is that at the end of January, I managed to track down a Nintendo Wii - and so I've been spending my free time waving my arms around.

Having finished Zelda, I did get into the basement today and put wood to router.  I've now done all the curved corner bits:

I had done 4 of the boards when my friend Chris was over, and the last 8 were about what I expected - really difficult.  If I had straight wood, this may not have been as much of a problem, but I really had to try to counteract the warped bits of the wood to get the router to cut the correct depth.  I'm hoping that when I assemble the corner posts, the warped bits will counteract each other and leave me with something straight(ish).

I've still got some more sawing to do, but it's not as daunting as the routing was.  We'll see if I can get away from Wii Tennis long enough to do it.

While I had the camera pulled out, I thought I'd take another picture of the top part of my roof that's sitting outside:

It's looked like this for a long time actually, as it's been too cold to snow for the longest time (we did get a dusting on Friday as it's been warming up (it's -10°C now, and forecast to go up to -2°C on Thursday).

Colin

[kiwidoc]

Looking good, getting those corners done must be satisfying, lovely routering job there.  Can't wait to see the roof when it thaws!

  glen

[Sorvan]

After sawing for most of the evening, I'm finally at the stage where I can start assembling the corner posts.  I'm not too happy about it though, since some of the boards are quite warped.  I'm hoping that when I attach them together, they'll counteract each other and be somewhat straighter, but I don't know if this is just wishful thinking.  I really don't want to have to buy more boards to re-do pieces, but I'm suspecting that I may have to do some of this.   

Colin

[Doctor Iz]

Colin,

I hear you about the warp-age  :-/
I had a lot of problems with my hinge stiles on my doors.
The doors would butt up against the jam at the middle and a wide gap was at both the top and bottom of the doors.  I had to redo my doors, ugh! 

Wood working is a peculiar thing!  I tried everything to draw those pieces in, but in the end, the only thing that worked was a 20 pound sledge hammer  

Keep us posted.. Looking forward to your build coming together!

Cheers,
Jon

PS - getting a lot of snow in the north?  We have had an Arctic winter here just on the south side of Lake Erie.  Spring couldn't come sooner.

[Sorvan]

Much time has passed since I last worked on my build.

I was quite depressed earlier this year when some of my boards seriously warped and while I still in this state, I managed to slip on some ice and fall on my left wrist which kept me from doing any serious lifting for months.  Since I couldn't do archery either (one of my passions), I started sewing myself costumes for the medieval recreation group that I belong to.  My wrist has gotten better, but having now made two hats, two shirts a pair of pluderhosen and the start of a doublet, I'm still sewing.  The sewing urge does seem to be wearing off, and my wife has lately been asking my why I haven't been working on my TARDIS, so today I went into the basement to work on it some more.

Before I injured my wrist, I had taken the most badly warped board (it was bowed about 3" out) and clamped it to one of the beams in my basement.  Leaving it there for several months certainly did something as it's now usable.  The boards are all a little warped, but nothing too serious.

You can see there's a bit of a gap in the middle, but when I actually attach the boards, I'll pull them together.

Today it was the start of gluing and screwing together the rest of the corner posts.


Hopefully I can get the momentum back and maybe finish my box this year.

Colin

[chriskingbees]

Welcome back "Sorvan my son"
and hi Colin, So sorry to hear of your problems. As you say stitchcraft can be quite theraputic and hopefully your Tardis will benefit from this all the more.
It's great to see you posting again
Many thanks
KB

[TG]

Great to see you here again Colin!!! I missed seeing the progress with your craftsman's TARDIS

A local longbowman group have a medieval festival called the Siege of Rye each year. I always admire their pointy toed boots? Do you have a pair? (I might have the wrong century)

Welcome back!
TG

[dematerialiser]

Welcome back, Colin! Sorry to hear of your setbacks, I'm sure it'll all come good. Great to see more progress photo's again too. :-)

all the best,
Chris

[Sorvan]

Thanks for the welcome back, it's feeling good to get back into this project.

A local longbowman group have a medieval festival called the Siege of Rye each year. I always admire their pointy toed boots? Do you have a pair? (I might have the wrong century)

I still don't have proper footwear - it's fairly expensive to buy and I haven't yet got around to leatherworking.  The group I'm with doesn't recreate any specific time period (it's the Society for Creative Anachronism) so pointy toed boots aren't out of the question.


I clamped up another post today.

I've got to use a lot of clamps so that there won't be any gaps, otherwise I could glue them all up at once.  Maybe on the weekend I'll pull the ones I've got done outside and give them a coating of epoxy.  I bought a bag of "play sand" last year to add texture to the roof, but think it's not fine enough for the walls.  I was trying to think of places I could get finer sand from, when it occurred to me that perhaps I should try a company that deals in sandblasting supplies.  I'm under the impression that sandblasting uses various particle sizes depending on what they're trying to do.  Can anyone else think of places I should try?

Colin

[DoctorWho8]

I believe you are correct regarding sand blasting grades.  I've seen it specified on This Old House.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

[dalethetimelord]

Welcome home Sorvan, good to have to you back with us; and good to know your TARDIS is making progress once more!

[Sorvan]

So today was the day that the rest of the roof/ring beam/signs came up out of the basement.


I thought I could get away with taking out a few of the stairs, but when the time came only the bottom three actually stayed in place and I had to remove part of the ceiling as well.


my father putting the stairs back

In other news I was talking to one of my mothers cousins at a family gathering, mentioned that I was looking for fine sand and he said "I've got four bags of silica sand at home, how many do you want?"    He said he'll bring me a bag next Sunday when he's in town.

Colin