TARDIS Toolkit box - 80s version - Build Diary

[vortexvisuals]

Evening all,
Earlier this year, I got hold of a Helix Filing box from eBay with the intention of converting it into an 80s TARDIS tool kit box.

Here is the original box


And here is the result of several months of work (with plenty of errors)



Here's how I did it:
After getting hold of the box, I sanded the yellowish colour to the metal before spray painting on the grey. The trickiest thing was finding the right colour spray paint. I used this one:


I then spray painted the green parts to matt black, and added thin black whiteboard tape to the lid


The illuminated buttons on top were a little challenging. The original prop shows the buttons to be dark blue when off but light green when on. I disassembled the buttons to remove the native dim blue LEDs, replaced them with bright green LEDs and cotton wool to diffuse the light generated. The wiring, 12v battery, and power switch  would then be contained within the centre box inside the lid, with a lid of its own for easy access/battery replacement




With that, everything was done apart from the black blocks inside and outside of the box. After a lot of searching, I gave in and bought a 3D printer. Oh, what a shame...

Here are the underlid boxes, with the "wire cage" (centre box) closed by a magnetically attached lid


Whilst the outer side boxes didn't take long to make, due to the plate size of my 3D printer, the large front and rear boxes had to printed in 2 halves and stuck together


The finishing touch was to add the reflective rectangles to the front and back pieces.

All 3D printed parts were sanded and spray painted with matt black.

For a while, I had black rubber feet over the lock release (on the front of the box) but it was pointed out to me that that was wrong, so back to the 3D printer I went for something more accurate.

Now, I just need to make the tool rack for the inside, but I need to make the tools first...but that'll take me a lot longer to do, so in the meantime...